Guilds, Labour and the Urban Body Politic: Fabricating Community in the Southern Netherlands, 1300-1800 1351245783, 9781351245784

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Guilds, Labour and the Urban Body Politic

This book presents a new view on the relation between labour and community through a focus on craft guilds. In the Southern Netherlands, occupational guilds were both powerful and governed by manufacturing masters, enabling the latter to imprint their mark upon urban society in an economic, socio-cultural and political way. While the urban community was deeply indebted to a corporative spirit and guild ethic originating in medieval Germanic and Christian traditions, guild-based artisans succeeded in being accepted as genuine political (and, hence, rational) actors—their political identity and agency being based upon their skills and trustworthiness. In the long run, this corporative spirit and power inexorably waned, being replaced by what has been called European modernity—i.e., proletarianisation and the emergence of a modern economy and modern economic and political thinking. This book shows that an adequate understanding thereof requires to take into account the fundamental entanglement and co-emergence of economic and political transformations with cultural, intellectual and epistemological ones. Corporatism became discredited in a process in which the economic was separated from the political, the individual from the social, and the transcendent from the material. In this context the guildbased artisans’ labour and skills became separated from the urban body politic again. While the religiously inspired corporative nature of the urban body politic waned, the urban artisans lost their credibility as political (and rational) actors. Bert De Munck is Professor at the History Department at the University of Antwerp, Belgium, and Director of the Antwerp Urban Studies Institute.

Routledge Research in Early Modern History For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com

In the same series: The Solemn League and Covenant of the Three Kingdoms and the Cromwellian Union, 1643–1663 by Kirsteen M. MacKenzie London, Londoners and the Great Fire of 1666 Disaster and Recovery by Jacob F. Field The Turks and Islam in Reformation Germany by Gregory J. Miller Church and Censorship in Eighteenth-Century Italy Governing Reading in the Age of Enlightenment by Patrizia Delpiano Individuality in Early Modern Japan Thinking for Oneself by Peter Nosco Guilds, Labour and the Urban Body Politic Fabricating Community in the Southern Netherlands, 1300–1800 by Bert De Munck An Unproclaimed Empire: The Grand Duchy of Lithuania From the Viewpoint of Comparative Historical Sociology of Empires by Zenonas Norkus The Discourse of Exile in Early Modern English Literature by J. Seth Lee Women and Jewish Marriage Negotiations in Early Modern Italy For Love and Money by Howard Tzvi Adelman

Guilds, Labour and the Urban Body Politic Fabricating Community in the Southern Netherlands, 1300–1800 Bert De Munck

First published 2018 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2018 Taylor & Francis The right of Bert De Munck to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Munck, Bert De, 1967– Title: Guilds, labour and the urban body politic : fabricating community in the southern Netherlands, 1300–1800 / by Bert De Munck. Description: New York : Routledge, 2018. | Series: Routledge research in early modern history | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017044192 (print) | LCCN 2017045711 (ebook) | ISBN 9781351245784 (ebook) | ISBN 9780815372028 (alk. paper) | ISBN 9781351245784 (ebk) Subjects: LCSH: Guilds—Netherlands—History. | Labor—Netherlands— Social aspects. | Netherlands—Social conditions. Classification: LCC HD6473.N2 (ebook) | LCC HD6473.N2 M86 2018 (print) | DDC 338.6/32094924—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017044192 ISBN: 978-0-8153-7202-8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-351-24578-4 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

List of Figures List of Tables Acknowledgments Introduction

vii xi xiii 1

1 Communal Revolts and the Politicization of Labor

29

2 The Fabrication of the Urban Body Politic

73

3 The Political Economy of Freeman Status

123

4 Corporatism, Proletarianization and the Patriarchal Order

179

5 Equality, Solidarity and the Decline of Brotherhood

229



Epilogue: Dis/Assembling the Workplace and the Agora

281

Index

307

Figures

  1.1 Battle at the Beverhoutsveld. This miniature from the Chroniques de Froissart pictures a victory of the Ghent militias (with their Black banners featuring a white lion) against the army of the count of Flanders Louis of Male in 1382. Berlin Staatsbibliothek: Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz, ms. Rehdiger 3 (Depot Breslau, 1, Bd. 3)—15th century/Copy by Paul Hermans. 35  1.2 a: City view of Ghent, surrounded by the coats of arms of the most important patrician families. Wood cut of Pieter de Keysere, 1524. Universiteitsbibliotheek Gent (Ghent University Library), BHSL.RES.1572. b: Coats of arms of the most important guilds in Ghent. Wood cut of Pieter de Keysere, 1524. Universiteitsbibliotheek Gent (Ghent University Library), BHSL.RES.1572. 40  2.1 This miniature in the Priviligiën en Statuten van Gent en Vlaanderen (Privileges and Statutes of Flanders and Ghent) pictures the submission of Ghent after the famous Battle of Gavere on 23 July 1453. Kneeled and dressed in white sheets members of the city council present their banners (some of which clearly refer to manufacturing guilds) to duke Philip the Good. Austrian National Library, Vienna (ÖNB/Wien, Cod. 2583, fol. 349v). 79  2.2 Board of the Mechelen tailors’ guild gathered around a table. Oil painting on canvas of Egidius Joseph Smeyers, 1735. © Stad Mechelen—Museum Hof van Busleyden, inv. nr. S/237. 95   3.1 (a+b) Inside wings of the triptych of the Brussels Guild of the Four Crowned (gathering the masons and other crafts in the construction trades), ca. 1560. Museum van de Stad Brussel-Broodhuis (City Archive Broodhuis Brussels), inv. nr. K 1884/2. 128

viii Figures  3.2  Miniature cabinet made as a master piece with the Brussels cabinet makers, eighteenth century. Museum van de Stad Brussel-Broodhuis (City Archive Broodhuis Brussels).   3.3 Model drawing of the master piece of the Mechelen cabinet makers, 1781. Stadsarchief Mechelen (City Archive Mechelen).   3.4 Flemish wool dyers at work. Miniature in Bartholomeus Anglicus, Des proprietez des choses, 1482. © The British Library Board.   3.5 Coat of arms of the Antwerp black smiths, featuring a crowned hammer. P. Génard, Armorial des institutions communales d’Anvers, Antwerp: Imprimerie Veuve De Backer, 1883 (Plate XVII 2), University Library Antwerp.   3.6 Members book and cartulary of the Ghent carpenters, showing their patron saint St Amandus as well as different tools, 1423. De Zwarte Doos, Archief Gent (City Archive Ghent), OA_190_1_1bis   4.1 Hall mark of the Antwerp tin smith Peter Hellaert (1714), featuring the master’s initials and references to his home town Antwerp (the rhomb-shaped fortress and the hands). Geel, Sint Dimpnagasthuis, inv.nr. T.BS.A.10 (Keur van tin uit de havensteden Amsterdam, Antwerpen en Rotterdam [exposition catalogue Amsterdam 1979, p. 160]. © Paul Stuyve).  4.2  Oil painting on canvas of Pieter van Lint, depicting the most prominent members of the Antwerp carpenters’ guild at the occasion of the marriage of Mary and Joseph (the latter being the carpenters’ patron saint), 1642. Our Lady’s Cathedral of Antwerp, inv. nr. JVDN E.62. © www.lukasweb.be—Art in Flanders vzw/photo Hugo Maertens.   4.3 The print ‘de tinnegieter’ (the tin smith) of Jan and Caspar Luyken, Het Menselyk Bedryf. Vertoond in 100 Verbeeldingen van Ambachten, Konsten, Hanteeringen en Bedryven, met Versen (The human enterprise, featured in 100 pictures of crafts, arts, stiles and enterprises, with verses), Amsterdam, 1694, pictures an apprentice (or else the master’s son).

134 137 147

151

153

187

195

204

Figures  ix   5.1 (a+b) Grain entering the city of Ghent under the supervision of a clerk. Two miniatures from the Biblia figurata symbolizing both the power of the city over its hinterland (the Ghent ‘staple right’ required to unload all grain passing through the rivers Scheldt and Leie and preserve part of it for the Ghent market) and its care for Nahrung (the grain being carefully distributed in equal shares). Saint-Bavo’s Cathedral Ghent. © www.lukasweb.be—Art in Flanders vzw, photo Hugo Maertens.  5.2  Portrait of the deans of the Confraternity of the Holy Sacrament, kneeled before the Holy Sacrament. Oil painting on canvas, 1673, maker unknown. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Gift of John G. Johnson for the W. P. Wilstach Collection, W1904–1901–1952.   5.3 Distribution of bread to the poor of the Ghent parish of St Jacob by the masters of the local Table of the Holy Spirit, 1436. The so-called three members of the Ghent government are each represented by a master, as two are identified as belonging to the patriciate, one to the wool weavers’ guild and one to the so-called ‘small trades’. Archive of the St Jacob church, Ghent. © www.lukasweb.be—Art in Flanders vzw/photo Hugo Maertens.   5.4 Board of the Bruges tailors’ guild gathered in their guild hall in the presence of poor and disabled people, 1754. Oil painting on canvas of Pieter Beuckels. Musea Brugge, inv. nr. O.1450. © www.lukasweb.be—Art in Flanders vzw/photo Hugo Maertens.

234

247

254

261

Tables

  3.1 Numbers of new guilds in a range of cities in the Southern Netherlands   3.2 Admission fees (for not-sons of masters) for a selection of trades ca. 1784 (in guilders and stivers)   3.3 Entrance fees in selected crafts in Antwerp, Ghent, Leuven and Mechelen, ca. 1450–1780 (lowest and highest amounts, in guilders and stivers)

127 139

140

Acknowledgments

In its attempt to offer a new synthesis of the long-term history of craft guilds in the Southern Netherlands, this book builds on a broad range of expertise. I was able to benefit from decades of excellent new work on cities, labour and guilds conducted in Belgian universities. Some of it has thus far only been published in Dutch (or French), and I can only hope to have done justice to it when framing it in my own historiographical and conceptual agenda. I was introduced to the world of the guilds in the late 1990s by my former supervisor Hugo Soly, who, mostly with his partner Catherina Lis, was also largely responsible for the revival of guild research in the Low Countries from the 1980s. A great deal of the insights and data built upon in my book actually results from research initiated by Hugo, such as the work of Johan Dambruyne, Harald Deceulaer, Marc Jacobs, Karin van Honacker, and Frederik Verleysen. I am extremely grateful for having been part of the same group and to have been trained in the same critical spirit. Most of this work was conducted at the Free University of Brussels (VUB), concentrated on the early modern period and approached guilds and cities from a socio-economic angle. The gauntlet I took up was to bridge this with the work of another important historical group of historians focusing on guilds, based at the University of Ghent. The so-called Ghent School— working in the tradition of the renowned Belgian historian Henri Pirenne and including Marc Boone, Jan Dumolyn and Jelle Haemers (currently KULeuven)—has focused on the medieval period and addressed the guilds from a political angle in particular. The work of Anne-Laure Van Bruaene on late medieval chambers of rhetoric, can be included too. As well as their collegiality and friendship, I value their work highly. This book would not have been possible without it. One of the strengths of my book is the integration of these two ‘schools’ of historical expertise. What I have endeavoured to do is build a long-term view in which socio-economic and political and cultural perspectives are brought into a fruitful dialogue. In addition to that, I hope to have introduced some new insights of my own, although these are indebted, in turn, to myriad fruitful conversations and debates at my home institution since

xiv Acknowledgments 2003, the Department of History at the University of Antwerp. This book has benefitted in particular from the knowledge and commitment of the members of the Centre of Urban History, currently including Bruno Blondé, Greet De Block, Pierre Delsaerdt, Hilde Greefs, Guido Marnef, Jeroen Puttevils, Tim Soens, Peter Stabel, Ilja Van Damme, Gerrit Verhoeven and Reinoud Vermoesen. Peter Stabel deserves a special mention, because as an expert on (medieval) guilds himself (trained in Ghent) he was my sparring partner on countless occasions. Bruno Blondé and Ilja Van Damme have led me to the research on material culture, which plays an important role in the book too. Former members of the Centre who have contributed to my thinking and expertise include Ellen Decraene, Jord Hanus, Dries Lyna, Wouter Ryckbosch and Maarten Van Dijck. Maarten’s broad and critical approach to the history of early modern civil society has been particularly helpful. In addition, my own PhD students have made a contribution, often, in all likelihood, without realising it. This book would lack both empirical data and historical insight if it were not for the work on migration of Jan De Meester, on training and technical knowledge of Annelies De Bie, Raoul De Kerf and Vincent Van Roy, on brotherhoods and poor relief of Ellen Decraene and Hadewijch Masure, and on labour and economic thinking of Jelle Versieren. I thank them all for their hard work, commitment and friendship. Beyond my own group at the University of Antwerp I am particularly grateful to Karel Davids, Maarten Prak and Patrick Wallis, with whom I have cooperated intensively in the past years. Their expertise, critical attitude and collegiality have challenged me in myriad fruitful ways. Last but not least, this book has benefitted enormously from a group of colleagues who were willing to read and critically comment upon the first drafts of the chapters. This group includes Bruno Blondé, Ellen Decraene, Brecht Dewilde, Raoul De Kerf, Jan Dumolyn, Jelle Haemers, Catharina Lis, Guido Marnef, Wouter Ryckbosch, Hugo Soly, Peter Stabel, AnneLaure Van Bruaene, Maarten Van Dijck and Jelle Versieren. I thank them all sincerely for their comments and input. Finally, I am indebted to Sandra McElroy for her efficient and excellent proofreading. Bert De Munck 1 May 2017

Introduction

The famous Annales historian Marc Bloch once wrote about the term commune that ‘no word ever evoked more passionate emotions’. He was of course referring to the ‘new urban communities’ which in the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries strove for collective independence and autonomy in a profoundly feudal context.1 Typically, these sworn associations of burghers stood up for communal rights, i.e. the right of a group of people to self-rule and self-governance. Italian cities in upper Italy—‘land of bellicose cities, communes, and astonishing urban energies’—famously pioneered this movement, but similar developments soon occurred in the most urbanized regions throughout Europe—the Low Countries included.2 They gave birth to urban privileges and chartered cities that were governed by men of substance whom, next to holding real estate in the city and controlling the local economy, had sworn an oath of loyalty to the city’s charters and privileges. Some decades afterwards, these urban communities were themselves torn apart by revolt, as other ‘communities’ within cities rose up against the aristocratic and patrician groups that embodied the early urban communities.3 It is this second wave of urban revolts that spawned the guilds to take centre stage in this book. The term commune turned out to be laden with ambiguity and ambivalence. In late medieval cities, a range of groupings had recourse to a strong communal ideology, but this eventually pitched cities and citizens against counts, craftsmen and guilds against patricians, the poor and unskilled against established craftsmen, etcetera. Craftsmen even fought other craftsmen, as is easily illustrated by the often bitter struggles between wool weavers and fullers in Flemish cities.4 Nevertheless, historians, historical sociologists and political scientists have often encased this in a long-term narrative of modernity—not seldom influenced by the ideas of Max Weber—in which late medieval cities eventually engendered democratic values and rationality.5 Current successors of these ideas present cities as hotbeds of a vibrant and healthy civil society, which is considered necessary for both economic efficiency and democratic practices.6 Under the influence of Weber, the very origins of modern citizenship are sought for in the medieval oath-bound fraternity, which would have replaced blood and kinship as the founding

2 Introduction elements of community.7 Some historians assume the existence of aboriginal ‘pure democracies’ in for instance the Alpine rural cantons of present-day Switzerland, in which decisions would have been in the hands of a general meeting of householders with equal voice.8 The history of these urban communities is extremely topical in the current socio-economic and political context. Ours is an age of growing inequality and growing dependence on both large capitalistic enterprises and supralocal governing institutions. On the local terrain, people often lack the levers to become empowered and act politically, especially when in need of resources and social and cultural capital. This is all the more urgent as the neo-corporatist welfare state, which served as both a safety net and a provider of social and cultural capital, has been gradually dismantled since the 1970s and 1980s. In the wake of this, conservative policy makers now legitimize neo-liberal policies with reference to self-reliance and the ‘Big Society’.9 Local groups of citizens as well place their trust in self-organization and selfreliance so as to cope with social, political and ecological challenges. This is why civil society has been rehabilitated in intellectual circles either by such political scientists as Robert Putnam—the well-known author of Bowling alone and advisor of the Clinton administration—or with references to common resource management and the ideas of Elinor Ostrom. Yet self-organization, self-reliance and self-management are ambivalent matters to say the least. Scholars working in the tradition of Alain Badiou, Jacques Rancière and Slavoj Žižek argue, with some justice, that presentday social organizations and institutions allegedly situated between the market and the state are part of, rather than opposed to, neo-liberal forms of governance.10 Echoing Gramsci and Foucault, they argue that social organizations help reproduce existing class relations and are moreover implicated in disciplining forms of governance. A proliferation of quasi-institutional and more or less formal horizontal networks of private actors are actually utilized to govern through. This was pre-eminently the case with the guilds and similar corporative organizations in late medieval cities, which were fundamentally implicated in politics and entangled with the social and political fabric of the city. To a degree, however, politics was, alternatively, organized on their terms and coached in their terminology. While wielding political power in the abovementioned revolts, they organized collective activities for their members and institutionalized solidarity. Related to that, they regulated economic life for the benefit of their members and—at least according to their own discourses—the common good. And last but not least, they helped transform the cities in ‘corporative’ body politics, with the guilds (or corporations) as one of their key constitutive ‘members’. The ambition of this book is to shed new light on the early development of civil society, citizenship and communal resource management so as to historicize the current debate and denaturalize the current state of affairs. With a view to a better understanding of the deeper challenges, opportunities and implications of organizing current societies on the basis of self-organized

Introduction  3 communal groupings, it is important to concentrate on historical transformation and discontinuity. I will neither reveal an age-old core of the past in present-day realities, nor consider the past as an absolute alterity—the proverbial foreign country. Rather than revealing which elements of the past are still ‘present’ in current-day reality, I will focus on what has changed and disappeared—not unlike an archeologist who examines the remnants upon which modern society is built. In the terminology of Bruno Latour, any state of affairs is profoundly contingent upon black-boxing the underlying assumptions about legitimate goals and veracity of argumentation. Understanding what is called ‘modernity’ therefore implies understanding what has disappeared and was discredited during the process of black-boxing. This certainly includes the guilds and the corporative ideology, which incrementally became discredited from the late medieval period on. Our focus on what has become obsolete is necessary for understanding that which has built on it while replacing it.

Civil Society, Governmentality, and Labor While the American economist and social scientist Mancur Olson reduced the rationale of collective action and the creation of public goods to the exclusion of free riders, Nobel prize winner Elinor Ostrom concentrates on the efficient management of common and public resources.11 Guilds too are currently addressed from such an efficiency perspective. They are considered to have lowered transaction costs, for instance by solving problems of information asymmetry or incomplete contracts.12 The problem of inclusion and exclusion is thereby reduced to a problem of dealing with free riding, the issue of mutual aid to such insurance problems as adverse selection and moral hazard, and collective activities to the production of social capital. In my view, there is a huge risk of anachronism when starting from these conceptual frameworks, because medieval and late medieval actors had entirely different frames of reference—imbued, for starters, with strong religious feelings and sensitivities. In their attitudes, efficient management and free riding were possibly not strong motivators. A similar proviso applies to thinking about civil society writ large. The advent of civil society was traditionally connected to such new types of sociability in the eighteenth century as clubs, salons, and art galleries, where the advent of Jürgen Habermas’ ‘communicative rationality’ was situated. The idealized and teleological approach of the latter has increasingly been qualified, to the extent that late medieval and early modern guilds and brotherhoods instead of eighteenth century clubs and friendly societies are now seen as the cradle of contemporary civil society—notably by Robert Putnam, who identified the guilds and confraternities in the cities and city states in Northern Italy as the cradle of Western democracy, for they would have fostered the creation of mutual trust, social capital and democratic practices such as electing boards.13 In a similar vein, Katherine Lynch has

4 Introduction attracted attention to the medieval and early modern guilds and confraternities while having recourse to a rather modern explanatory scheme. Referring to the ‘nuclear hardship thesis’ of Peter Laslett, Lynch argues that associations were founded (and joined) in response to a lack of strong (extended) family ties in urban environments, which created a need for mutual aid and other collective goods.14 Interesting perspectives are thus created for historians examining guilds and confraternities, but modernity narratives and teleological thinking still loom large. Firstly, civic society is still conceptualized as a sphere between (and detached from) both the state and the market. While according to the critics, this definition falls short even of adequately defining presentday civil society, it is surely inadequate for capturing the reality of guilds, which were fundamentally entangled with both the private spheres of the household and the market and the public sphere of politics. Secondly, the current image downplays discontinuities in the late medieval and early modern period—and not only with Putnam, who skipped the period altogether. Research on guilds proper has virtually ceased to examine the role of the Protestant and Catholic Reformations, confessionalization and secularization—not to mention the eventual abolition of the guilds and the role of enlightenment thinking therein.15 Reducing civil society to ‘a nexus of relatively free individuals and groups without reference to the state’16 amounts to adopting a modern definition profoundly marked by a liberal or neo-liberal ideology in which civil society is considered to be ‘post-political’. In order to prevent such a reduction, it is vital to connect the urban and intra-urban communes to the broader political and ideological context. Thus, questions arise as to their aboriginal character, the degree of self-rule present and the very dichotomy of self-rule and autonomy versus dominion and feudalism. Current literature rather stresses the hierarchical and feudal context in which urban and corporative communes came about.17 Moreover, guilds, especially in the case study presented here, were part of rather than opposed to the urban body politic—certainly after the urban revolts in which they gained access to the political realm as we will see in the first chapter. Focusing on late medieval and early modern guilds therefore inevitably entails addressing the connection between civil society and the broader political context. Nor can civil society in general and guilds in particular be detached from the private sphere of both the family and the economy. Guilds were collectives of housefathers who dominated both a family (including servants, apprentices and journeymen) and a family firm. Distinguishing, in the late medieval context, between the public sphere of the guild and the private sphere of the family and the family firm would just as well amount to the introduction of a modern frame of reference, largely owing to Habermas’ ideas. While Habermas’ distinction between the public and the private sphere has been criticized even for the eighteenth century, such a distinction was certainly absent in the late medieval period. According to Josef

Introduction  5 Ehmer, guilds were still very much entangled with the family sphere in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, and he argued that ‘the life career of a traditional artisan was influenced far more strongly by his attachment to a guild rather than to a family’.18 So here again, the guilds cannot be studied as autonomous entities but are to be broached from their entanglement with the demographic, economic and patriarchal grid of urban society. This book will attempt, then, to understand the meaning and role of the guilds through their entanglements with both the private and the political sphere—with both spheres in turn being embedded, moreover, in a religious culture. While traditional views have often opposed civil society to religious ‘oppression’, it is important to stress from the outset that religious motivations are not at odds with political emancipation and self-reliance—let alone mutual aid. Conversely, through the lens of the guilds I will shed new light on the late medieval and early modern city as a political, economic and religious unit. On the one hand, the relationship and field of tension between economy and community is tackled, starting from the question of how communities were forged and maintained notwithstanding the mobility of resources, products and people across boundaries—in this case across city walls. On the other hand, the related issue of political subjectivity is addressed. What kind of political subjectivity was implied in and produced by guilds? Should guilds be seen as collectives of individuals who defended their private interests in a public organization as we would today? If not, how is the relationship between the individual and the collective and the individual and the political to be understood? In the last instance, I will connect civil society to labor in this book. As is well known, guilds were typically referred to with terms like métiers (in France), Handwerke (in German areas), guildes or jurandes (in Northern Europe), mysteries (in England), arti and arts (in Italy and Catalonia), mesteres or oficios (in Castille and Aragon) and so forth.19 Perhaps this is not only because these types of guilds gathered artisans (mostly those active in the same sector), but also because behind their struggle for political recognition lurked demands related to the value of labor and skills. And here as well, anachronism looms large. Labor has long been approached from the perspective of class and proletarianization. During the cultural turn emphasis shifted to the meaning and perception of labor, which was sought for in either learned treatises or pamphlets, poems, and other ego-documents of workers and artisans themselves.20 William Sewell, in his ground-breaking book Work and Revolution in France, has even connected changing attitudes towards artisanal labor and skills to new philosophical ideas. According to Sewell, the waning and abolition of the guilds was due in part to the advent of the enlightened ideas of such philosophers as Diderot, which implied a ‘single, unified, orderly realm of nature’ which man itself was part of, rather than opposed to. This, according to Sewell, was inconsistent with the existence of corporations, which would instead have implied a dichotomy between the ordered realm of the spirit and the disordered realm

6 Introduction of matter. While in the latter context, artisans were seen as being connected to God’s wisdom through their soul, individual artisans connected to matter through their senses and experimental activity at the end of the ancien régime, as a result of which regulations and trade secrets became obsolete.21 In this vein, labor also has a political dimension, which is often overlooked by current day policy and opinion makers and historians alike. We are all too familiar with considering the perception and value of labor as the result of market forces—as they materialize in both demand for certain products and the use of specific technologies to manufacture and distribute them. This is why the present-day distinction between highly valued knowledge workers and the new proletariate of those working in their service is hardly questioned in public opinion.22 History enables us to denaturalize such a state of affair, and this is what I will try to do when writing the history of guilds in the Southern Netherlands.

The Southern Netherlands as the Cradle of Strong Communities The Southern Netherlands are an excellent case study because they harbored particularly strong urban communes and, more importantly for my purpose, guilds. First of all, the large cities in present-day Belgium—those in the county of Flanders and the duchy of Brabant in particular—played a decisive political role. From the political crisis in 1127–1128, Flemish cities claimed a role as the ‘third estate’, the members of which were in reality delegates of the large cities.23 In contrast to the famous Italian city-states, these cities did not become fully independent from feudal rule, but in the twelfth and thirteenth century princely power became subject to the rule of law and the consent of its subjects.24 In 1208 the urban elites of Flanders negotiated directly with the King of England when the import of English wool was at stake.25 In Brabant the Third Estate in 1312 obtained the Charter of Kortenberg, which secured a range of rights and privileges for the cities. At the pinnacle of their power in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, these cities also tried to dominate the surrounding countryside both economically and politically, with the county of Flanders for instance subdivided into ‘Quarters’ dominated by the large cities.26 In demographic terms, the cities were important too. While these were relatively densely populated regions per se, more than 25% of the people tended to live in cities. In the duchy of Brabant in 1374, more than 27% of the population lived in cities of more than 5000 inhabitants.27 The figures were higher for the county of Flanders, without there being one or even a few metropolises attracting all demographic surplus from the countryside. Instead, a wide range of cities below 100,000 inhabitants were scattered across the region, often only a proverbial stone’s throw from each other. The largest cities in the most densely populated area in the mid-fourteenth century were Ghent (ca. 64,000 inhabitants), Bruges (ca. 45,000) and Ypres (ca.

Introduction  7 28,000).28 They were followed by a handful of cities with between 10,000 and 30,000 inhabitants, such as Lille, Douai, Saint Omer and Arras.29 In the county of Flanders alone some fifty cities can be added with populations ranging from 500 up to almost 10,000, seven of which harbored 5,000 to 10,000 inhabitants and eleven between 2,000 and 5,000.30 In the duchy of Brabant, the second-most important region, the situation was similar, with in 1437 one city with more than 30,000 inhabitants (Brussels), another four above 10,000 (Leuven, Antwerp, ‘s-Hertogenbosch, Diest) and some twenty cities above 1000 inhabitants. Anno 1526 Antwerp had taken the lead with more than 50,000 inhabitants, but Brussels and Leuven continued to be important too.31 Secondly, perhaps more than for any other region, the corporative element is considered an essential characteristic of these cities.32 According to Sylvia Thrupp, ‘the gilds nowhere played a more spectacular and militant role than in the Low Countries’.33 In Italy, the political events leading up to the erection of guilds proved to be earlier but also more elusive. While the popolo rebelled in the second half of the thirteenth century in Italian cities, their successes were already rolled back in the 1280s, the very moment at which revolts elsewhere in Europe took off.34 In the long run, the revolts in the Low Countries would actually seem to have been more successful. Given the early start of the establishment of guilds and guild-related revolts, historians have often wondered to what extent the Italian example has influenced experiences of guilds elsewhere, but Belgian historians have also referred to the reverse—the influence of the Flemish case—especially in the era of the Ghent and Bruges wars and the rule of Jacob van Artevelde in the midfourteenth century.35 Unlike Italy and similar to a range of cities in western and southern parts of Germany, the guilds in the Southern regions of the Low Countries were able to make an indelible impression upon the urban political and social fabric between the late thirteenth and the sixteenth century.36 Manufacturing guilds were often integrated in the political system as their representatives were granted access in a structural way to the inner and wider municipal councils. This is in contrast to the northern principalities such as Holland, now situated in the Netherlands. Due to cities and guilds emerging later there, guilds did not usually amass political power to the same degree. With the exception of older cities such as Dordrecht and Utrecht, most did not succeed in gaining access to the powerful and oligarchic town councils (vroedschappen), membership of which was generally for life and obtained through cooptation.37 This book will therefore concentrate on cities situated in current-day Belgium, although for the early period a few cities in the northeast of present-day France, especially Arras, Douai, Lille and Saint Omer, will briefly enter the picture.38 A related factor is that manufacturing masters mostly continued to be in charge of their own guilds in this region. While manufacturing guilds were often—and increasingly—dominated by large merchants in the Northern

8 Introduction Netherlands, Northern Italy and a range of leading cities in the rest of Europe, manufacturing masters could often to a large extent elect the members of their board themselves and from among their own ranks in the Southern Netherlands. As we will see in the first chapters, this was subject to a great deal of struggle throughout the period, but not unlike the German Imperial cities and many smaller towns in the Empire, manufacturing masters could really exercise political power in most of the cities focused on in this book. Given their position in the urban councils, the guilds’ governors had a say in local policy making—including economic policy—and to a degree even on the level of the principality, as they were also represented in the estates.39 From a methodological point of view, this enables the historian to reveal some of the artisans’ own interests, motivations and sensitivities, because their rules and practices were at least partly the result of their own choices (taking into account of course power struggles and internal divisions). An additional reason for focusing on present-day Belgium is the Revolt in which the Northern principalities broke away from Spanish Rule during the Eighty Years War (with the final quarter of the sixteenth century being decisive) to form the independent Dutch Republic, due among other things to the Catholic faith being substituted by the Reformed church (strongly influenced by the teaching of John Calvin) as the public denomination. As a consequence, the already weaker guilds in most cities situated in the North lost their public character altogether. Any chapels and altars they had once possessed were often destroyed or confiscated during the Revolt, not to be rebuilt later—in contrast to the Southern parts. Guilds continued to exist, but they were for the most part stripped of their religious and political meanings, while often only their charitable functions remained important. While this is of course an important and fascinating process in itself, I have chosen to concentrate on the long-term transformations befalling guilds in a Catholic environment.40 Moreover, while focusing on Belgian territory, I will limit myself chiefly to the largest cities, which are, as a rule, also the cities with the most numerous and the most powerful guilds.41 As a matter of course, I will thus automatically favor the county of Flanders and the duchy of Brabant. This is deliberate, as it enables me to better highlight the fields of tension resulting from the impact of guilds and a guild-like ideology on the urban socio-economic, political and cultural fabric. Another important city to be included from this perspective is Liège, situated in the prince-bishopric of Liège, which was not only important in terms of scale but also because of its pioneering role in the urban revolts.42 The largest cities in other principalities such as Namur (in the county of Namur) and Mons (in the county of Hainaut) will only be included haphazardly.43 Nor will I sufficiently take into account differences between different types of guilds in terms of scale (number of members) and their economic orientation (including whether they served local or export markets). Instead,

Introduction  9 I concentrate on what occupational guilds had in common with a view to revealing the deeper corporative ideology, including the religious values and hidden epistemology upon which they were built. In so doing, I will proceed from the ideas of Antony Black, who identified two basic ideological clusters in late medieval and early modern civil society, i.e., a ‘guilds ethos’ based on values like friendship and mutual aid and ‘civil society’, based on liberal ideas about personal freedom, legal equality, and individual independence. The former cluster of values would have been more prominent north of the Alps, and is expected to be found especially in strong guilds such as those to be examined here. This has not been examined empirically however. Black’s book is based entirely upon the political ideas of intellectuals, who were for the most part not even situated in the Low Countries.44 In order to qualify this, I will zero in on regulations and practices while being sensitive to long-term transformations in the late medieval and early modern period. Wherever possible, I will refer to fragments of discourses of the artisans themselves, as found in poems or juridical files. This is not a second-best option in my view. As argued by political historians in particular, well-developed political theories about republican or communal governance hardly emerged in the Low Countries.45 Although Flemish scholars played a part in French scholastic circles and such fourteenth century urban officials like Jan Van Boendale elaborated in writing upon existing theories about good government and virtuous life, political practices prevailed: ‘In Flanders, and in the Low Countries in general, politics is lived before it is thought’.46 In addition, politics is of course inseparable from the economy. The early development of these cities in the eleventh through thirteenth centuries was largely due to the textile industry. While the urban elites, which succeeded in gaining political autonomy and voice, grew rich thanks to the cloth trade,47 the most powerful intra-urban groupings during the urban revolts were the guilds of the wool weavers and the fullers. Consequently, historians have often framed these revolts as commoners trying to throw off the yoke of economic exploitation and a yearning for more democratic principles.48 Yet, this does not exhaust explanation, as will be shown in the first chapter. While political events played an important part, communal coalitions often cut across class boundaries. Moreover, the opposing groups and factions often shared important values, communal values among others.49 Nor did the economic monoculture persist. From the fourteenth through the sixteenth centuries the traditional cloth industry declined irrevocably, to be replaced with, on the one hand, the production of cheaper woolens and linen in the countryside and, on the other, a broad range of luxury industries in cities—including painting and sculpting, tapestry weaving and embroidery, gold and silversmithing, diamond cutting, silk and ribbon weaving, cabinetmaking, gold leather production, and so on.50

10 Introduction In this process, the urban network was also transformed, with Bruges in the fifteenth century and Antwerp in the sixteenth century turning into important gateways for the import of raw materials and the export of finished products manufactured in the countryside and smaller cities. Moreover, these cities themselves harbored important manufacturing and finishing industries, the Antwerp cloth dressing industry in the sixteenth century being the most conspicuous.51 After the Fall of Antwerp and the final blow to the revolting cities in 1585, the golden ages in the Southern Netherlands died out, not to return before the nineteenth century. Antwerp could withstand stagnation for about half a century owing to luxury industries, which profited from a robust purchasing power, export routes to Spanish territory, existing trade networks, and the Counter-reformatory redecoration of churches and chapels.52 Yet from the mid-seventeenth century on an inexorable decline set in. To a certain degree, the centre of gravity for luxury production shifted to Brussels, where the court and the central state administration resided, but novel and fashionable products were increasingly imported—with Paris now being the fashion center.53 In terms of labor relations, this period was characterized by two opposing developments. Some sectors were subject to what has been called ‘traditionalization’—i.e., the intensification of labor intensive luxury production (art, gold and silversmithing, etc.)—in the context of a revival of the guilds (next to elites investing in rents and bonds rather than in the economy). Other sectors however witnessed the expansion of proto-industrialization and the emergence of large manufacturing masters, which eventually outcompeted the traditional merchants.54 This transformation would obviously seriously impact upon the guilds, but in the long run virtually all guilds shared the same fate. In a nutshell, they lost credibility in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and were eventually abolished in 1795 (under French occupation). To a certain extent, this may be due to the political evolution, which was characterized by centralization and state formation. Between 1384 and 1543 approximately twenty more or less independent principalities fell under the authority of one and the same prince, the latter emanating first from the House of Burgundy and, from 1482, the Habsburg dynasty. Autonomous and rebellious cities were increasingly disciplined in this process, with the power of the most rebellious of all, namely Ghent, being curtailed irrevocably in 1540 (save for a brief republican experiment between 1577 and 1585). Perhaps even more than the city itself, the power of the guilds was curtailed for good in 1540 and 1585. The Ghent guilds, paradoxically, were among the weakest in the region in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In part, this explains why I extensively include the duchy of Brabant in this book. More than in the county of Flanders, the Brabantine guilds retained their (relative) autonomy and power until at least the end of the seventeenth century (and formally until 1795). These guilds thus allow for an in-depth understanding of the corporative spirit behind their practices and regulations.55

Introduction  11

Composition and Conceptual Approach In subsequent chapters I will neither narrate the history of the guilds in a chronological and descriptive way nor present a juxtaposition of different thematic approaches or systematically and step-by-step treat a range of possible causal factors. Rather than isolating different causal factors, I will consistently point to the interconnection between different dimensions and present a layered view—one of my credos being that splitting reality into an economic, social, political, and cultural domain would be the artificial product of modern thinking too. Therefore, rather than chronologically or thematically, I will move spiral-wise, foregrounding different dimensions while advancing chronologically in an incremental way. In the first chapter, I will tackle the emergence of urban communes and guilds through the prism of urban revolts. Empirically, I will rehearse and synthesize the well-known history of the advent of cities and representative institutions beyond and within cities, concentrating on the emergence of guilds within these cities. Along the route, I will also develop a methodological and conceptual argument. Today, there is broad agreement about the impossibility of concluding the debate on the precise ‘origin’ of communes and guilds, but historians still tend to favor one or a limited set of causal factors when it comes to explaining revolts. Urban revolts are often reduced to either workers’ revolutions shaped by class relations or political revolutions heralding modern notions of political participation and liberty. While the former approach dominated in the 1960s to 1980s, historians studying the urban revolts now tend to stress ‘the politics of social revolt’ rather than wages, food prices and rents.56 Thus, Samuel Cohn examines to what extent the motivations and demands of rebellious groups were either conservative or progressive. In a European perspective Cohn thereby identifies a fault line around 1348, caused by the devastating demographic effects of bubonic plague. While the rebels—which for Cohn predominantly consisted of urban groups of lower rank—would have striven for the preservation of ‘privileges’ before the mid-fourteenth century, they would subsequently have concentrated on a new conception of liberty to be summarized as ‘political freedom’ and a ‘constitutional sense of equality’.57 Current research on the Low Countries does not support these arguments. In a case study on fourteenth-century revolts in Leuven, Jelle Haemers agrees that the insurgents had political and institutional transformations in mind, but he qualifies both the bipolar nature of the cities as implied by Cohn and the nature of the political freedoms that arose as a result of the revolts. According to Haemers the rebels in Leuven strove for neither political equality nor the abolition of political privileges; instead, the corporative groups behind the revolts aimed at acquiring political privileges themselves. The plague does not seem to have had an impact at all.58 Proceeding from these observations, I will argue that the aim of the guilds-based actor groups was to be accepted and recognized as political subjects and be part of the urban body politic. While this was driven by political ideas, these cannot be

12 Introduction disentangled from the socio-economic and religious context. Moreover, the ultimate success very much depended on both socio-economic and political circumstances, without either the one or the other factor being a prime mover of sorts. In my view, historical outcomes can never be attributed to one causal factor—whether it be labor relations and economic exploitation or political thought and discourses. Instead, multi-causality and historical contingency are to be taken seriously. At present, most historians conveniently navigate between description on the one hand and narration on the other, invoking causality in an often implicit way. Mine is an attempt to be more explicit on both causality and contingency. First, ‘structural’ factors will be sought for in both the socio-economic and the political realms. Structure will actually be understood in this book in both a social and cultural way—thus including division of labor and wealth inequality as well as cultural systems of meaning. In addition, events will not be explained away by structural factors in this book, but they will rather be seen as both emerging from a given structure (or, rather, structures in the plural) and have a lasting impact on these very structures. As William Sewell argues, events transform societies, but their working is nonetheless inscribed in and steered by the structures in which they themselves emerge.59 In the words of Marshall Sahlins (quoted by Sewell) ‘the transformation of a culture is a mode of its reproduction’.60 What eventually emerges in concrete terms is a communal and ‘corporative’ tradition entangled in economic, political and intellectual structures and systems of meaning. In the second chapter, this corporative tradition will specifically be addressed from a political angle. I will show that the insurgent artisanal groups were ultimately incorporated in the body politic through their guilds, which were considered ‘members’ of the larger urban body. The guilds were in turn themselves conceived as ‘bodies’ with different ‘members’ (the masters). While examining this in detail, I will take issue with the old Weberian school of historical sociology. Weber has described the European medieval city emerging in the eleventh and twelfth centuries as a conjuratio, a sworn community of individuals (rather than clans). The oath with which the commune was forged was, for Weber, the revolutionary moment in which freedom and man-made law substituted feudal rule. In the act of swearing loyalty to their own community, a group of citizens claimed to be politically autonomous and autocephalous.61 Thus, Weber has impacted not only upon our views on cities but guilds too. For Otto Gerhard Oexle, the mutual oath of guild members established not only a gathering of individuals but a new type of governance and sociality, in which the oath grounded not only mutual aid, but also the principle of representation and delegation, decision-making (in consensus) and a legal system rooted in voluntas or Willkur rather than an abstract, transcendent or general form of ‘lex’.62 Weber was of course the harbinger of a profoundly teleological and, moreover, Eurocentric, history. In Weber’s rendering, European cities differed

Introduction  13 from their non-European counterparts because of both the relative independence of the citizenry from feudal lordship and the lesser importance of kinship ties and clans. This would have been due largely to Christianity, in which the importance of the parish and the local community rather than the family were emphasized.63 Guilds, too, might in this sense be seen as seedbeds of modernity, being one of the communities to replace the extended family. According to Lynch, Christianity served as an inspiration and blueprint for guilds and brotherhoods owing to its contribution to a greater individualism (through the doctrine of mutual consent to the marriage) and because its institutions (i.e., monasteries, beguinages, etc.) were often artificial families themselves.64 In order to qualify this, I will focus on the intricate relationship of the guilds’ political practices with the broader political and institutional context in which these practices emerged. Rather than looking for the origins of self-rule, I will examine how election and decision-making procedures were connected to the broader ideological and institutional context. Conceptually, I will do so with the Foucauldian notion of governmentality in mind. With this term, Michel Foucault has notoriously merged a perspective of practices with a perspective on ideologies and discursivity in a series of lectures at the Collège de France. In it, Foucault simultaneously sought the origins of a liberal type of governmentality, which for him germinated in anti-Machiavellian treatises—in which he found a kind of rationality of government unconnected to the problematic of the prince and his direct relationship with the subjects of which he is master. What emerged instead, was a type of proto-statistically informed management of a population on a territory—something which he also termed ‘bio-politics’.65 Recently however, it has been argued that similar ideas are to be found in the republican writings of earlier centuries—thus creating a space for in-depth historical research.66 Among other things, an area of tension emerges between a territorial and a corporative conception of the urban body politic, with the latter in my view prevailing in the cities examined in the book. Rather than governing a territory, the political imaginary was geared towards building a hierarchical corporative structure starting from household up to the feudal ruler—with both the cities and the guilds within cities as important ‘members’ of the larger body politic. In the third chapter, the political economy of guilds will take centre stage, including mechanisms of exclusion and inclusion. Many economic historians currently address guilds from a neo-institutional perspective, examining how regulations and institutional arrangements helped solve economic problems like the need for contract enforcement and market transparency. Regulations such as apprenticeship requirements are seen, for instance, as fostering a more efficient production of skills.67 In addition, hallmarks and regulations related to product quality would from this perspective have helped prevent fraud and, thus, created trust in the guild-based masters’ products.68 Power, in this view, is largely evacuated from institutions, which are reduced to solutions for economic problems. This is why Sheilagh

14 Introduction Ogilvie and other scholars have raised objections from a social angle.69 Ogilvie argues that guild regulations should be understood from the perspective of ‘distributional conflicts’—i.e., conflicts regarding the safeguarding and sharing of resources and profits. However, Ogilvie also starts from a utility maximising actor who utilizes malleable institutions for the benefit of individual interests. Specifically, she tends to see guilds as rent-seeking and monopolistic cartels, as was the case in the older literature. I try to venture beyond the economic versus the social dichotomy. To that end I will substitute a genealogical approach for the teleological approach— to use the terminology of the economist Paul David. While in the latter approach institutions are considered to continuously adapt to changing circumstances in an evolutionary way—with the ‘fittest’ or most efficient institutions surviving at the expense of inefficient forms—the former view allows for a messier historical reality and takes into account path dependency. The crux of the matter is that the most efficient institutional forms will mostly not emerge or totally erase the older ones, because any historical state of affairs, especially when institutions are involved, is linked to a previous sequence of events ‘that allow the hand of the past to exert a continuing influence upon the shape of the present’.70 From this perspective it is necessary to examine how pre-existing institutional forms are either appropriated or bricolaged upon. In addition, I will argue that a specific approach to material culture is key to a proper understanding of the guild’s regulations. The emergence and development of regulations—including those related to access and inclusion— were very often connected to their specific conception of product quality as something ‘intrinsic’ to the raw material used. As I will argue, this is not to downgrade skills as a factor; rather it points to an imaginary in which skills are intimately connected to the political and religious context. I will in this book connect the history of guilds to political philosophy and epistemology—starting with the heritage of Aristotle, which has so profoundly influenced medieval political thinking. For Aristotle and his most loyal student Thomas Aquinas, the very concept of politics was predicated on a distinction between nature and artifice, with the political being opposed to the state of nature—notwithstanding Man being seen as a zoon politikon (political animal).71 As a consequence, a crucial question was whether people working with nature (rather than reason) could be political subjects at all. However implicitly, this issue was addressed during the urban revolts. In addition to demographic, socio-economic and political circumstances, the urban revolts co-emerged with changes in the perception and value of labor and skills, which may themselves have been connected to epistemological transformations. While the artisanal groups increasingly focused on high value-added products involving ever more sophisticated skills, the distinction between nature and artifice grew blurred. On the one hand, artisans succeeded in imitating the wonders of nature better; on the other, nature soon lost some of its godly characteristics—prefiguring God’s transcendent rather than immanent

Introduction  15 status. In my view, such transformations too are to be taken into account, albeit without substituting one mono-causality for another. By its focus on the deep meaning of master status and the related regulations, the third chapter will serve as a turning point. While the first chapters recount the emergence and development of the corporations in the cities, the fourth and fifth will focus on the decline of the guilds and the corporative ideology. In the fourth chapter, I will zero in on social mobility and, specifically, processes of proletarianization. As is well known, social and labor historians have convincingly argued in favor of a long-term increase, from the late middle ages on, in the rates of proletarianization. Both in the countryside and in cities people are considered to have lost ownership of the means of production and to have been forced to sell their labor for a wage.72 In recent decades, this view has been complemented with research on middling groups and the prospect (or the absence thereof) of social mobility.73 This has resulted in discussions on the causes of upward or downward social mobility and the relationship between social mobility and political stability.74 Building on this, I will show that social historians have often downplayed one crucial point, namely the patriarchal and corporative context in which labor was practiced and experienced. I will argue that guild-based masters were less preoccupied with ownership of the means of production than with their status as, on the one hand, autonomous citizen and political subject and, on the other, independent and authoritative father in charge of a household. At least in the early days, becoming an independent master in an economic sense implied not only becoming a member of a guild, but also coming of age and becoming a political subject too. As regards the transformation in the early modern period, my argument is that the political or public sphere and the economic or private sphere gradually drifted apart—which is addressed in this chapter from the perspective of the relationship of master status with the position of journeymen, apprentices and female economic actors. What appears in each of these cases, is that the ideal of the urban freeman working independently while reigning over his subjects, became increasingly distanced from reality. While women circumvented the masters’ labour market monopsony, the relationship of masters with their journeymen and apprentices resembled a contractual one from at least the seventeenth century on. To be sure, this is not to say that ‘contract’ simply substituted ‘status’ as the traditional view would have it. In order to understand it adequately, a totally new perspective on the decline of guilds must be sketched, one which proceeds from the entanglement of the economic and the political spheres. In it, not only labour relations but also product quality has to be taken into account. As I have shown earlier, product quality materialized in regulations to standardize products (the intrinsic value of the raw material more specifically) and in the use of collective hallmarks and other instruments in which product quality was represented. These quality marks were usually simultaneously marks of origin, connecting the economic reality to the political

16 Introduction imaginary with reference to the guild’s host city, for instance by featuring an emblem or the coat of arms of the city in question. This did not happen by chance, however. Guild-based masters connected product quality to their political environment intentionally. Specifically, they reduced product quality to intrinsic value while warranting the latter by their trustworthiness, which was in turn based upon their status as political subjects or urban citizens. To a large degree, this explains the legitimatizing discourses of the manufacturing guilds losing credibility from about mid-seventeenth-century on. As historians of consumption and material culture have shown, in the seventeenth and eighteenth-century consumers started to favour design and fashion over the ‘intrinsic value’ of the raw materials used, thus rendering the strategies of guild-based artisans obsolete and the intimate link between the artisans’ products and their political standing futile. Of course, consumer preferences cannot be seen as the ultimate cause either. Rather, the emergence thereof as a force in history is to be explained, with reference to not only economic, but political and even religious factors as well. In the fifth chapter, the guild ideology will be captured through a focus on the notions of equality and charity, proceeding from yet another caution about applying modern definitions, which in the case of equality would imply not only equal individual rights and equality before the law, but also the absence of hierarchy and equality in the socio-economic sense. In the organic conception of cities, community and social inequality were not mutually exclusive. The Republican tradition notoriously fostered equality before the law and equal access to political participation, but not social equality. To this, Antony Black in his book Guild & State (originally Guilds and civil society) notoriously contrasted a guild ethic, based on such values as fraternity, friendship and mutual aid.75 These values would have been more prominent north of the Alps, but here again the differences with current conceptions of equality take precedence over the similarities. While hierarchical relationships are not per definition excluded, equality here is based on religious sensitivities. Rather than equality before the law or equality as something measurable and objectifiable, reference was made to equality in the face of God or equality as being part of the same Christian community. One central notion was caritas—in which the love of God merged with taking care of one’s neighbor or fellow creature.76 As already hinted at above, medieval and late-medieval Christianity strongly believed in the immanence of God, who was considered to be pre­ sent in all things created and to manifest himself in the Other in general and the poor in particular. This was expressed in rituals such as Mass or having communion together, but it was in turn laden with political meaning. As Edward Muir contends, ‘(a)ll Christian communities, whether the church, city, or state, were understood to be “bodies” or corporations (corpus = body)’.77 Such political bodies were seen as analogous to the body of

Introduction  17 Christ, which symbolized and had materialized the eternal wisdom and love of God. Becoming part of such a community in the late medieval context therefore implied going to Mass and taking communion together, which amounted to becoming part of an eternal community. According to historian of religion John Bossy Christian traditions thus helped to unify communities threatened by feuds and dissension, which suggests that religious transformations consequently also partly explain the transformations the guilds experienced.78 The relationship between transformations on the level of community and religion has been examined before by such social historians as Christopher Hill, who sketched a process of new religious forms like Puritanism accommodating processes of (rural) communities dissolving as a result of increasing socio-economic individualism.79 But this was part of a tradition in which religion was seen as answering rather than shaping societal transformations. Religion is now granted more autonomy and agency. While the Protestants are seen as having been the first to shift the holy from the created world to the transcendental and to have stripped the Catholic rituals, sacraments and images of their power, the Reformation would have caused a situation in which the ‘body of God was no longer the model for the body of society’.80 This is reminiscent of Max Weber’s views on the disenchantment of the world and the desacralization of authority, which, as is well known, have been repeatedly disputed and debunked.81 Yet, profound religious transformations— now often understood beyond differences between Catholicism and Protestantism (and to a degree between different strands of Protestantism)—are still generally accepted, and so is the point that this is related to the question whether God is really present in matter or not.82 My analysis will reveal that in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, religious communities, including parishes and guilds, became entangled in the body politic of the city indeed. They were essential in the transformation of the city as a body politic in which such middling groups as manufacturing artisans had a place. This was, however, predicated upon Christianity being both a communal and material religion, and this is what changed in the long run. Collective activities that implied the guild was an eternal community, such as mass and the collective burial of a co-member, starkly declined. As God transformed into the proverbial clockmaker, political communities could no longer be founded upon collective activities or devotions or upon the collective worshipping of a patron saint. Nor could solidarity be founded upon the notion of caritas. As I will show, solidarity and mutual aid from the sixteenth century on were gradually based upon an entirely new logic, involving both market mechanisms and bureaucracy. Equality and mutual aid stopped being self-evident in the context of guilds, resulting in growing social polarization and a declining sense of commitment to the community. In response, formal rules were introduced to preserve a minimum of equality and institute a minimum of solidarity. These rules, more than expressing

18 Introduction the guilds’ sense of solidarity, thus signaled its decline—along with the religious foundations upon which the collectivity had been built. I do not wish to imply that religion is now the ultimate explanatory factor. While religious transformations more than economic cycles and trends may be located in the deeper and slower layers of Fernand Braudel’s time regimes, the religious is itself contingent upon other contextual factors—the political sense of community only being the most obvious connection to be made. In previous work I have hinted at a possible connection between religious and economic transformation too—not in the sense of Max Weber’s Protestant ethic, but on a totally different level. The shift from intrinsic value to fashion and novelty as the ultimate source of value in products may have been related to the disenchantment of the world—which has also been revealed by historians of science.83 While intrinsic value as a convention was connected to the idea of matter possessing mysterious, religious and creative powers in itself, natural philosophers naturalized matter from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries on.84 This process may in turn have been connected to political processes in general and the dissipation of the city as a corporative body politic in particular. In summary, I will in this book refrain from having recourse to an architectural metaphor in which something ‘deeper’ or ‘more basic’ explains all other factors. Instead, I will consistently focus on the co-emergence of different phenomena and on the way different factors were connected and intricately entangled. I am inspired in this by the so-called Actor Network Theory approach, in which Bruno Latour and others have criticized the use of both rational choices and such abstractions as ‘class’ and ‘structures’ as explanations. As summed up in the catchphrase that ‘there is nothing beyond the network’, they argue that any factor—whether it is human or non-human—only acquires meaning and agency in its connection with other factors.85 Thus they prevent not only mono-causal approaches, but also the view of history possessing an inner logic in which rationalization, individualism or free market mechanisms unfold as it were by nature. In Latour’s view, modernity is fabricated in a process that involved a myriad of actors—including intellectuals and scientists, whom have, in the end, helped to disenchant nature and to disentangle political and cultural factors from natural laws.86 Such an approach thus urges to refrain, as an historian, to adopt the view of the victors of history—which in the framework of this book are clearly those who have argued against the guilds and their practices, ideas and values. Without (I hope) idealizing the occupational guilds’ values, I am convinced that a better understanding of this process also helps to better understand modernity itself. Writing the history of what disappeared during the advent of such modern ideals as individual freedom, the protection of property, liberty of consciousness, and scientific objectivity, may amount to opening the black boxes and reveal the epistemologies upon which they are build.

Introduction  19

Notes   1  Quoted in Black, Guild & State, 49.   2 The literature is obviously too vast to be covered in one footnote. Some of the works consulted are Petit-Dutaillis, Les communes; Martines, Power, ch. 2 (quote on p. 12); Schulz, Denn; Verhulst, The Rise, chs. 4 and 5; Boone and Prak, ‘Rulers’, 101–111; Dumolyn and Haemers, ‘Patterns’, 370–374. More references in chapter 1. For the long-term development of representative institutions, see the overview in Blickle (ed.), Resistance.  3 Martines, Power, ch. 4; Blickle, Unruhen; Epstein, Wage Labor, ch. 2; Schulz, ‘Die Politische Zunft’; Boone and Prak, ‘Rulers’, 103ff; Dumolyn and Haemers, ‘Patterns’, 374ff. For a long-term overview see Blickle, Unruhen.   4 See e.g., Boone and Brand, ‘Vollersoproeren’; Dumolyn and Haemers, ‘Patterns’, 377 (with additional references).  5 Weber, Wirtschaft, esp. 727–814. An English version in Weber, ‘The City‘. See also ftn 62.   6 This is of course pioneered by Putnam, Making. Criticism of historians is too extensive to be referenced here. A good place to start would be Black, ‘The Putnam Thesis’ and Terpstra, ‘ “Republics” ’.   7  Isin, ‘Citizens’, 454.   8 Cf. Blickle, ‘Kommunalismus’, Unruhen and Kommunalismus. Also Blickle (ed.), Landgemeinde. And: Monahan, Consent, 148–152.   9  Ishkanian and Szreter, The Big Society Debate. Monahan, Consent, 148–152. 10 See e.g., Swyngedouw, ‘Governance’ and ‘The Antinomies’. 11 See, among other work, Ostrom, Governing and Understanding. 12 A state of the art and further references in Epstein and Prak (eds.), Guilds. See also Epstein, ‘Craft Guilds, Apprenticeship’ and van Leeuwen, ‘Guilds’. 13 Putnam, Making. 14 Lynch, Individuals; also: ‘Behavioral Regulation’. 15 For a state of the art, see: Haupt, Das Ende. 16 Black, ‘Concepts’, 33. 17 See, among others, Wunder and Hauptmeyer, ‘Zum Feudalismusbegriff’; Oakley, ‘Legitimation’; Isenmann, ‘Die städtische Gemeinde’; Scribner, ‘Communalism’. 18 Ehmer, ‘The Artisan Family’, 196 and 199. Quoted in De Munck, ‘From Brotherhood’, 4. 19 Boucheron and Menjot, ‘La ville’, 442–443. 20 A recent state of the art with extensive references in Lis and Soly, Worthy Efforts. 21 Sewell Jr., Work, 22–25, 70–71. 22 See e.g., Scott, Social Economy. 23 Boone and Prak, ‘Rulers’, 102. 24 A comparative view on the role of cities and urban revolts in the emergence of representative institutions and popular participation in Blockmans, ‘The Low Countries’ and Van Nierop, ‘Popular Participation’. 25 Boone and Prak, ‘Rulers’, 103. 26 For the so-called republican yearning for city-state status, see Wells, ‘Emergence’; Prevenier and Boone, ‘De “stadstaat”-droom’; Boone, ‘La construction’. See also: Schilling, ‘Gab es’; Van Gelderen, The Political Thought; Arnade, Beggars. 27 Van Uytven, ‘Geen ware landbouwcrisis’, 171. 28 Prevenier, ‘La démographie’, esp. 255–258. 29 Derville, ‘Le nombre’, esp. 279–293. 30 Stabel, ‘Stedelijke instellingen’, 247; Boone, A la recherche, 62. 31 Van Uytven, ‘De triomf’, 242–243. 32 See Prevenier and Boone, ‘De steden’; Boone, A la recherche. 33 Thrupp, ‘The Gilds’, 243.

20 Introduction 34 Boucheron and Menjot, ‘la ville’, 530. 35 Comp. Thrupp, ‘The Gilds’, 240; Boone and Prak, ‘Rulers’, 104. 36 Epstein, Wage Labor, chs. 1 and 2; Boone and Prak, ‘Rulers’. 37 Prak, ‘Corporate Politics’; De Munck, Lourens and Lucassen ‘The Establishment’. 38 For a distinction between French and Habsburg rule for a range of cities north and south of the border, see Guignet, Le Pouvoir. 39 Cf. Jacobs, ‘De ambachten’. 40 In addition, I will concentrate on cities which remained under Habsburg rule in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which is why Douai, Lille, Valenciennes and other cities in present-day France will figure less prominently in this study. For the shifting boundaries in this region, see Guignet, Le pouvoir, 16–41. 41 As also observed by Guignet, Le pouvoir, 291. 42 See Xhayet, Réseaux. 43 The same goes for Tournai, which was enlisted only in 1521 by Charles V. 44 Black, Guild. 45 Schilling, ‘Gab es’, 101, 117, 137. 46 ‘En Flandre, et dans les Pays-Bas en général, la politique se vit avant de se penser’. Dumolyn and Lecuppre-Desjardin, 262. In practice, civic values and identities may have been as strong nonetheless. Prevenier and Boone, ‘De “Stadstaat”droom’, esp. 84–87; Van Bruaene, ‘A Breakdown’, 277. 47 Boone and Prak, ‘Rulers’, 103; Van Uytven, ‘Het gewicht’, 121–123. 48 This is pioneered by the Belgian historian Henri Pirenne. See Pirenne, Les anciennes démocraties, chs. VI and VII; Idem, Histoire de la Belgique; tome II, chs. II and III; Pirenne, Les villes, chs. VI‑VIII. 49 A very detailed in-depth analysis of one such revolutionary period is Haemers, For the Common Good. 50 Van Der Wee, ‘Structural Changes’; Thijs, ‘Antwerp’s Luxury Industries’. 51 Thijs, Van ‘werkwinkel’, 62–89. 52 Soly, ‘De dominantie’, 133–135. 53 Van Damme, ‘Zotte verwaandheid’; Blondé and Van Damme, ‘Een crisis’. 54 Van Der Wee, ‘Industrial Dynamics’; and Lis and Soly ‘Different Paths’, 222–223. 55 Brabantine political culture moreover had a large impact on the Dutch Republic. Marnef, ‘Resistance’. 56 Cf. Cohn, Lust; Lantschner, ‘Revolts’. 57 Ibidem, 236–242. Also: Haemers, ‘Bloed’, 144. 58 Haemers, ‘Bloed’, esp. 144–145 and 156. 59 Sewell, Logics, esp. ch. 7. 60 Sewell, Logics, 202. 61 See Ftn 5. Also: Dilcher, ‘Max Webers Stadt’, 94, 106–108; Schreiner, ‘Legitimität’, 181–195; Dilcher, ‘Bürgerrecht’, 90. 62 Oexle, ‘Die mittelalterlichen Gilden‘, esp. 206–212. 63 Schreiner, ‘Legitimität’, esp. 184. 64 Lynch, Individuals; also: ‘Behavioral Regulation’. 65 This thinking materialized in two series of lectures of Foucault at the Collége de France, i.e., Sécurité, Territoire, Population (1977–1978) and Naissance de la biopolitique (1978–1979), which were posthumously published (based on his notes and audio-recordings) as Foucault, Sécurité and Naissance. For English translations see Foucault, Security and The Birth. The lecture on governmentality is the fourth lecture of the first series, but this is to be read in relation to the others. See Foucault, ‘La gouvernementalité’. An English translation, an excellent introduction and further elaborations in Burchell, Gordon and Miller (eds.), The Foucault Effect. 66 Korvela, ‘Sources’, esp. 77.

Introduction  21 67 Epstein, ‘Craft Guilds, Apprenticeship’. 68 See e.g., Gustafsson, ‘The Rise’. 69 Ogilvie, ‘Rehabilitating’ and ‘Whatever’. Also: Epstein, ‘Craft Guilds in the PreModern Economy’. 70 David, ‘Why’, quote op p. 206. 71 For Thomas Aquinas, the nature of Man implied a form of government, but Man was seen as social or political because of his will and reason. Dumolyn and Lecuppre-Desjardin, 260–261 (with additional references). 72 One of the first to chart this was Tilly, ‘Demographic Origins’. 73 A pioneering article was Friedrichs, ‘Capitalism’. 74 See, e.g. Friedrichs, ‘Capitalism’; Rappaport, Worlds, 387; Friedrichs, The Early Modern City, 142–143, 164, 196–199; Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 177–178. 75 Black, Guild, passim. 76 Pullan, ‘Catholics’, esp. 442. 77 Muir, Ritual, 161. 78 Bossy, ‘Blood’. 79 Cf. Hill, Society, esp. ch. XIV ‘Individuals and communities’. 80 Muir, Ritual, 186. 81 Weber, Wirtschaft and Die protestantische Ethik. 82 Muir, Ritual, chs. 5 and 6. 83 See De Munck, ‘Guilds’. 84 Smith, ‘Artists’, ‘Vital Spirits’, and The Body. 85 For an introduction, see Latour, Reassembling. A critical epistemological assessment in Harman, Prince. 86 Latour, Nous n’avons jamais.

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24 Introduction Haupt, Heinz-Gerhard ed. Das Ende der Zünfte: Ein europäischer Vergleich. Göttingen: 2002. Hill, Christopher. Society and Puritanism in Pre-Revolutionary England. London: Secker and Warburg, 1964. Isenmann, Eberhard. ‘Die städtische Gemeinde im oberdeutsch-schweizerischen Raum (1300–1800).’ In Blickle, Peter ed. Landgemeinde und Stadtgemeinde in Mitteleuropa: Ein struktureller Vergleich. Munich: Oldenbourg, 1991, pp. 191–263. Ishkanian, Armine and Szreter, Simon eds. The Big Society Debate: A New Agenda for Social Welfare? Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar, 2012. Isin, Engin F. ‘Citizens Without Nations.’ Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 30 (2012): 450–467. Jacobs, Marc. ‘De ambachten in Brabant en Mechelen (12de eeuw-1795).’ In De gewestelijke en lokale overheidsinstellingen in Brabant en Mechelen tot 1795. Brussels: Algemeen Rijksarchief, 2000, pp. 558–624. Korvela, Paul-Erika. ‘Sources of Governmentality: Two Notes on Foucault’s Lecture.’ History of the Human Sciences 25/4 (2012): 74–89. Lantschner, Patrick. ‘Revolts and the Political Order of Cities in the Late Middle Ages.’ Past and Present 225 (November 2014): 3–46. Latour, Bruno. Nous n’avons jamais été modernes: Essai d’anthropologie symétrique. Paris: La Découverte, 1991. Latour, Bruno. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Lis, Catharina and Soly, Hugo. ‘Different Paths of Development: Capitalism in the Northern and Southern Netherlands During the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period.’ Review 20 (1997): 211–242. Lis, Catharina and Soly, Hugo. Worthy Efforts: Attitudes to Work and Workers in Pre-Industrial Europe. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2012. Lynch, K.A. ‘Behavioral Regulation in the City: Families, Religious Associations, and the Role of Poor Relief.’ In Roodenburg, Herman and Spierenburg, Pieter eds. Social Control in Europe, Volume 1, 1500–1800. Columbus: Ohio State University, 2004, pp. 200–219. Lynch, K.A. Individuals, Families, and Communities in Europe, 1200–1800: The Urban Foundation of Western Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Marnef, Guido. ‘Resistance and the Celebration of Priviliges in Sixteenth-Century Brabant.’ In Pollmann, Judith and Spicer, Andrew eds. Public Opinion and the Changing Identities in the Early Modern Netherlands: Essays in Honour of Alastair Duke. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2007, pp. 125–139. Martines, Lauro. Power and Imagination: City-states in Renaissance Italy. Baltimore, John Hopkins University Press, 1992 (3rd ed. [1979]). Monahan, Arthur P. Consent, Coercion, and Limit: The Medieval Origins of Parliamentary Democracy. Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1987. Muir, Edward. Ritual in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Oakley, Francis. ‘Legitimation by Consent: The Question of the Medieval Roots.’ Viator: Medieval and Renaissance Studies 14 (1983): 303–335. Oexle, Otto Gerhard. ‘Die mittelalterlichen Gilden: ihre Selbtsdeutung und ihr Beitrag zur Formung Sozialer Strukturen.’ In Zimmerman, Albert ed. Soziale Ordnungen

Introduction  25 im Selbstverständnis des Mittelalters. Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 1979, pp. 203–226 (Miscellanea Mediaevalia. Band 12). Ogilvie, Sheilagh. ‘Rehabilitating the Guilds: A Reply.’ Economic History Review 61 (2008) 1: 175–182. Ogilvie, Sheilagh. ‘ “Whatever Is, Is Right?” Economic Institutions in Pre-Industrial Europe.’ Economic History Review 60 (2007) 4: 649–684. Ostrom, Elinor. Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Ostrom, Elinor. Understanding Institutional Diversity. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005. Petit-Dutaillis, Charles E. Les communes françaises: Caractères et evolution des origines au XVIIIe siècle. Paris: Albin Michel, 1947. Pirenne, Henri. Histoire de Belgique; tome II: du commencement du XIVe siècle à la mort de Charles le téméraire. Brussels: Henri Lamertin, 1908 (2nd ed.). Pirenne, Henri. Les anciennes démocraties des Pays Bas. Paris: Ernest Flammarion, 1917 (1st ed. 1910). Pirenne, Henri. Les villes et les institutions urbaines, tome I. Brussels and Paris: Alcan/NSE, 1939. Prak, Maarten. ‘Corporate Politics in the Low Countries: Guilds as Institutions.’ In Prak, Maarten, Lis, Catharina, Lucassen, Jan and Soly, Hugo eds. Craft Guilds in the Early Modern Low Countries: Work, Power and Representation. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006, pp. 74–106. Prevenier, Walter. ‘La démographie des villes du comté de Flandre au XIVe et XVe siècles: Etat de question: Essai d’interprétation.’ Revue du Nord LXV (1983): 255–275. Prevenier, Walter and Boone, Marc. ‘De “stadstaat”-droom.’ In Decavele, Johan ed. Gent: Apologie van een rebelse stad. Antwerp: Mercatorfonds, 1989, pp. 80–105. Prevenier, Walter and Boone, Marc. ‘De steden van de Zuidelijke Nederlanden in de late middeleeuwen: stedelijke identiteiten en corporatieve solidariteiten.’ Driemaandelijks tijdschrift van het Gemeentekrediet 183 (1993): 33–42. Pullan, Brian. ‘Catholics, Protestants, and the Poor in Early Modern Europe.’ Journal of Interdisciplinary History 35/3 (2005): 441–456. Putnam, R.D. Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993. Rappaport, Steve. Worlds Within Worlds: Structures of Life in Sixteenth-Century Londen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Schilling, Heinz. ‘Gab es im späten Mittelalter und zu Beginn der Neuzeit in Deutschland einen städtischen “Republikanismus”? Zur politischen Kultur des alteuropäischen Stadtbürgertums.’ In Koenigsberger, Helmut G. ed. Republiken und Republikanismus im Europa der Frühen Neuzeit. Munchen: R. Oldenburg Verlag, 1988, pp. 101–143 (Schriften des Historischen Kollegs 11). Schreiner, Klaus. ‘Legitimität, Autonomie, Rationalisierung: Drei Kategorien Max Webers zur Analyse mittelalterlicher Stadtgesellschaften— wissenschaftgeschichtlicher Ballast oder unabgegoltene Herausforderung?’ In Meier, Christian ed. Die Okzidentale Stadt nach Max Weber: Zum Problem der Zugehörigkeit in Antike und Mittelalter. Munich: R. Oldenburg Verlag, 1994, pp. 161–211. Schulz, Knut. Denn sie lieben die Freiheit so Sehr. . .: Kommunale Aufstände und Entstehung des europaïschen Bürgertums im Hochmittelalter. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1992.

26 Introduction Schulz, Knut. ‘Die politische Zunft: Eine die spätmittelalterliche Stadt prägende Institution?’ In Ehbrecht, Wilfried ed. Verwaltung und Politik in Städten Mitteleuropas: Beiträge zur Verfassungsnorm und Verfassungswirklichkeit in altständischer Zeit . Cologne: Böhlau, 1994, pp. 1–20. Scott, Alan J. Social Economy of the Metropolis: Cognitive-Cultural Capitalism and the Global Resurgence of Cities. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Scribner, Robert W. ‘Communalism: Universal Category or Ideological Construct? A Debate in the Historiography of Early Modern Germany and Switzerland.’ The Historical Journal 37/1 (1994): 199–207. Sewell, William H. Jr. Logics of History: Social Theory and Social Transformation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. Sewell, William H. Jr. Work and Revolution in France: The Language of Labor from the Old Regime to 1848. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980. Smith, Pamela H. ‘Artists as Scientists: Nature and Realism in Early Modern Europe.’ Endeavour 24 (2000) 1: 13–21. Smith, Pamela H. The Body of the Artisan: Art and Experiment in the Scientific Revolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Smith, Pamela H. ‘Vital Spirits: Redemption, Artisanship, and the New Philosophy in Early Modern Europe.’ In Osler, Margaret J. ed. Rethinking the Scientific Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 119–136. Soly, Hugo. ‘De dominantie van het handelskapitalisme: stad en platteland (XVIde‑XVIIIde eeuw).’ In Witte, Els ed. Geschiedenis van Vlaanderen, van de oorsprong tot heden. Brussels: Historische Getuigen/La Renaissance du Livre, 1983, pp. 105–178. Stabel, Peter. ‘Stedelijke instellingen (12de eeuw-1795).’ In Prevenier, Walter and Augustyn, Beatrijs eds. De gewestelijke en lokale instellingen in Vlaanderen tot 1795. Brussels: Algemeen Rijksarchief, 1997, pp. 247–276. Swyngedouw, Erik. ‘Governance Innovation and the Citizen: The Janus Face of Governance-Beyond-the-State.’ Urban Studies 42/11 (2005): 1991–2006. Swyngedouw, Erik. ‘The Antinomies of the Postpolitical: In Search of a Democratic Politics of Environmental Protection.’ International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 33/3 (2009): 601–620. Terpstra, Nicholas. ‘”Republics by contract”: Civil Society in the Papal State.’ In Eckstein, Nicholas A. and Terpstra, Nicholas eds. Sociability and its Discontents: Civil Society, Social Capital and their Alternatives in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Turnhout: Brepols, 2009, pp. 293–312. Thijs, Alfons K.L. ‘Antwerp’s Luxury Industries: The Pursuit of Profit and Artistic Sensitivity.’ In Van Der Stock, Jan ed. Antwerp: Story of a Metropolis, 16th‑17th Century. Antwerp: Snoeck-Ducaju and Zoon, 1993, pp. 105–113. Thijs, Alfons K.L. Van ‘werkwinkel’ tot ‘fabriek’: De textielnijverheid te Antwerpen (einde 15de-begin 19de eeuw). Brussels: Gemeentekrediet, 1987 (Historische Uitgaven, reeks in-8°, Nr. 69). Thrupp, Sylvia L. ‘The Gilds.’ In Postan, M.M., Rich, E.E. and Miller, Edward eds. The Cambridge Economic History of Europe: Volume III: Economic Organization and Policies in the Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971, pp. 230–280. Tilly, Charles. ‘Demographic Origins of the European Proletariat.’ In Levine, David ed. Proletarianization and Family History. New York: Academic Press, 1984, pp. 1–85. Van Bruaene, Anne-Laure. ‘A Breakdown of Civic Community? Civic Traditions, Voluntary Associations and the Ghent Calvinist Regime (1577–1584).’ In

Introduction  27 Eckstein, Nicholas and Terpstra, Nicholas eds. Sociability and Its Discontents: Civil Society, Social Capital and Their Alternatives in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Turnhout: Brepols, 2009, pp. 273–291. Van Damme, Ilja. ‘Zotte verwaandheid: Over Franse verleiding en Zuid-Nederlands onbehagen, 1650–1750).’ In De Bont, Raf and Verschaffel, Tom eds. Het verderf van Parijs. Leuven: University Press, 2004, pp. 187–204. Van Der Wee, Herman. ‘Industrial Dynamics and the Process of Urbanization and De-Urbanization in the Low Countries from the Late Middle Ages to the Eighteenth Century.’ In Van Der Wee, Herman ed. The Rise and Decline of Urban Industries in Italy and the Low Countries (Late Middle Ages‑Early Modern Times). Leuven: University Press, 1988, pp. 307–381. Van Der Wee, Herman. ‘Structural Changes and Specialization in the Industry of the Southern Netherlands.’ Economic History Review 28 (1975): 203–221. Van Gelderen, Maarten. The Political Thought of the Dutch Revolt, 1555–1590. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Van Leeuwen, Marco. ‘Guilds and Middle-Class Welfare 1550–1800: Provisions for Burial, Sickness, Old Age, and Widowhood.’ Economic History Review 65 (2012) 1: 61–90. Van Nierop, Henk. ‘Popular Participation in Politics in the Dutch Republic.’ In Blickle, Peter ed. Resistance, Representation and Community. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997, pp. 272–290. Van Uytven, Raymond. ‘De triomf van Antwerpen en de grote steden.’ In Van Uytven, Raymond ed. Geschiedenis van Brabant van het hertogdom tot heden. Leuven: Davidsfonds, s.d., pp. 241–251. Van Uytven, Raymond. ‘Geen ware landbouwcrisis.’ In Van Uytven, Raymond ed. Geschiedenis van Brabant van het hertogdom tot heden. Leuven: Davidsfonds, s.d., pp. 169–171. Van Uytven, Raymond. ‘Het gewicht van de goede steden.’ In Van Uytven, Raymond ed. Geschiedenis van Brabant van het hertogdom tot heden. Leuven: Davidsfonds, s.d., pp. 118–124. Verhulst, Adriaan. The Rise of Cities in North-West Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Weber, Max. Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus, Vollständige Ausgabe. Herausgegeben und eingeleitet von Dirk Kaesler, 3. Munich: C.H. Beck, 2010. Weber, Max. ‘The City (Non-Legitimate Domination): Concepts and Categories of the City.’ In Roth, Guenther and Wittich, Claus eds. Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1978 [1922], vol. 2, pp. 1212–1235. Weber, Max. Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft: Studienausgabe. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1972 (5th ed., 1st ed. 1922). Wells, Guy. ‘Emergence and Evanescence: Republicanism and the “Res Publica” at Antwerp Before the Revolt of the Netherlands.’ In Koenigsberger, Helmut G. ed. Republiken und Republikanismus im Europa der Frühen Neuzeit. Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1988, pp. 155–168. Wunder, Heide and Hauptmeyer, Carl-Hans. ‘Zum Feudalismusbegriff in der Kommunalismusdiskussion.’ In Blickle, Peter ed. Landgemeinde und Stadtgemeinde in Mitteleuropa: Ein struktureller Vergleich. München: Oldenbourg, 1991, pp. 93–98. Xhayet, Geneviève. Réseaux de pouvoir et solidarités de parti à Liège au Moyen Age (1250–1468). Genève: Librairie Droz, 1997.

1 Communal Revolts and the Politicization of Labor

In the early eleventh century (1021–1024), a monk, Alpertus of Metz, famously described the Merchant Guild of Tiel, referring to communal drinking and feasting, a common fund, an unwritten law the members mutually agreed to, and an internal administration of justice. Similar although more extensive characteristics are found in subsequent examples, such as the merchant guilds in Valenciennes (ca. 1050–1070) and SaintOmer (1072–1083).1 These guilds shared a range of characteristics familiar to twentieth-century historians studying late medieval and early modern occupational guilds. And yet, they of course differed significantly—in their economic and political power, the nature of their membership and probably also their sense of community. For one thing, the subsequent history of the merchant guilds was bound to become fundamentally entangled with the development of the early urban communes, the history of the latter in turn being fundamentally entangled with the vicissitudes of princely power. Both the early communes and the merchant guilds moreover awaited military and political challenges from popular and artisanal groups organizing in craft guilds, which booked their first victories in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries during often bloody and protracted revolts.2 While all these ‘communities’ may have shared specific features and perhaps even a communal or corporative tradition of sorts, it is important to disentangle them and focus on differences and discontinuities too. Historiography has shown how extremely difficult it is to describe the urban revolts in a non-anachronistic and non-teleological way. In a recent historiographical comment Patrick Lantschner has rightfully pointed to the tendency to describe the revolts in late medieval cities as ‘harbingers of a modern state-centred political order’. Looking at them through a modern prism, Marxisant historians have described such events as the Ciompi Revolt as ‘a veritable social and workers’ revolution’. Liberal and conservative historians in turn have downplayed the class characteristics while nevertheless framing them as ‘political revolutions’ at the root of the modern state and even modern democracy.3 The famous Belgian (liberal) historian Henri Pirenne rendered them as struggles in which the popular classes fought for a ‘democratic’ type of emancipation.4 Recent approaches have rightfully

30  Communal Revolts and the Politicization of Labor qualified this, among other things by problematizing the social and ideological fault lines implied in these narratives. Coalitions along lines other than class or commoners versus elites often materialized.5 In this chapter, I will proceed from these observations, while returning to olden debates on the causes of urban revolts. Historians have gone to great lengths to identify the causes of the revolts and the establishment of communes. For starters, they have referred to urbanization and the growth of commerce and trade as important factors in the rise and establishment of urban communes. Economic and demographic growth would have urged people to move to the city, thus straining their feudal bounds. As wealth moreover increasingly accumulated in cities, landlords and princes were obliged to reckon with the demands of urban-based merchants and patricians. While cities turned into military powers in themselves, the feudal lords often depended on them to finance their own wars.6 This is why both Italian cities and cities in the Low Countries and the Rhine area were at the vanguard of this movement, although the different subsequent evolutions in these regions simultaneously reveal a need to account for specific political circumstances—such as the conflict between the Holy Roman Empire and the papacy in Northern and central Italy.7 Some historians have maintained that one specific type of city was more favorable to the establishment of guilds than another. Midsize towns of about 10,000 to 30,000 inhabitants, harboring a relatively broad range of industries and specializations, would seem to have been the most fertile ground for guilds; while large seaports and seaport towns that focused on overseas trade would seem to have been less prone to their establishment.8 Here, reference is of course made to Venice, next to, among others, Genoa. As Venetian patricians were engaged in overseas trade (without being organized in a guild), they were distanced from the crafts in their city.9 Nevertheless, disagreement surfaces over the role of the economic context. On the one hand, demographic growth, urbanization and specialization are considered to have not only created a wealthy middle class, but also to have stimulated people to bargain and cooperate and, hence, to establish social organizations.10 Other historians have however specified that inner-urban revolts did not become widespread before the latter part of the thirteenth century, when the economic and demographic engine had begun to sputter. The rapid proliferation of guilds in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries typically took place in a context of population decline, economic stagnation and fiscal crises.11 In this context, social historians have referred to labor relations as a causal factor, in particular historians writing about northwest Europe.12 Textbook examples of cities with successful guild revolts of course abound in the Low Countries, but factors other than demographic and economic may have been involved. According to Samuel Cohn, political factors and issues of justice were more fundamental. While urban revolts involving popular groups attacking their oligarchic rulers were among the

Communal Revolts and the Politicization of Labor  31 most frequent, urban laboring classes would typically have stood up for political inclusion and the granting of citizenship rights.13 As I will argue below, this was indeed the case in the well-known urban revolts in Flanders, Brabant and elsewhere, but it remains to be seen exactly what type of political community the protagonists had in mind. How are the ‘privileges’ and ‘liberties’ the rebels pressed for to be understood? Does it make sense at all to distinguish, like Cohn, a ‘conservative’ focus on privileges from a ‘progressive’ yearning for political freedom and equality?14 In my view, the case study presented here does not support such a dichotomy. Rather than a shift from privilege to liberty, the urban revolts in the Southern Netherlands corroborate the idea that the laboring classes gained both momentum and political consciousness from the thirteenth century on, but their goal was to be included in the body politic and to enjoy privileges similar to those of the oligarchic elites. As it appears, both groups shared a certain communal discourse. Although extremely plural and eclectic, the political discourses in Flemish communities (both urban and rural) were rife with references to unity and brotherhood, which was expressed in such terms as ‘agreement’ (acoort or acorde) and concord (concordien), ‘friendship’ (vrienscap) and ‘mutual love’ (onderlinghe minne), and brotherhood (broederlichede). These terms were used alongside references to the common good (bonum commune, utilitas publica, etc.), privileges (e.g., previlegie, keure, etc.) and freedom (vrijhede), which also refer to a communautarian ideal—including the ideal of autonomy.15 Below, I will maintain that these discourses did not instrumentally serve to express and justify class interests, but should be understood rather as part of ideological—and partly unconscious—systems of meaning. While the guildbased artisans in the last instance achieved a more inclusive conception of citizenship, the way this inclusion materialized was deeply entrenched in corporative values. This is not to say, of course, that a pre-existing corporative tradition explains the shape of the revolts and the political and institutional compromises resulting from them. Structures, discourses and events should rather be seen as constantly interacting. In my view, it is this interaction rather then something intrinsic which explains the difference between my case study and other cases of the cities in northern Italy. In order to bring these differences to light, I will in the first section describe the communal and urban revolts while situating them in a wider European comparative framework. An additional aim of this section is to provide a detailed chronological overview while simultaneously pointing to the importance of events—thus following Willem Sewell where he maintains that events have a lasting impact on structures.16 Subsequently, I will try to identify some causal factors, showing that both structural power relations and such contingent factors as the need for raw materials played a part. Beyond that, I will argue that cultural and ideological factors mattered too, perhaps even more. The key issue, for me, is the fabrication of a communal or corporative tradition, which will be the red line through this chapter. In

32  Communal Revolts and the Politicization of Labor addition, in the last two sections I will introduce a new element to be taken into account, namely the relationship between politics and labor. What has been overlooked in most political history to date is that being a political subject and working with one’s hands was seen as mutually exclusive by a great deal of political thinkers and political elites alike. Gaining access to urban citizenship and becoming a political subject thus involved more than obtaining a fair share of power and wealth. It implied recognizing laborers and artisans as political subjects capable of rational thought and acting in the name of the common good. Perhaps this explains the ferocity of the guild-based artisans’ rebellions more than any other factor invoked earlier.

Communal Patterns in Medieval Europe The communal revolts in Europe came in two waves, the first being one of ‘communal emancipation’ in which cities and urban patricians took a stand against feudal rule.17 In Lombardy, Tuscany and the Low Countries, the most densely urbanized regions in Medieval Europe, urban communes emerged in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries.18 In Italy, the first charters would have been granted to Genoa (958), Mantua (1014), Brescia (1038) and Ferrara (1055).19 In the Low Countries, the first recorded was Cam­brai in 1077, but others followed suit in Valenciennes (1114), SaintOmer (1127), Aire (1093–1111) and Tournai (1147).20 In the Rhine region, the communal movement was important and precocious as well, although after early manifestations in Worms and Cologne in the eleventh century, the movement only gathered speed in 1105–1106 and 1110–1112.21 In Valenciennes, Saint-Omer and Tournai sworn communes emerged shortly after the merchant guilds. Although a lack of sources makes it difficult to sketch the precise relationship between the merchant guilds and the communes jurées or ‘sworn communes’ which ran many a city in twelfthcentury Flanders, Artois, and Hainaut,22 most functions of the merchant guilds were soon assumed by the urban commune, which then applied its rules to the urban community as a whole.23 While in Cologne the board of the merchant guild became the first town government, merchant law was often used as the basis for civic law.24 In the well-known charter granted by the count of Flanders (William Clito) to the burghers of Saint Omer in 1127, the latter received a great deal of liberty to engage in business, including rights that involved personal liberty, the ability to adjudicate merchant disputes, to be free from tolls, etcetera. Through a mutual oath of association, townsmen eventually created a ‘super guild’ of sorts, which was allegedly devoted to the well-being of the whole community.25 This is not to say that there was continuity between the merchant guilds and the first benches of aldermen, that mercantile principles formed the sole basis of the customary law of the early communes, or that the merchant guilds served as the blueprint for the urban communes. While a large overlap has been revealed between the bench of aldermen and the Flemish Hanse of London

Communal Revolts and the Politicization of Labor  33 in thirteenth-century Bruges, mercantile principles merged with other elements from Germanic law. By the thirteenth century, moreover, benches of aldermen were by and large princely institutions.26 However, all these organizations shared communal ideas and such key principles as self-rule, mutual help and protection based on an oath.27 Important regional differences occurred on a European level. With the exception of London, York and Winchester, where burghers eventually elected their own mayor and had financial and juridical competences, there was hardly any communal movement in England. From the twelfth century, a series of royal charters were issued with the twin aim of curtailing the spread of urban communes and raising royal revenue, but this resulted in privileges being cut back soon afterward.28 Nor was the situation much better in France. Although communal movements have been recorded in certain regions, the French monarch did not grant jurisdictions to cities in his royal domain comparable to the jurisdictions of the cities in northern Italy and the Low Countries. King Philip August (1165–1223), in his efforts to control the municipal movement, granted only limited urban autonomy in return for political loyalty and support—thus actually extending royal authority.29 In what is called in France ‘bonnes villes’, what little communal ideals of self-rule and independence there were eventually disappeared as the cities transformed into an administrative level in the monarchial state.30 Paris never received the right to have a commune at all.31 In Spain, Catholic Kings re-enforced the power of city government in the context of their military campaigns against Islam—the power of the latter being largely based in cities. Charters and privileges were granted to, among others, the frontier cities, in order to attract settlers and fighters. This did not grant these cities a greater autonomy in the long run however. After the thirteenth century, it enabled the Kings to tighten their grip. The early urbanized regions in Lombardy and Tuscany, the Rhine Regions and the Low Countries thus resembled each other more than they did France (with the exception of the North) and Spain. German cities were often more fortunate and were able to develop municipal institutions. Not unlike the Italian cities, they often profited from the conflicts and battles between the Empire and the Papacy. In episcopal cities like Cologne and Mainz, urban leaders exploited this conflict and often succeeded in securing extensive rights. Cologne thus acquired an urban seal in 1074 after an insurrection of its merchants against the Archbishop. Moreover, as the Emperor faced the growing power of territorial princes, the former became increasingly dependent on cities—a growing number of which received the status of ‘imperial city’ (as either Freie Städte or Reichsstädte) and thus enjoyed a large degree of autonomy and self-rule while not being subjected to a lay or ecclesiastical lord.32 Cities in central and northern Italy often even achieved full autonomy and independence from higher authorities. This is ascribed to their early development and extraordinary economic capacity and dynamic which prevented fragile ecclesiastical and other territorial lords from dominating

34  Communal Revolts and the Politicization of Labor them. Territorial ambitions of princes were hampered both by the proliferation of smaller lordships and the emerging economic and political power of urban centers. As is well known, even such emperors as Barbarossa and Frederick II failed to absorb them into their Empire. During a process in which the largest cities conquered rural seigniories and smaller cities, the Italian region instead became ‘totally divided up among cities’.33 In the Low Countries, the urban communes never gained absolute autonomy; nor did they extend their jurisdiction over their hinterland in a way comparable to the large Italian cities. In contradistinction with Northern and Central Italy, the power of the feudal lords even increased in Flanders during the twelfth century, with the count exerting control through the boards of aldermen (scabini).34 As a result, from the thirteenth up to the sixteenth century, Flemish and other cities repeatedly took up arms against their feudal lords.35 Compared to French and Spanish cities, they were rather successful too. Some historians have claimed that Flemish cities such as Bruges and, in particular, Ghent, were on the brink of becoming autonomous republics around the mid-fourteenth century.36 During the so-called ‘Ghent War’ of 1379–1385, the different factions within the city rallying in their struggle for more urban autonomy managed to seriously challenge the power of the Count and even of the French monarch, of whom the Count of Flanders was a vassal. In the same period Ghent, Bruges and Ypres dominated their hinterlands to a large degree.37 The city of Liège too, tended to exercise quasi-sovereign power within the bishopric after military confrontations with the bishop and the breakthrough of ‘democratic’ forces within the city.38 From the thirteenth century on, the Flemish cities joined in a type of League—the scabini Flandriae—which gathered the aldermen of the major cities. After the introduction of the comital taxes (the so-called beden or aides) in the early fourteenth century the three largest cities Ghent, Bruges and Ypres along with the rural district (kasselrij) around Bruges (the Brugse Vrije) formed the so-called ‘four members of Flanders’, which superseded and embodied the third estate in the representative body at the level of the county, the Estates of Flanders.39 In Brabant and other principalities in the Low Countries, the cities were less powerful and successful, but only to a certain degree. In Brabant, a few large cities succeeded in checking the power of the feudal lord and wielded substantial autonomy and power, which was eventually anchored structurally in the so-called third estate. Brussels and Leuven concluded a treaty on 26 July 1261, which other cities soon joined. In 1312, these cities obtained an important privilege from the duke (John II): the so-called ‘charter of Kortenberg’. While the charter acknowledged the fiscal, political and juridical privileges of the cities in Brabant, the cities’ delegates formed the majority in the representative Council of Kortenberg, whose function was to check the power of the duke.40 The three largest cities, Antwerp, Brussels and Leuven—with Leuven dominating until the fifteenth century—eventually formed a type of ‘three members of Brabant’.41 During

Communal Revolts and the Politicization of Labor  35

Figure 1.1 Battle at the Beverhoutsveld. This miniature from the Chroniques de Froissart pictures a victory of the Ghent militias (with their Black banners featuring a white lion) against the army of the count of Flanders Louis of Male in 1382. Berlin Staatsbibliothek: Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz, ms. Rehdiger 3 (Depot Breslau, 1, Bd. 3)—fifteenth century/Copy by Paul Hermans.

the Artevelde period, the Flemish cities even concluded a treaty (on 3 December 1339) with the Brabantine cities, after which Hainaut and HollandZeeland joined as well.42 In terms of ambitions, the cities in the Low Countries clearly resembled the Italian city-states.43 In Flanders, the administration of rural districts (kasselrijen) not only tended to have their seat in the regional capital, but there also was an overlap in personnel. In addition, urban governments had jurisdictional and political authority outside their city walls, as was the case in Ghent with the so-called banlieu, a zone of one mile around the city.44 But most importantly, the large cities in Flanders (the so-called ‘members of Flanders’) politically and economically dominated a hierarchical network which encompassed the smaller cities—with the large cities’ spheres of influence partitioned in large districts (kwartieren or quarters).45 In Brabant, Leuven often ignored the juridical privileges of such smaller cities as Tienen, Zoutleeuw and Herentals, while Lier had to admit burghers from Antwerp, Leuven and Brussels in its bench of aldermen in 1427–1429.46 The political role of such smaller cities as Lier, Diest, Geldenaken, Herentals and Nijvel was further eliminated during the Eighty Years’ War (1568–1648).47

36  Communal Revolts and the Politicization of Labor However, notwithstanding serious military and political attempts, no city in the Low Countries has ever succeeded in really dominating its rural hinterland (except perhaps for Groningen in the far North). Both juridically and economically, rural areas in the Low countries continued to be dominated by, on the one hand, a more or less independent peasantry and, on the other, dominating but not too powerful (compared, for instance, to England) seigniorial or landed elites.48 Moreover, while the Italian citystates also absorbed smaller cities in their jurisdiction, the smaller cities in Flanders and other principalities in the Low Countries continued to be economic powers in their own right.49 Nor did princely and territorial power fail to increase again during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. As we will see in more detail in the next chapter, the Burgundian and Habsburg rulers not only succeeded in concatenating the different principalities in currentday Belgium and the Netherlands—the Prince-Bishopric of Liège excepted; the dukes of Burgundy and, subsequently, the Habsburg rulers systematically rolled back the independence of both the cities and the guilds within the cities. The point I want to make here is that an urban conception of politics was important, and increasingly so up to the fourteenth and fifteen centuries. Urban elites succeeded in becoming recognized as legitimate and powerful political actors, and cities as constitutive political units. Yet rather than becoming the sole political units and forces in a broader territory, a complex interplay between different political actors materialized and eventually became institutionalized. In addition, it remains to be seen to what extent the cities in the Low Countries became monolithic political units, in which, for instance, the body politic was embodied by a small oligarchic elite—as eventually happened in the Italian city-states.

Patterns of Civic Emancipation The establishment of urban communes was soon followed by waves of intra-urban revolt, in which lower and middling groups fought for political recognition and participation. This phase resulted in the establishment of guilds, which often succeeded in cornering a great deal of political power. Central and Northern Italy harbored several guild republics like Perugia by about 1300, but the guilds’ power was usually short-lived there.50 In Venice, dozens of guilds were registered, but they were closely supervised by the Giustizia vecchia—an official body created in 1173 which imposed and approved statutes and monitored regulations and quality controls. A craftsman was to swear an oath of allegiance to the state instead of the guild upon promotion to master status by 1270.51 As Richard Mackenney cleverly remarks, these oaths were moreover administered by the city’s magistrate and not by the guild board, which meant that the masters acted as an individual rather than as part of a corporation. The guilds were definitively denied access to local political power with the Serrata of 1297, which

Communal Revolts and the Politicization of Labor  37 restricted access to the Great Council to the descendants of a number of patrician families.52 To quote the historian who has meticulously unraveled this unfortunate history for guildsmen, ‘the exclusion of the common people from Venetian politics was virtually complete by 1300’.53 In comparison, the guilds were far more successful in the Rhine areas and the Low Countries. The first known guilds, which appeared around 1100, were merchants’ guilds, which as we have seen either transformed into a bench of aldermen dominated by mercantile and landed elites (in alliance with the feudal ruler) or were soon paralleled by such a bench—with a large overlap in personnel. However, their oligarchic power was soon contested by manufacturing artisans, who also organized themselves into guilds. In Flanders, Brabant and other principalities, guilds moreover managed to acquire and partly secure a large degree of political clout. This is especially true in the oldest cities, including a few cities in what was later to become the Dutch Republic, such as Dordrecht and Utrecht.54 In Flanders, representatives of the guilds were typically admitted to the benches of aldermen around or after the victory of the ‘commoners’ at the so-called Battle of the Golden Spurs near Courtrai on 11 July 1302. In Bruges in a charter of 1304, the guilds obtained nine out of thirteen seats in both the inner council (bench of aldermen) and the wider council. The other seats were reserved for four representatives of the patriciate (all of them rich and powerful merchants), which before 1302 had monopolized municipal government.55 The guilds in the duchy of Brabant obtained their charters and political rights mostly later and more gradually than those in Flanders, although shortly after 1302, dozens of guilds obtained charters and privileges there as well.56 While the Battle of the Golden Spurs triggered the erection of autonomous guilds in the Northern city of Den Bosch, the years 1303–1306 witnessed temporary successes elsewhere in Brabant.57 In Brussels, the commoners participated in power for three years, but in 1306 the patrician families regained absolute control. The seats in both the council (seven aldermen) and the merchant guild (the so-called achten or ‘eight’ plus two deans) were exclusively reserved for the patrician lineages (the so-called geslachten).58 In Leuven, the power of the patrician families (called Saint Petermen) was likewise contested between 1303 and 1306, but here as well, they remained in power. According to the charter of 17 September 1306, the bench of aldermen was likewise reserved exclusively for the representatives of the patrician families.59 In a totally different political context, the bishopric of Liège, similar evolutions unfolded around the same time. In the city of Liège in the south east of the region, after at least half a century of political unrest and strife in the region, a council was created in which the representatives of the guilds were seated in equal numbers alongside representatives of the ancient lineages. This council, which in the early fourteenth century comprised no less than 132 members, was created alongside the bench of aldermen, which had emanated from the bishop since time immemorial. Even so, the guilds

38  Communal Revolts and the Politicization of Labor acquired a great deal of power through the new council there too. From 1303 the lineages agreed to share power with the guilds, with the latter also electing one of the two burgomasters in the council. On 14 February 1313, the guilds even seized absolute power in the city, as henceforth one had to be a member of a guild in order to sit in the council.60 A second and more important range of victories for the lower social groups in Brabant occurred around 1360. In Brussels a collective action of butchers, weavers and fullers failed, but these years are renowned for the successes of Pieter Coutereel in Leuven.61 Coutereel was a member of one of the patrician families and, moreover, nominated meier by Duke Jan III (1300–1355). Yet, after winning the favor of Duke Wenceslas (1337–1383) in his war against the Count of Flanders, Louis of Male, he successfully sided with the artisans against the patriciate. On 1 September 1360 Duke Wenceslas ruled that three out of seven aldermen were to be representatives of the guilds and that non-patricians could take part in the election of the urban council. Moreover, eleven out of twenty-two sworn councilors (jurés), of what was later to become the wider council, were reserved for commoners (next to six for the Colnere family and five for the Blankaerde family).62 Non-patrician burghers moreover gained access to the merchant guild; while this was previously led by three patrician members, the socalled regime of the ‘eight’ was installed, with four representatives of the patrician families and four from the ‘bourgeois’. This victory as well was only temporary, as the number of seats for the guild representatives was soon reduced to two again—with these two moreover being nominated by the patrician families. As late as 1373 the political dominance of the patrician families was confirmed.63 Nevertheless, an incremental process of what was later to be labeled ‘democratization’ was imminent here as well. In 1378 and 1383, after additional violent confrontations, it was ruled in Leuven that fiscal matters were to be supervised by the ‘broad council’, in which the guilds’ upper-deans (the deans of ten umbrella guilds) formed the fourth ‘member’. This time, the guilds obtained only ten sworn and the patrician families eleven. As to the bench of aldermen, the charter of 14 September 1378 returned to the three versus four division of 1360, which was definitively confirmed in 1383 (not to change again before the end of the ancien régime).64 A similar political structure occurred in cities in Flanders, Brabant and other principalities, although often at a different speed. The day after Coutereel and a number of commoners had conquered Leuven (in the night of 21 to 22 July 1360) revolt broke out in Brussels too. Telling from the acceleration in the recognition of guilds after 1360, there may have been a limited shift in power afterwards. Most guilds in Brussels were formally founded from 1365 on. Moreover, in 1368 a mixed jurisdiction was founded for the handling of workers’ complaints. It was composed of four members from the patrician families and four burghers.65 Nevertheless, substantial and stable participation by the commoners in Brussels did not come about before 1421—and this is again explained by contingent political circumstances.

Communal Revolts and the Politicization of Labor  39 In summary, large waves of similar revolts spread across the region unhindered by boundaries between the different principalities. As a rule, commoners organized in guilds were involved, but both the triggers and the outcomes of the revolts could differ from city to city and—to the extent that supraurban military and political factors played a role—from principality to principality. This suggests that specific power balances and contingent political factors played a role alongside what could be called structural factors.

Power Relations and Traditions of Revolt How can the different patterns of revolt and—eventually—power-sharing be explained? At the most basic level, differences are explained with reference to power relations in a somewhat crude sense, with power reduced to military power and geo-political vicissitudes. For the Low Countries and regions with similar characteristics, the balance of power between three or four political actors and actor groups is usually taken into account. First, there were the feudal lords of the first degree, which in Flanders and Artois was the King of France and in Brabant, Hainaut, Liège and Namur the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. Second came such territorial rulers as the Count of Flanders, the Duke of Brabant and the Prince-Bishop of Liège, who were vassals of either the French King or the Holy Roman Emperor. The third actor group is the urban patriciate, which was the ruling elite in most cities during and after the early communal movement, although their origin could be very diverse.66 And fourth comes the so-called ‘commune’, i.e., the workers and artisans who organized themselves in occupational guilds. All these groups were specific to every region in their composition, interests, and power. While this is obvious for the first category, it is perhaps even more the case for the second. The urban patriciate—which comprised 3% to 10% of the urban population in Flanders—had variegated backgrounds.67 The forebears of the lineages could be knight, episcopal vassal, ministerial and the like—although in the thirteenth century the different urban elites merged into a more or less monolithic urban ‘patriciate’, a group which moreover adopted aristocratic lifestyles and strove to secure noble privileges.68 Typically they coupled landholding and investing in real estate with mercantile interests and activities, with the proviso that this could differ between cities.69 Bruges is for instance known to have harbored a more ‘open’ patrician elite, based on membership in the merchant guild, whereas the ruling elites in Ghent, Douai and Saint-Omer are instead described as a closed caste of urban landowners, the so-called viri hereditarii.70 In those places where the earliest communes emerged, mercantile interests were most pronounced, although this should not be exaggerated. While there was often a large overlap both in personnel and functionality between the board of the merchant guild and the municipal government (the bench of aldermen), the elites of the cities often held fiefs while simultaneously being involved in long-distance trade. This is not only the case in Flemish cities, but in Brabantine cities as well.71 As such,

40  Communal Revolts and the Politicization of Labor contrary to what Pirenne and his heirs claimed, trade and industry were not the sole sources of wealth of the patrician class in northwest Europe. These groups engaged in war with their feudal lords, but the course of history can obviously not be reduced to military strength and the vagaries of the battles. What is more important, not least in the case of the Low Countries, is the coalitions forged. In the county of Flanders, the urban elites surfaced for the first time during a succession crisis in 1127–1128.72 After the murder of the Count of Flanders Charles I, King Louis VI of France put forward William Clito (Duke of Normandy) as the next count, but this threatened to jeopardize the economic interests of both merchants and manufacturing artisans. Economically, the large cities in the county of Flanders were dominated by the production of cloth. As they moreover specialized in high-quality fabrics, the entrepreneurs involved were heavily dependent on the import of English wool, which was considered of the best quality. In this context, the economic magnates were reluctant to support a pro-French and anti-English prospective count (William Clito).73 The large cities fiercely opposed Clito and successfully supported an alternative candidate, Thierry of Alsace, who after Revolts in Lille, Saint Omer and Ghent became the new count. The latter was thought to serve the mercantile and entrepreneurial interests of the Flemish towns better, as he sided with the English.74 The importance of English wool was a crucial factor in the run-up to the Battle of the Spurs too, although the patriciate and the commoners were on different sides then. In 1297, the Count of Flanders Guy of Dampierre

Figure 1.2a City view of Ghent, surrounded by the coats of arms of the most important patrician families. Wood cut of Pieter de Keysere, 1524. Universiteitsbibliotheek Gent (Ghent University Library), BHSL.RES.1572.

Communal Revolts and the Politicization of Labor  41

Figure 1.2b Coats of arms of the most important guilds in Ghent. Wood cut of Pieter de Keysere, 1524. Universiteitsbibliotheek Gent (Ghent University Library), BHSL.RES.1572.

became the natural ally of the ‘commoners’ because he broke with his lord, the French King Philip the Fair (Philip IV), and allied with Edward I the King of England while the patriciate rallied with the French King.75 In response the French King took the count hostage and appointed a governor to the county, which in turn upset the guilds in the large cities. This eventually culminated in military conflict, on Flemish soil, between the French army and urban militias from Bruges and its suburbs, which included some 9,000 guildsmen alongside some 400 nobles. The urban militias notoriously prevailed, notwithstanding the fact that the largest part of the urban patrician lineages sided with the French because the count supported some of the commoners’ demands. Thus, both political and economic factors had a huge impact on the vagaries of the battle and the outcome of wars and rebellions, but given the rather coincidental importance of English wool quality and the unpredictable character of the coalitions forged, this was highly contingent. In Brabant around 1360, Duke Wenceslas (of Luxembourg) was also disinclined to side with the patrician class, as the powerful cities seized the occasion of his minority and lack of local support to limit his power. This resulted, at the end of the Brabant war of succession, in the famous Joyous Entry of 1356, which anchored the de facto power of the cities juridically. In this context, the large cities in Brabant not unlike those in Flanders thus wielded considerable power, and this had consequences for the power balance within

42  Communal Revolts and the Politicization of Labor the cities as well. In Antwerp, guilds gained formal power under the short rule of a Flemish count (Louis of Male, from 1357) on the occasion of the Brabant war of succession.76 While economic and fiscal matters were often decisive in the formation of coalitions, factional strife within cities proved to be important too. In Leuven, a first success for the commoners was reported when one faction among the patrician class (the so-called family of the Colneren) sided with the commoners. Possibly there was an economic motive involved since the family of the Colneren included large entrepreneurs, but it also happened in the context of the power vacuum due to the succession of Duke Henry III (1231–1261).77 Inevitably, these different levels became entangled. From about 1400 the patrician class in Brussels clustered into enemy factions, the Van Lombekes and Vander Straetens versus the Van Heetveldes. On the level of the duchy, Duke John IV at the time faced the joint forces of the large cities of Antwerp, Brussels and Leuven, which were about to be supported by the large landholding elites. The eventual success of the commoners and the guilds is explained by the fact that the Van Lombekes-Vander Straetens rallied with the duke and the other lineages with the latter’s adversaries.78 The guilds supplied the majority of the shock troops to conquer the patrician faction which was loyal to the duke, as a result of which they were granted substantial political rights by the regent (ruwaard) Philip of Saint Pol (the duke’s brother) in the early 1420s. Henceforth, the municipal council would be composed of one burgomaster, seven aldermen and two stewards (rentmeesters) from the patrician families and one burgomaster, two stewards and six officials (sworn) from the guilds—the guilds being grouped in nine ‘nations’ at the occasion. In addition, a broad council was installed, which was composed of all old members of the inner council.79 In Liège, yet another specific power constellation served as catalyst of revolt. As in Flanders, Liège experienced severe unrest on the eve of 1302. The trades were already organized politically and militarily before—they may even have had juridical competencies—but they were not entitled to (co-govern) the municipality and urban economy. Their protest was triggered as the patrician rulers tried to impose a new consumption tax, yet the situation in Liège was specific in that the patrician class faced the opposition of the bishop’s aldermen. The commoners moreover found an ally in the cathedral chapter of Saint Lambert which was firmly opposed to the new tax as well (because they were not exempt). Thanks in part to the canons supporting the commoners, the patrician class was obligated to share power with the guilds from 1303. Notwithstanding support for the patrician class from the Duke of Brabant and the Count of Looz, the guilds succeeded in securing political power in the longer run. In 1311, they were entitled to impose fines, confiscate goods and control professional life. In 1313, they seized absolute power. Although this power was of course not uncontested and the guilds experienced severe setbacks in the course of the fourteenth century (with power again being shared), they exhausted the lineages to such

Communal Revolts and the Politicization of Labor  43 an extent that the latter practically abdicated in 1384—as they renounced from residing in the council entirely.80 Not without reason, Henri Pirenne proclaimed that this regime was ‘the most democratic that the Low Countries have ever known’.81 As it appears, then, political and military vicissitudes, including political power vacuums and the need for English wool, seriously precipitated or delayed certain developments and resulted in different temporalities, yet a certain drive for communal and corporative emancipation would seem to have been common. Notwithstanding all hereditary coincidences and political and military vicissitudes, and not unlike the first phase of communal emancipation, these revolts came in waves, which suggests that structural factors—whether social and political, economic and demographic, or cultural and discursive—were nevertheless involved. Specifically, historians have often assumed a context of economic and demographic decline and fiscal crises underneath the history of political events and shifting power balances.82 This is particularly the case in the inner-city revolts. While the surge in political autonomy and power of cities was ultimately attributed to their gaining economic and financial strength, inner city revolts would have been triggered by degrading economic and social circumstances and increasing fiscal pressures. However, some revolts clearly preceded and followed the crises in the fourteenth century. While economic, fiscal and food crises may have triggered specific revolts, eras of revolt cannot be reduced to them.83 Moreover, the mid-fourteenth century plague is difficult to account for in this context, given the rising living standards which resulted from it for at least part of the lower and lower middling groups.84 How, then, are these structural factors to be accounted for? Can they be reduced to a class struggle of sorts, or to something akin to a ‘democratic’ revolution? What role did such cultural factors as the existence of a ‘communal’ or ‘corporative’ tradition play?

Guilds, Class and a Corporative Tradition In Ghent, Douai, and Arras revolts broke out in 1275 and five years later in Ypres, Bruges and elsewhere in the region.85 This happened in a context where downward pressures on wages and labor conditions were combined with upward grain prices and fiscal pressure. In consequence, historians have often assumed a class conflict of sorts, in which handworkers from the textile industry stood up to the magnates who exploited them and dominated them politically.86 This view is supported by the importance of the textile trades and the large numbers of proletarianized textile workers in the Low Countries in general and Flanders, Artois, Hainaut and Brabant in particular. Not coincidentally, in the Low Countries, the urban revolts leading to the erection of guilds were often preceded by strikes—called takehans (referring to either ‘take hands’ or the money paid to a common box)87 in the thirteenth century.

44  Communal Revolts and the Politicization of Labor In line with this, the militancy of the groups involved is attributed to both their material living conditions and their numbers. The weavers in Ghent numbered 5000 out of a population of 56,000 in the mid-fourteenth century.88 These workers were squeezed by the merchants, who regulated production and labor, including wages, working hours and product standards. The fullers were often worst off and there were thousands of them as well. Among other things, they strove for minimum wages, which were granted to them in Brussels and Leuven around 1280 and 1298 respectively.89 Although strikes have been recorded in other sectors and regions, including that of the butchers of Paris in 1250, they were typical for the textile centers in the regions under consideration here. In Douai in 1245, in Ghent in 1274, and in Ypres in 1280 strikes were organized by textile workers.90 In Brussels a rebellion of fullers has been recorded in 1282.91 Nevertheless, historians have qualified the dichotomous framing of the revolts in terms of a one-dimensional clash between the urban patriciate and the commoners.92 According to both Carlos Wyffels and Agatha Anna Bardoel the first phases of the revolts in Bruges around 1280 were driven by economic elites deprived of political power because of the foreign policy of the count.93 In Ghent patrician families deprived of access to the bench of aldermen took the lead in an attempt to break the power of the so-called XXXIX—a body of three rotating groups of thirteen patricians governing the city in the thirteenth century.94 Conversely, while the revolts were often triggered by fiscal issues, the anger of the commoners was often targeted at the patrician class, rather than the merchant guild. This has at least been argued for the important revolts in the city of Leuven around 1360. After all, to the extent that the merchant guild reduced competition from the countryside and enabled monopolistic competition through the standardization of products, the interests of weavers and fullers could just as well chime with those of the merchants. On top of this, both the patrician and the artisanal groups were in fact very heterogeneous. While the latter comprised both employers and employees, the former not only included merchants and landowners, but manufacturers as well.95 Hence, the social revolts in the textile sector cannot serve as a pars pro toto for a broader class-based strife for political emancipation. While they were part of a broader movement in which it had become rational to organize collectively along professional lines while striving for political emancipation, it was not uncommon to forge coalitions across class divides with a view to gaining political power. As Richard MacKenney rightfully observes, there are other relationships and fields of tension to be taken into account, such as the urban-rural relationship, feudal relationships, and tension between crafts.96 But above all, it should be borne in mind that the goals of the commoners were not limited to a more socially equitable society. The coalitions could for example have the common goal of a more just and accountable government. During the moerlemaeye uprising in Bruges in 1280, when the popular party joined forces with wealthy merchants who

Communal Revolts and the Politicization of Labor  45 were themselves excluded from government, the common cause was taking part in governance.97 This is why conflict has also been recorded in cities not dominated by textile industries and in which other groups took the lead, as was also the case with the butchers in Sienna in the early fourteenth century.98 So, while class interests and the military power resulting from the sheer number of socially deprived artisans in the textile industries may explain the ferocity and relative success of the revolt, the commercial power of the patrician elites and the socio-demographic composition of the city were not the sole or even the key predictors of popular protest.99 While the revolts typically resulted in the political recognition of craft guilds, the demands of the commoners included the accession of a new prince and his presence in the county, the appointment of and control over committal and urban officials, political and financial transparency, and the administration of justice—to be summed up in political participation.100 Beyond conflict was the wish, on the part of the commoners and artisans, to be recognized as political actors. And rather than rejecting the existing ideology, the rebels concerned fought for their inclusion in the existing political framework. In this context, the corporatist ideology reigning in these cities materialized. By the thirteenth century, the original communal spirit of the early cities had waned drastically, but the guilds created a new sense of community as they claimed that they now embodied ‘the true commune of the city’—or the real meentucht as they called it.101 It remains to be seen, however, to what extent their ideology resembled the communal ideology of the early urban communes. When looking at the outcome of the urban revolts, the idea of being ‘member’—as group—of the broader urban body politic actually jumps into the eye.102 Representation was achieved not on an individual level but through membership of a guild.103 These guilds were organized in nations which were, in turn, part of the general council of the city. The basis for government in Ghent after the victory of the commoners was the so-called regime of ‘the three members’, in which (from 1369 at all levels of government) power was shared between the patrician class, the weavers, and 53 so-called small trades (neeringen). In the two benches of aldermen (since 1301 political and juridical authority was distributed among two benches in Ghent), the patrician families held three seats, the weavers five and the small trades also five.104 In Bruges, which had a more diversified economy, four of the thirteen seats in the bench of aldermen were, from 1304, reserved for representatives of the poorterij (patrician lineages) and nine for representatives of the guilds. To that end the 54 trades were themselves clustered into nine groups (like textile guilds, ‘small guilds’, ‘hammer guilds’, ‘leather guilds’, ‘needle guilds’, etc.).105 In other cities, similar arrangements materialized—including the largest cities in Brabant.106 In order to build the urban body politic as a pyramid of sorts, the guilds were often grouped in umbrella guilds, also conceived as a kind of ‘members’ of the larger body politic. In Leuven in 1378 the guilds were clustered

46  Communal Revolts and the Politicization of Labor in ten so-called ‘nations’. In Antwerp, the guilds were grouped under three umbrella guilds: the skippers, the mercers and the cloth dressers.107 In Brussels nine nations materialized in 1421, the sworn deans of which formed the third member of a wider council (literally the ‘back board’ or l’arriere conseil of the city).108 In Ghent, not only was the ‘three member-structure’ applied to lower administrative levels, one third of the 58 official craft guilds (which formed the third member) were, moreover, themselves subdivided into two or more ‘members’. The blacksmiths for example officially included twelve groupings, the mercers five and the skippers three.109 These structures were to remain remarkably stable after their introduction in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries—although it would change drastically in the sixteenth century in the most stark example presented here (Ghent)—not coincidentally as we will see in the next chapter. In the next chapters, we will also see that the guilds themselves can be regarded as a body, composed of members (the masters), the latter in turn being themselves heads of households and, hence, encompassing their wives, children, apprentices and journeymen. But suffice it to say here that the artisans, when adopting a corporative structure, fell back on a corporative ideology of sorts rather than on modern ideas of individual or classrelated economic or political emancipation. In this, they did not even differ much from the patrician families. In Brussels, every patrician burgher had to become a member of a lineage from the age of 28.110 While kinship had to be proven, political activities on an individual level were obviously not an option. This raises the question, in turn, of the origins and genealogy of the ‘corporative tradition’. Knut Schulz in a recent overview points to the so-called guild-tradition, i.e., the idea of voluntary association forged with a solemn oath by a group of individuals seeking protection and mutual aid. This is often based on the historical traces left by the organizations of merchants involved in longdistance trade, which not only formed the first guilds, but—to a certain extent—embodied the first urban communes as well. Significantly, the north of France and the southern parts of the Low Countries figure prominently here too.111 A second genealogy Schulz refers to is the so-called Gottesfrieden (Truce of God) movement, which was prominent in France. While the very first urban revolts chronologically coincide with the investiture controversy, communio (communion) and pax (peace) were important elements in the early communes’ ideology. These terms were instrumental in stressing the need to overcome feuds and the arbitrary use of power by feudal lords. Moreover, the investiture controversy, which basically focused on the right to institute rulers (church officials) autonomously, may have triggered an interest in the election and appointment of rulers in the context of cities as well.112 Historians of guilds too have attached a great deal of importance to ‘traditions’. According to Black, late medieval guilds and confraternities resulted from a fusion between a Germanic tradition of mutual association and a

Communal Revolts and the Politicization of Labor  47 Christian ethic of charity and mutual aid. During the early and high Middle Ages, the Germanic guilds would have been Christianized, as a result of which they adopted patron saints and prayers for the deceased.113 Remarkably, a great many of the early merchant guilds indeed share a common geographical origin, namely the southwest of the Low countries. Valenciennes is currently situated in northern France but was at the time an important city in the county of Hainaut and connected to the heartland of the Low Countries (the county of Flanders) by the river Scheldt. Saint Omer is situated on the border of the county of Flanders. The city came into the possession of the count of Flanders in 932, but from 1212 was part of the county of Artois. Simultaneously, however, these cities shared an important cloth industry with the large centers in Flanders. Between 1235 and 1241 so-called Hansa guilds, which gathered Flemish cloth merchants active in England, were established in the large cities of Lille, Ypres, Bruges and Douai (with Bruges soon taking the lead).114 There is, thus, clearly an economic factor involved as well. Even so, the existence of these guilds cannot be reduced to their economic function. These merchant guilds were one type of a broader range of confraternities which included not only professional groups such as the servants of the Abbey of Saint Truiden (mid-eleventh century) and the brewers of Huy (1068), but also such devotional and charitable organizations as the confraternity of Saint Eloy in Béthune (founded in 1188) and other confraternities connected to religious orders and churches.115 Without the precise connection between these groups being clear, they appear to have shared a certain communal tradition, in which common rule and mutual obligation were based upon an oath pledged to the group.

Urban Citizenship and the Corporative Community The ultimate consequence of the inclusion of guilds in the body politic was that guild membership and urban citizenship became entangled.116 Throughout northwest Europe, economic privileges were often connected to citizenship rights. While in England, apprenticeship next to patrimony and birth opened the way to burghership and political participation, membership of a guild often gave access to urban citizenship and political participation in Italy and the Languedoc.117 Conversely, in Frankfurt the municipal government stipulated that no one could become a member of a guild without first being a burgher of the city. While this was confirmed repeatedly in subsequent decades, this condition also found its way into the guilds’ statutes and included the obligation for new members to swear loyalty to the council and the lords.118 In the Low Countries as well, it was mostly stipulated that one had to be a burgher in order to have access to a guild. Burghership was nearly always a prerequisite to guild membership.119 Sometimes the guilds even succeeded in controlling access to citizenship, as was the case in Liège after 1313, where access to burghership rights was conditional upon

48  Communal Revolts and the Politicization of Labor membership of a guild.120 Something similar applied in Tournai, where in the early fifteenth century 36 guilds usurped and shared all municipal power and obliged every citizen to be registered in one of them.121 Social historians have often addressed this through the prism of an increasing or decreasing exclusivity, which was in turn thought to be connected to economic and demographic needs. Sometimes the burghership fee was deliberately raised for those urban dwellers not born a burgher in order to prevent poor people from entering a trade or the city; or else a minimum level of wealth was required to protect the communal resources as was already the case in Ulm at the beginning of the fifteenth century, where one had to prove the possession of 200 pounds. Alternatively, some cities forced urban dwellers to become burghers, for instance after an outburst of plague, as happened in fourteenth-century Luzern. In Frankfurt in 1432, urban officials roamed the streets to urge all newcomers to the city and their sons to swear the burghership oath. In Frankfurt at the end of the fourteenth century plans were drawn up to make burghership mandatory for every male of age living in the city. And in Zurich in 1351 all residents were simply declared burghers; those who refused had to notify the municipal officials within a certain period.122 In the long run exclusive measures would have prevailed.123 This is reportedly the case for Flanders and Brabant, where the financial threshold steadily rose from the late Middle Ages on. In Antwerp, the fee rose from seventeen day’s wages for a skilled artisan in 1459 to the equivalent of sixty-eight days of work in 1544.124 However, it might be more fruitful for our purpose to first of all see burghership for what it originally was, namely a set of rights and obligations. The status of burgher—or in Dutch poorter—came with a range of juridical and political privileges—including exemption from feudal obligations and taxes.125 One crucial privilege was the right for burghers to be judged before the urban courts, which was standard for burghers.126 This is of course related to the freeing of burghers from feudal ties, and it often included the protection of burghers outside the town—as enacted in Brussels. There, burghers could even be summoned to court only by other burghers.127 As such, burghership is first of all to be considered a part of the emancipation process of artisans—at least in the early decades of the guilds’ official existence. In Cologne in the charter of 1396 the political body materialized as a sworn community including all inhabitants who were members of one of the twenty-two Gaffeln—i.e., associations of burgers grounded in one or more guilds—through which they had voting rights.128 This could still be explained from a distributional perspective. A concern with the community and communal resources is said to have informed urban politics at least to a degree. For Amsterdam, it has been shown that access to burghership was regulated with a view to protecting resources for poor relief—which could be realized by both raising the fees and introducing a waiting period.129 In Zurich, the waiting period was five years.130 Moreover, there was sometimes a trade-off between securing loyalty to the city

Communal Revolts and the Politicization of Labor  49 with a waiting period and re-compensating the city financially. In Cologne, the fee was twelve Rheinish guilders in the fifteenth century, but this was reduced to six guilders after a waiting period of three years of residence. Those who wanted to be entitled to take part in the lucrative business of wine-selling faced either a ten-year waiting period or a fee of one hundred guilders (in 1421).131 However, this is not to say that burghership is reducible to a compromise about the distribution of profits and resources. Nor can it be reduced, as some economic historians have recently argued, to a type of contract between ruler and ruled in which burghers are prepared to produce wealth, pay taxes and provide services in return for public goods such as a juridical system that defines and protects property rights.132 In my view, these may be anachronistic interpretations which insufficiently take into account the contemporary intellectual and cultural climate. Citizenship was not simply an entry ticket to be purchased in order to be entitled to do business in town. Juridically, citizenship implied both a historical link and a commitment to the city in question. This commitment often included the willingness to protect and defend the city in a military way.133 Just as was the case with guilds, the most basic condition for burghership was an oath of loyalty, as is pointed out by German historians in particular.134 In a range of cities and regions, most clearly in Southern Germany, burghers even reiterated their oath yearly—thus ritualistically confirming the existence of a sworn community of burghers.135 In Brussels even sons of burghers had to pledge an oath upon becoming a burgher themselves at the age of fifteen.136 Essentially, one swore to be loyal to the city in a military, political, economic and fiscal way.137 Nor could burghership simply be discarded afterwards. In a range of cities in the German area it was mandatory for new burghers to retain burghership for at least five or even ten years.138 In the Southern Netherlands, as elsewhere, burghers were also compelled to reside in the city concerned.139 A more businesslike approach may have emanated from an evolution in which the importance of ancestry, real estate and political office evanesced. In Frankfurt am Main, among other cities, residence and possession of real estate as a prerequisite for burghership were gradually replaced by pecuniary mechanisms. Until the first decades of the fourteenth century a prospective burgher had to prove the possession of real estate, but this could later be a certain rental income attached to real estate, or else one could lend a sum of money to the city in return for a rent; and eventually, simply paying a fee prevailed.140 The core areas of the Southern Netherlands may have been early examples of such a business-like approach. Waiting periods were usually rather short in Brabant and Flanders, often one year and one day, as was the case in Ghent and Bruges, although it could also be up to three years (as in Ypres) or more.141 This is probably due to the high geographic mobility in these regions and the need for such mercantile and industrial centers as Ghent and Bruges to accommodate newcomers leniently. The threshold appears to have been the highest in some cities in northern Italy, where burghership

50  Communal Revolts and the Politicization of Labor was connected to a certain amor patriae. While in Florence one had to prove loyalty and ‘love’ to the city; the citizenship law of 1305 in Venice prescribed a residence period of fifteen to twenty years (which was lowered to eight to fifteen years after the Black Death in 1358), but here burghership was reserved for a small political elite, not including guild-based artisans.142 The limited power of the latter was reflected in their not being citizens to the city. In my view, then, the appropriation of burghership status by artisans during and after the urban revolts must have been a more radical experience than a calculated redistribution of resources and a rebalancing of power. In the Southern Netherlands, burghership was generally obtained through birth, as it was hereditary for sons and daughters of burghers—sometimes on the condition that one had to be born inside the city as well, as was the case in Brussels. In addition, marriage to a burgher also provided one with burghership status.143 So either one was born a burgher or one concluded the most intimate partnership possible with a burgher family through marriage.144 In fewer cases, although not exceptionally, ius soli prevailed, when for example everyone born within the city walls could automatically become a burgher—as was the case in Antwerp, Bergen op Zoom and ‘s-Hertogenbosch.145 But even then, a certain loyalty and commitment to the city was implied, if only because an oath of allegiance was required.

The Incorporation of Handicrafts What happened from around 1300, is a profound politicization of craft and craft guilds.146 As already hinted at above, historians have searched for the origins of the occupational guilds in Roman collegia, in the officia or workhouses under the rule of a manorial lord (which transformed into magisteria, governed by a magister), and in the Germanic tradition of the gilda.147 A typical feature of the latter was the oath to be pledged to the group (rather than to a leader) which could, thus, be seen as a sacred artificial family to provide security and mutual aid and, moreover, to embody a system of selfrule and man-made law.148 Lower Germania, Frisia and the Low Countries are mentioned as the first regions to harbor such organizations.149 These regions were also the first in which professional guilds would have organized as brotherhoods, which subsequently transformed into guilds with an economic and political purpose.150 Nevertheless, most historians currently admit that continuity between Roman colleges and late medieval merchant or craft guilds is limited to the terminology used. Apart from the Byzantine guilds a genuine continuity is nowhere to be found, not even in the earliest economic associations in Rome, Pavia, and Ravenna.151 This is not to say that continuity was nonexistent. The term gildonia (related to the German gelt or money) in the early capitularies under Charlemagne referred to ‘conspirations’ or sworn criminal associations, with a group of non-kin swearing an oath of loyalty to each other.152 As this heralds a range of perceptions and practices during the

Communal Revolts and the Politicization of Labor  51 urban revolts, continuity may have existed, if more diffuse and ethereal, on the level of discourses and practices. When looking at such shared features as the mutual oath, provision against sickness and deprivation, ceremonial feasting, and the burial of brethren, etcetera, there was continuity—at least telling from the first available records. As Dumolyn and Haemers invoke so vividly when referring to the early communes: ‘people were constantly meeting, discussing and swearing oaths together’.153 Yet, the occupational guilds clearly made a political turn—and one influenced by both their corporative tradition and contemporary political thinking. As is well known, medieval political philosophers were very much influenced by the ideas of Aristotle.154 For the Greek philosopher a city was synonymous with a political community, which was in turn based on a type of partnership of individuals. This partnership cannot be reduced to a contract, or to the specific laws and power relations which create the city institutionally. For Aristotle, the city has an essence or a substance prior to all this. On the one hand, individuals are considered to have a natural drive to form such a community and, thus, to be involved in politics. On the other hand, the city has a telos or purpose. Cities make happiness and virtue possible because being involved in the commune of the city is necessary to become a complete human being. Building on these ideas, medieval and Renaissance political thinkers and jurists have referred to cities using organic metaphors.155 While a free republic was described by civic humanists as ‘one body with many heads, hands, and feet’, the relationship of the individual to the city was considered similar to the relationship of a part of the body to the whole body.156 The challenge for artisans was to become part of the body politic. While notions of unity and mutual obligation were not limited to the guilds or similar organizations, bodily metaphors and an organic conception of the body politic was not limited to the cities, let alone the guilds.157 It pervaded political thought throughout, which may be due more to a Christian ideology of the Corpus Christi than to political thought per se—as will be argued in the fifth chapter of this book. Yet, the inclusion of manufacturing artisans, next to new mercantile elites, necessitated a different conception of burghership and the body politic.158 For medieval scholars, citizenship was related to a political attitude and project and to the very existence of reason. Being a burgher implied being oriented towards the common good—not in an instrumental way but because burghers had ‘reason’ and, accordingly, were supposed to act virtuously and towards peace and justice.159 In medieval political theory being a citizen was almost synonymous with being human. And however odd this may sound today, it was not at all self-evident to include artisans in this. The ideas of Antique political philosophers like Plato and Aristotle often automatically involved the exclusion of people working with their hands. For Aristotle, man was a political creature (zoon politikon) by nature and necessity; political society was, alternatively, a prerequisite for the fulfillment of a human being’s social purpose.160 But, having to work with one’s hands

52  Communal Revolts and the Politicization of Labor was prohibitive to being such a political subject. Handworkers, just like children, women and slaves were in theory excluded from the political, owing to handiwork being considered akin to slavery and opposed to independence, freedom and the ability to lead a disinterested and contemplative life.161 Such ideas clearly chimed with political practice. Political office was often explicitly denied to artisans and people who had to work with their hands. In Antwerp, Brussels and Lier in the fourteenth century, only members of patrician families could become members of the merchant guild.162 Moreover, artisans working with their hands were explicitly excluded from political office on a more general (urban) level—and sometimes explicitly so. While reference was made to mechanici vulgares as well as minores, working with one’s hands could be mentioned explicitly as an exclusionary factor for political office.163 A Bruges privilege from 1241–1242, for instance, stated explicitly that no men ‘doing manual labor’ (manuoperarius quicumque fuerit) were allowed to participate in municipal government. Anybody wanting to become an alderman had to abstain from manual labor for one year and one day and enter the Flemish Hansa of London as a member.164 In Liège, after a defeat suffered by guilds in 1408, a municipal council was established, access to which was still explicitly excluded for manual workers.165 Simultaneously, humanist thinkers notoriously stressed the citizen’s ancestry and local forebears. The foundation of such cities as Venice was seen by their intellectual supporters as a kind of refuge for liberty-loving people when republicanism and liberty decayed in Rome.166 The same thinkers argued that a city shaped the character and virtue of its inhabitants. This was already propounded by Livy (Titus Livius Patavinus, 59 BC—AD 17) in his History of Rome (Ab Urbe Condita) and was enthusiastically appropriated during the Renaissance. Leonardo Bruni in his Panegyric of the city of Florence, notoriously merged the two views, when he wrote that ‘the Florentines are in such harmony with this very noble and outstanding city that it seems they could never have lived anywhere else. Nor could the city, so skillfully created, have had any other kind of inhabitants’.167 In this context, artisans not only fought for a fair share, but for their very recognition as political and rational subjects, which in turn necessitated the recognition of their labor and skills as central to their political identity. In his recent work Jan Dumolyn has noted the centrality of work in the language of medieval artisans in the Low Countries. Gathering information from literary sources (such as the poems of Anthonis de Roovere, c. 1430–1482) and practical documents like requests, legal files, pamphlets, and the like, such notions as friendship, community, unity, mutual aid or simply caritas are shown to have been omnipresent in guild discourse, but labor—honest labor in particular—was what really distinguished the guild discourse from other groups’ discourses.168 The fact that their status as manual workers was at stake for the artisans, is corroborated by the sheer range of occupational guilds involved in the

Communal Revolts and the Politicization of Labor  53 revolts.169 Next to the textile trades, such trades as the black smiths also show up regularly in the sources at a very early date. In Mechelen, the blacksmiths claimed to have been erected around 1254 (although their first known charter dates from 1472). Brotherhoods of Saint Eloy (the standard patron saint in the metal trades) often existed already in the thirteenth century. The first professional organization mentioned in Diest was, for instance, a group of blacksmiths gathered under this name, in 1262. For the famous trade of copper-smithing in the Prince-bishopric of Liège, a corporative group is said to have existed in 1255, namely in Dinant.170 Nor were these groups absent at the vanguard of revolts. In Bruges during the revolts around 1280, groups such as blacksmiths, butchers, fishmongers, carpenters, masons and shoemakers, appear to have been rather active and involved.171 Next to the transport trades, the food trades, among which the brewers, butchers and bakers, figured prominently. While some of these groups may have had to deal with merchants for access to either raw materials or export markets, this was surely not the case for all of them; some could even be rather affluent. Rather than being squeezed economically like the well-studied small weavers and fullers, such groups could be economically successful while nonetheless being excluded from political power because of their status as artisans. Eventually, these guilds succeeded in becoming a ‘member’ of the urban body politic. While political theory hesitantly tried to come to grips with the idea of artisans being citizen or burghers,172 guild based masters joined the ranks of heads of households who dominated and incorporated other groups. Women, children, servants, journeymen and apprentices were all part of the patriarchal household which was connected to the political body via the ‘head’ of the household, the master and burgher. The smallest social unit that mattered was the household, das ganze Haus, which was a member of the political body of the city—preferably through membership of another intra-urban corporation.173

Conclusion In a recent overview of the urban revolts in medieval Flanders, Jan Dumolyn and Jelle Haemers emphasize that urban rebellions were not irrational outbursts of desperate poor on the occasion of food crises. They argue ‘that people acted together in a rebellion because they had shared interests and were conscious of the interests’ (italics in original).174 These young Belgian scholars thus rightfully qualify anachronistic approaches which tend to deny political consciousness to resurrecting commoners and artisans. In their rendering as well, however, the problem of anachronism and teleological thinking lurks. For how should this awareness of shared interests be interpreted? Should we assume class consciousness in its nineteenth century guise or rather as a twentieth century sense of political participation

54  Communal Revolts and the Politicization of Labor through civil society? Are we, as twenty-first-century political subjects, ourselves conscious of all our interests? Many an historian working on collective action currently endorses the tradition of Mancur Olson and Elinor Ostrom, in which collective action is seen as a solution to the problem of free-riding in the creation and management of public goods.175 The intellectual challenge Dumolyn and Haemers face is far more complex. Their work is entrenched in a long-standing political tradition of research into the emergence of the modern state and the advent of representation, constitutionalism and the so-called contract between ruler and ruled.176 Most often, constitutionalism and political participation are considered to have medieval roots, without the precise juridical, ideological and political genealogy being entirely clear—to say the least.177 Dumolyn and Haemers rightfully refer to a ‘juridical eclecticism’ when observing that the idea of a contract between ruler and ruled was influenced by canon law, Roman law, the bible, private law, feudal law, and local customs.178 However, what is clear in their case study is that political rights typically resulted from rebellion and revolt. Moreover, virtually all revolts which bequeathed some sort of constitutionalism or a type of political voice and representation from lower social groups had a communal dimension to them. This was particularly so in urbanized regions such as Flanders, Picardy, and other regions in northwest Europe where corporative groups had a strong hand in political agitation.179 Still, we largely remain in the dark about how this communal tradition impacted upon both the revolts as political events and the institutional arrangements which emanated from them. While the well-known medieval privileges and estates are easily linked to early modern notions of the social or political contract, the ideas of Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau of course differ significantly from those of such medieval political thinkers as John of Paris, Thomas Aquinas, John of Salisbury, and even of Marsiglio of Padua and William of Ockham.180 Specifically, both the state and the individual are much more abstracted and reified in Enlightenment thinking, where references to the inalienable rights of political subjects are entrenched in more positivist and less theological approaches to natural rights and natural law. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century social contract-theorists started from more secular and individualistic ideas about the freedom and equality of all. In comparison, late medieval political thinkers had a more organic conception of society in general and cities in particular.181 While the general will (even in its popular guise) was not the sum of individual wills, urban society was not composed of equal individuals but of kin-based or corporative groups which formed the ‘members’ of the political body.182 This at least urges us to take seriously the role of communal and corporative ideas in the advent of political participation and representation. In my view, it is essential to venture beyond understanding urban revolts and the establishment and political acknowledgement of guilds as expressions of conscious and calculated collective interests. Proceeding from a

Communal Revolts and the Politicization of Labor  55 more Foucauldian approach to power and politics, I would prefer to connect the urban revolts to juridical traditions and political thought, as well as to more diffuse cultural systems of meaning and epistemological traditions which the actors involved may themselves not have been conscious of. Specifically, corporative ideas and values may have been profound and genuine driving forces for those involved in the guild revolts. A corporative conception of the body politic may have functioned as the fundamental underlying mental grid to give sense and shape both to their actions and the systems of power sharing and compromise which eventually came about. Somewhat paradoxically, the terminology used for the ideal of the city as a commune was also used to refer to factions and groups within the city (and across cities). While in Italy factions were called societas or consorzio, references to ‘sworn associations’ (coniuration, conspiratio) were rife north of the Alps. The latter terms were often used in a negative sense, in opposition to the common good—notwithstanding both the guild and the city itself being a type of sworn community.183 In the long run, the social organization known as gilds or confratriae, turned out to be fertile ground for resistance and revolt. While their rites, secrecy and oaths were already suspect to the Lombard and Carolingian kings (and also the church) and were often forbidden in town law from at least the twelfth century, the outcome of the inner-city revolts (which became endemic ca. 1275) ‘was truly revolutionary’ indeed.184 As we will see in more detail in the next chapter, both these traditions and the events during the revolts profoundly shaped urban and guild life for centuries to come. When it comes to causes, it is impossible to be conclusive. The literature has rightfully referred to demographic growth and fiscal pressure as well as political disorder and the existence of a certain ‘corporative tradition’.185 While the former is renowned for northwest, central and southern Europe in its entirety, there were differences related to the latter two. In the Northern region of Italy, the chronology of the first urban charters (1070–1130) nicely coincides with destabilization of princely or episcopal power.186 Likewise, in the Low Countries the emergence of chartered communes was concurrent with economic and political instability. Moreover, the subsequent guild revolts coincided all too frequently with a certain power vacuum—during which the often odd coalitions between groups of commoners and either parts of the urban aristocracy or the feudal lord were forged. The latter give the impression of highly opportunistic groups who grasped historical opportunities—the more so since economic factors also mattered greatly. Nevertheless, an adequate understanding requires taking into account the deeper mental framework of the time as well. Antony Black has notoriously distinguished a guild ethos focused on brotherhood, friendship and mutual aid from civil society ideals such as political participation and personal freedom and autonomy. While the latter would be typical for the Mediterranean, Italy in particular, the former is connected to the communal movement north of the Alps.187 As set out above, it would have emanated

56  Communal Revolts and the Politicization of Labor from a Germanic tradition of mutual association which was later imbued by a Christian ethos of mutual aid and charity. While the importance of such cultural notions remains hard to pinpoint, they should be added to the structural causes and political eventualities forwarded to date—although without prioritizing either of the causal factors involved. While a corporative ‘tradition’ may have preceded the social upheaval in the late thirteenth and fourteenth century, it may itself have been forged partially during the earlier communal revolts. Moreover, the revolts must have provoked or accelerated the politicization of the guilds. After all, other medieval conflicts and revolts too are revealed as having redefined the conception of politics and widened the political sphere.188 Once established, the corporations functioned as the very framework through which political participation and ‘incorporation’ in the urban body politic was achieved. This implies a specific approach to politics and the common good. A younger generation of historians has rightfully pointed out that ideals of just and accountable governance were often involved whenever parties joined forces to fight for the political autonomy of cities or the participation of guilds in politics.189 The question is, however, how the common good was defined exactly. Debates in late medieval political thought reveal that the very conception of the common good as a concept was at stake. In the Aristotelian tradition, the common good was essentially the same for all citizens. Reasonable political subjects acted in favor of one and the same common good by their very nature. But, as historians of medieval political thinking have amply shown, medieval scholars often diverged from Aristotle in significant ways.190 Marsiglio of Padua, whose Defensor Pacis was described as ‘the first systematic statement of the popular basis of authority’,191 argued in favor of the inclusion of different specialized groupings in the body politic—such as the manufacturing artisans. This implied a more pluralistic conception of the common good, with the city becoming a composite reality, to which different groups contributed in a different way.192 In the next chapter, I take my cue from these observations to delve deeper into the relationship between the ideology and the political compromises which eventually materialized. As it appears, the guilds in the Southern parts of the Low Countries eventually resembled the Marsiglian ideas more than did the Italian city-states. In a broad range of large and medium-sized cities, guilds became a constituent part of the city as a body politic. They had access—as groups—to the inner and wider councils and took part in elections and decision-making procedures. In chapter 5, I will moreover connect this to religious sensitivities in general and public rituals which involved the guilds in particular. In such civic ceremonies as Corpus Christi and Holy Blood processions the city was invoked as a civic and at the same time Holy body.193 It was perhaps not a coincidence that the former emerged more or less simultaneously with the guilds. In the diocese of Liège, Corpus Christi was instituted as a feast in 1264, after which it grew in importance in the Low Countries among other regions in the fourteenth century.194

Communal Revolts and the Politicization of Labor  57 Nor can it be a coincidence that guild-based artisans continuously connected labor to religion and the political in their visual culture, for instance by including references to their labor (either their tools or products) in images of their patron saints.195 In my view, the fact that working with one’s hands prohibited access to political office must have been important in the political imaginary behind the guild revolts. In chapter 3, we will see that this may have been related to epistemological transformations too. This will become clear when connecting the field of tension between the ‘natural’ or rather ‘conventional’ or ‘artificial’ character of the political in political thinking to the field of tension between ‘nature’ and ‘artifice’ in a broader epistemic sense.

Notes   1 Espinas and Pirenne, ‘Les coutumes’; Planitz, ‘Kaufmannsgilde’, 7–30; Verhulst, The Rise, 123–125; Guignet, Le pouvoir, 44; Schulz, Denn, 123–131, esp. 124–127.   2  Recent views in Dumolyn and Haemers, ‘Reclaiming’.   3 Lantschner, ‘Revolts’, quotes on 3 and 5. An alternative approach stressing the corporatist ideological framework in Liddy and Haemers, ‘Popular Politics’.  4 E.g., Pirenne, Les anciennes démocraties, chs. VI and VII; Idem, Histoire de la Belgique; tome II, chs. II and III; Pirenne, Les villes, chs. VI‑VIII. Critical comments in Schulz, Denn, 5; Xhayet, Réseaux, 41–44; Boone, A la recherche, ch. 1. As Jelle Haemers cleverly remarked, Pirenne, who wrote in the early twentieth century, of course referred to a specific type of ‘democracy’, ‘une démocratie de privilégiés’. See Haemers, ‘Bloed’, 160–161. An early critical approach in Van Uytven, ‘Plutokratie’.   5 Braekevelt et al., ‘The Politics’, 13–31. Examples and additional references in Haemers, De Gentse opstand, 138–146; Idem, ‘Factionalism’; Vandecandelaere, ‘Een opstand’, 37–45. Also Heers, Parties; Nicholas, The van Arteveldes; Haemers, For the Common Good, ch. 3. For Italian communes, see Coleman, ‘Cities’, 48–56.  6 Schulz, Denn, 11.   7  Cf. Coleman, ‘Cities’, 29–35 and 42–48.  8 Thrupp, ‘The Gilds’, 230. Thrupp also argues that textile towns were not a favorable field of action for craft guilds, but this is refuted by the history of the late medieval Flemish cities, as we will see below.   9  Thrupp, ‘The Gilds’, 237; Mackenney, Tradesmen, 8ff. 10 Epstein, Wage Labor, 50. 11 Thrupp, ‘The Gilds’, 230. Also: Espinas, Les origins, 1096; Van Honacker, Lokaal verzet, 235–364. 12 Boucheron and Menjot, ‘La ville’, 528. 13 Cohn, Lust, ch. 3. 14 Cohn, Lust, 236–242. 15 Dumolyn, ‘Privileges’, 12. 16 Sewell, Logics, esp. chs. 7 and 8. 17 Dumolyn and Haemers, ‘Patterns’, 372–376. 18 Planitz, ‘Kaufmannsgilde’, 30–52; Verhulst, The Rise, chs. 4 and 5; Epstein, Wage Labor, 54; Boone, A la recherche, chs. I and II; Boucheron and Menjot, ‘La ville’, 497; Coleman, ‘Cities’, 29–35. 19 Bordone, ‘Kommune’, 1285; Skinner, The Foundation’, 3; Clark, European Cities, 91. Introductions to the early history of the Italian communes: Waley, The Italian City-Republics and Hyde, Society.

58  Communal Revolts and the Politicization of Labor 20 Verhulst, The Rise, 126; Guignet, Le pouvoir, 44, 61. 21 Boucheron and Menjot, ‘La ville’, 505; Schulz, Denn, 75–99. 22 Cf. Schulz, Denn, 119–131. 23 Des Marez, ‘La première étape’; Verhulst, The Rise, 124–127; Guignet, Le pouvoir, 44, 61. 24 Black, Guild, 56. Also: Planitz, Die deutsche Städt. 25 Coornaert, Les corporations, 209–211; Epstein, Wage Labor, 54–55; Schulz, Denn, 119–131; Black, Guild, 58. 26 Wyffels, ‘Nieuwe gegevens’, 46–47; Boone, ‘ “Cette frivole” ’, 35; Dumolyn and Haemers, ‘Reclaiming’. 27 Planitz, ‘Kaufmannsgilde’, 101–106; Schulz, Denn, 123–131. 28 Bourcheron and Menjot, ‘La ville’, 503; Clark, European Cities, 93–94. 29 Clark, European Cities, 93. Also: Saint-Denis, ‘L’apparition’. 30 Cf. Chevalier, Les bonnes villes. 31 Epstein, Wage Labor, 56. More about communes in France in Petit-Dutaillis, Les communes françaises; Rigaudière, ‘Kommune, II Frankreich’; Guyotjeannin ’1060–1285’. 32 Clark, European Cities, 92–94. 33 Chittolini, ‘Cities’, quote p. 30; Bourcheron and Menjot, ‘La ville’, 500. 34 Dumolyn, ‘The Vengeance’, 258, 263; Dumolyn and Haemers, ‘Reclaiming’. Overviews in Boone and Prak, ‘Rulers’; Dumolyn and Haemers, ‘Patterns’; 35  Dumolyn, ‘Guild Politics’. 36 Boone ‘Städtische Selbstverwaltungsorgane; Idem, ‘La construction’. 37 Boone and Prak, ‘Rulers’, 106. 38 Hansotte, ‘Naissance’. Another city, for which the republican spirit acquired mythical dimensions, is Tournai. See Guignet, Le pouvoir, 61–64, 296. 39 Originally, there were seven cities, but Atrecht (in 1191), Saint Omer (1212), Lille and Douai (1312) fell out due to geo-political vicissitudes. Cf. Dhondt, ‘ “Ordres” ’; Prevenier, De leden, 19–21, 27–56, 101–106; Blockmans, De volksvertegenwoordiging, 128ff; Boone, ‘ “In den beginne” ’. 40 10 delegates from 6 cities (3 from Leuven, 3 from Brussels, 1 from Antwerp, 1 from ’s-Hertogenbosch, 1 from Tienen and 1 from Zoutleeuw), next to 4 aristocrats. 41 Van Uytven, ‘Het gewicht’, 119–120. 42 Boone, ‘ “In den beginne” ’, 356. Also: Avonds, ‘Beschouwingen’, 45–48. 43 E.g., Prevenier and Boone, ‘De “Stadstaat-droom” ’. 44 Decavele, ‘Bestuursinstellingen’, 277. The cloth trade’s privileges were even more extensive. In 1314 the count banned cloth production in a radius of five miles around the city. Prevenier and Boone, ‘De “stadstaat”-droom’, 84; Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 26, Fnt 7. Similar rulings existed in the duchy of Brabant. E.g., Cuvelier, Les institutions, 224. 45 Stabel, ‘Stedelijke instellingen’, 251. 46 Van Uytven, ‘Beroering’, 173. 47 Jacobs, ‘De ambachten’, 565. 48 A recent synthesis of the socio-economic and institutional history of the Low Countries in Van Bavel, Manors. 49 See Stabel, Dwarfs. 50 Black, Guild, 66–67. Also Coleman, ‘Cities’, 53–56. 51 Mackenney, Tradesmen, 9–10, 25; Farr, Artisans, 166. 52 Mackenney, Tradesmen, 23–28. 53 MacKenney, Tradesmen, 2. In Florence, the guilds experienced a similar fate of incorporation and neutralization, as we will see in more detail in the next chapter. 54 Prak, ‘Corporate Politics’, esp. 88–90.

Communal Revolts and the Politicization of Labor  59 55 Blockmans, De volksvertegenwoordiging, 75–77; Vandewalle, ‘De Brugse stadsmagistraat’, 28. In the county of Flanders, the municipal ‘benches’ (or inner councils) mostly numbered 6 to 12 or 13 aldermen. Stabel, ‘Stedelijke instellingen’, 252. 56 Jacobs, ‘De ambachten’, 559ff. 57 Van Den Heuvel, De ambachtsgilden, 5–12ff; Vandecandelaere, ‘Een opstand’. 58 Favresse, L’avènement, 13–23, 67. 59 Cuvelier, Les institutions, 210; Jacobs, ‘De ambachten’, 560. 60 Pirenne, Les anciennes démocraties, 169–178; Xhayet, Réseaux,77–86, 366. 61 Van Uytven, ‘Peter Couthereel’. Recent perspectives in Haemers, ‘Bloed’. An interesting comparison between the events in Brussels and Leuven in Boffa, ‘Réflexions’, 176–178. 62 Cuvelier, Les institutions, 210–211, 218, 236–237, 248; Verhavert, Het ambachtswezen, 37–38, 98–99; Jacobs, ‘De ambachten’, 560. 63 Cuvelier, Les institutions, 210; Verhavert, Het ambachtswezen, 99–100. 64 Cuvelier, Les institutions, 210; Jacobs, ‘De ambachten’, 560; Haemers, ‘Bloed’, 160. 65 Des Marez, L’organisation, 24–26; Favresse, L’avènement, 119–126; Boffa, ‘Réflexions’, 173. 66 The term ‘patriciate’ was not used in the period itself, yet there is a certain consensus among historians for the use of it. See Boone, ‘ “Cette frivole” ’, 34–45. 67 Stabel, ‘Stedelijke instellingen’, 250–251. Note that the extent depends on the definition used. In Ghent, it was limited to families in the possession of an allodium (3–4%), while for Bruges and other cities the vague term ‘poorterie’ is often used, which also encompassed large parts of the upper middle class, including manufacturers and retailers. Wyffels, ‘Nieuwe gegevens’, 45–46. In Brussels in the fourteenth century (1375) 282 families were counted—with political power concentrated in seven extended families. Favresse, L’avènement, 17, 26ff. For Liège, see Xhayet, Réseaux, 87–94. 68 Verhulst, The Rise, 122; Boucheron and Menjot, ‘la ville’, 523–524. Also: Braekevelt et al. ‘The Politics’. 69 Boone, ‘ “Cette frivole” ’, 34–36. 70 Boone, ‘ “Cette frivole” ’, 35; Dumolyn and Haemers, ‘Reclaiming’. 71 E.g., Des Marez, L’organisation, 188, 190; Favresse, L’avènement, 26–45; Cuvelier, Les institutions, 230. 72 Boone, A la recherche, 38. 73 Verhulst, The Rise, 137. 74 Boone and Prak, ‘Rulers’, 101–102. 75 Boone and Prak, ‘Rulers’, 103–104; Boone, A la recherche, 63ff. 76 Favresse, L’avènement, 107–109; Verhavert, Het ambachtswezen, 35ff; Haemers, ‘Bloed’, 146. For Brussels, see Boffa, ‘Réflexions’. 77 Cuvelier, Les institutions, 241–242. 78 Favresse, L’avènement, 21. 79 Favresse, L’avènement, 223–228, 230–233; Jacobs, ‘De ambachten’, 560; Van Uytven, ‘Beroering’, 177–178. 80 Pirenne, Les anciennes démocraties, 169–178; Hansotte, ‘Naissance’, 7–8, 11–20; Xhayet, Réseaux, 77–86. 81 ‘la plus démocratique que les Pays-Bas aient jamais connue’. Pirenne, Les anciennes démocraties, 176. 82 Thrupp, ‘The Gilds’, 230. 83  See e.g., Haemers, ‘Bloed’, 149–150. 84 MacKenney, Tradesmen, 2. The impact of the plague on real wages is itself qualified in Munro, ‘Before and After’. 85 Boucheron and Menjot, ‘La ville’, 528–529; Dumolyn and Haemers, ‘Reclaiming’.

60  Communal Revolts and the Politicization of Labor   86  Lantschner, ‘Revolts’, 7.   87  Dumolyn, ‘Guild Politics’, 9–10.   88  Prevenier, ‘Bevolkingscijfers’, 269–279.  89 Favresse, L’avènement, 50.  90 Lestocquoy, Les villes, 78, 131, 139, 141; Pirenne, Les anciennes démocraties, 164–165; Idem, Economic and Social History, 189–190.  91 Favresse, L’avènement, 48.   92 E.g., Liddy and Haemers, ‘Popular Politics’; Lantschner, ‘Revolts’.   93 Wyffels, ‘Nieuwe gegevens’; Idem, ‘Kanttekening’; Bardoel, ‘The Urban Uprisings’. Recent perspectives in Boone, ‘Social Conflicts’. Also: Nicholas, Medieval Flanders, 180–185.   94  Wyffels, ‘Nieuwe gegevens’, 41–43.  95 Cuvelier, Les institutions, 225, 242.  96 Mackenney, Tradesmen, pp. 23–28.   97  Braekevelt et al., ‘The Politics’, 27. Also Wyffels, ‘Nieuwe gegevens’, 38.  98 Mackenney, Trademen, 30ff.   99  Liddy and Haemers, ‘Popular Politics’, 772. 100 See e.g., Blockmans, De volksvertegenwoordiging, passim; Haemers, ‘Bloed’, 151–156. Also Cohn, Lust, ch. 3. 101 Dumolyn and Haemers, ‘Reclaiming’. 102 Liddy and Haemers, ‘Popular Politics’, 774, 779–780, 800–801. See also Boone, A la recherche, 39–40; Dumolyn and Haemers, ‘A Bad Chicken’, 23–24. 103 Schilling, ‘Gab es’, 108–111. 104 Decavele, ‘Bestuursinstellingen’ 278, 280–281, 287–294. Also Blockmans, De volksvertegenwoordiging, 72–75; Boone, Gent, 33–53 and A la recherche, 39–40. 105 Murray, Cradle, 110–117; Boone, A la recherche, 40; Liddy and Haemers, ‘Popular Politics’, 776; Dumolyn, ‘Guild Politics’. 106 See ch. 2 and Guignet, Le pouvoir, 44–72. 107 Boumans, Het Antwerps stadsbestuur, 31. 108 Des Marez, L’organisation, 31. 109 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 24–26, 269. 110 Favresse, L’avènement, 147. 111 Schulz, Denn, 11–13. 112 Schulz, Denn, 13, 128; Keller, ‘”Kommune”, 584ff. Recent perspectives in Dumolyn, ‘The Vengeance’, 256–262. 113 Black, Guild, 5, 26. 114 Boucheron and Menjot, ‘La ville’, 445. 115 E.g., Espinas, Les origines, 229–242, 348–350, 760–765 and passim; Boucheron and Menjot, ‘La ville’, 446; Trio and Bijsterveld, ‘Van gebedsverbroede­ ring’ (I and II). 116 Dilcher, Bürgerrecht, 153–154; Isenmann, ‘Bürgerrecht’, 237–239. I use the term ‘burgher’ to distinguish it from the more widely used term ‘citizen’ which is often connected to the idea of the nation-state in present-day literature. 117 Cf. Boone et al., ‘Introduction’, 5–6; Barry, ‘Civility’, 186, 191; Boucheron and Menjot, ‘La ville’, 517; Amelang, ‘Cities’, 45; Friedrichs, The Early Modern City, 143–144. 118 Isenmann, ‘Bürgerrecht’, 205–206. 119 Boone and Stabel, ‘New Burghers’, 322; Boone et al., ‘Introduction’, 5; De Meester, Gastvrij, 41; Liddy and Haemers, ‘Popular Politics’, 796. When burghership was not a condition for entry to a guild, non-burghers could face a higher entrance fee for guild membership. 120 Rouhart-Chabot and Hélin, ‘Comment’, 94; Xhayet, Réseaux, 82. 121 Guignet, Le pouvoir, 61. A similar ruling existed in Cologne. In most of France burghership was not a prerequisite for guild membership.

Communal Revolts and the Politicization of Labor  61 122 Isenmann, ‘Bürgerrecht’, 206, 215–216, 242–243. 123 E.g., Amelang, ‘Cities’, 52. 124 Boone and Stabel, ‘New Burghers’, 320, 325. 125 Godding, Le droit privé, 59–60; Isenmann, ‘Bürgerrecht’, 208. 126 Boucheron and Menjot, ‘La ville’, 517. For the Southern Netherlands, see Godding, Le droit privé, 59–60. 127 Favresse, L’avènement, 19; Godding, Le droit privé, 59–60. See Also: Dilcher, Bürgerrecht, 165. 128 Isenmann, ‘Bürgerrecht’, 223. 129 Kuijpers and Prak, ‘Burger’. Other examples in Harrington, ‘Escape’. Also, De Munck and Winter, ‘Regulating’, 10–12. 130 Isenmann, ‘Bürgerrecht’, 224. 131 Isenmann, ‘Bürgerrecht’, 234. 132 Van Zanden and Prak, ‘Towards an Economic Interpretation’. See also Genet, ‘Du contrat’, 693 in which the emergence of the idea of a contract between ruler and ruled is connected to the commercial culture of the time. 133 Boone et al., ‘Introduction’, 6; Isenmann, ‘Bürgerrecht’, 237. 134 E.g., Ebel, Der Bürgereid; Dilcher, Bürgerrecht. Also: Godding, Le droit privé, 58–59; Boone and Stabel, ‘New Burghers’, 219. Also: Withington, The Politics, 10. 135 Dilcher, Bürgerrecht, 89–91. 136 Favresse, L’avènement, 20–21. 137 Godding, Le droit privé, 60. 138 Isenmann, ‘Bürgerrecht’, 237. 139 Godding, Le droit privé, 57–58; Boone and Stabel, ‘New Burghers’, 319. Sometimes wealthy immigrants could acquire burghership rights without a prolonged stay upon paying a larger fee. 140 Dilcher, Bürgerrecht, 139–140, 147; Isenmann, ‘Bürgerrecht’, 220–221. 141 Godding, Le droit privé, 57–58; Boone and Stabel, ‘New Burghers’, 219. 142 Amelang, ‘Cities’, 47; Lanaro, ‘At the Centre’, 41. 143 Godding, Le droit privé, 57–58; Boone and Stabel, ‘New Burghers’, 319. 144 See also Isenmann, ‘Bürgerrecht’, 211; Boucheron and Menjot, ‘La ville’, 517. 145 Godding, Le droit privé, 58. Also Thijs, ‘Minderheden’, 18; De Meester, Gastvrij, 37–43. 146 For a definition of ‘political guild’, see Schulz, ‘Die politische Zunft’. Also: Dumolyn, ‘Guild Politics’. 147 See Eberstad, Der Ursprung; Coornaert, Les corporations, 47–49.; Verhavert, Het ambachtswezen, 25–26, 29–31; Thrupp, ‘The Gilds’, 235–236; Oexle, ‘Die mittelalterlichen Gilden’, 204–212; Epstein, Wage Labor, 10–24; Black, Guild, 4–6. 148 Oexle, ‘Die mittelalterlichen Gilden’, 206–212; Black, Guild, 4–6; also Thrupp, ‘The Gilds’, 235–236. 149 Coornaert, Les corporations, 48–49; Oexle, ‘Die mittelalterlichen Gilden’, 204. 150 Des Marez, ‘La première etape’; Verhavert, Het ambachtswezen, 26–28. 151 Thrupp, ‘The Gilds’, 234–235; Epstein, Wage Labor, 26–33, 42–44; Boucheron and Menjot, ‘La ville’, 444 (with additional references). 152 Epstein, Wage Labor, 35ff. 153 Dumolyn and Haemers, ‘Reclaiming’. 154 E.g., Genet, ‘Political Theory’; Monahan, Consent, passim; Nederman, Community, 29–30. 155 For the Southern Netherlands, see Vandenbroeck, ‘Stadscultuur’, 78, 81; Guignet, Le Pouvoir, 498; Boone, A la recherche, 39; Liddy and Haemers, ‘Popular Politics’, 776. 156 Quillet, ‘Community’, 530; Rubinstein, ‘Italian Political Thought’, quote on 39.

62  Communal Revolts and the Politicization of Labor 157 See e.g., Blockmans, ‘Alternatives’, 148. 158 Isenmann, ‘Bürgerrecht’, 215–216. 159 Meier, ‘Gemeinnutz’, esp. 54–58. 160 Partridge, Consent, 11–12. 161 Lis and Soly, Worthy Efforts, ch. 1, esp. 14–16. 162 Examples in Mertens and Torfs, Geschiedenis, II, 560; Favresse, L’avènement, 68–69; Des Marez, L’organisation, 5, 383. 163 Dumolyn, ‘Guild Politics’. 164 Dumolyn, ‘The Vengeance’, 266; Dumolyn and Haemers, ‘Reclaiming’. 165 Xhayet, Réseaux, 84. 166 Bruni, ‘Panegyric’; Rubinstein, ‘Italian Political Thought’, 36. 167 Bruni, ‘Panegyric’, 135–178, 136. 168 Cf. Dumolyn, ‘Het corporatieve element’ and ‘ “I thought of it” ’. See also Dumolyn and Haemers, ‘ “Let each man carry on”. Compare with Farr, Hands of Honour, who stresses honor, a term hardly found in late medieval Flemish sources. 169 Liddy and Haemers, ‘Popular Politics’, 777–778, 789. 170 For detailed information on dates of origin, see ‘Craft Guilds Flanders’, http:// hdl.handle.net/10411/10059 V2 (2011). Also: De Munck, Lourens and Lucassen, ‘The Establishment’, 34–36. 171 Wyffels, ‘Nieuwe gegevens’, 63–64, 110; Bardoel, ‘The Urban Uprisings’, 765. 172 Dilcher, Bürgerrecht, 139–140, 147; Isenmann, ‘Bürgerrecht’, 220–221; Meier, ‘Gemeinnutz’, 62. 173 Dilcher, Bürgerrecht, 149; Meier, ‘Gemeinnutz’, esp. 63. Also: Brunner, ‘Das “Ganze haus” ’. 174 Dumolyn and Haemers, ‘Patterns’, 385. 175 Olson, The Logic; Ostrom, Governing. Also: De Moor, ‘The Silent Revolution’. 176 Cf. Prevenier, De Leden; Blockmans, De volksvertegenwoordiging. Also: Avonds, ‘ “Ghemeyn Oirbaer” ’. 177 Recent perspectives and additional references in Foronda et al., Avant le contrat social. 178 Dumolyn and Haemers, ‘Les bonnes causes’, 327–328. 179 Genet, ‘Political Theory’, 19; Boone, ‘ “In den beginne” ’, 342ff. Also: Boone, A la recherché and Schulz, Denn, 104–131. 180 Cf. Partridge, Consent, ch. 1; Oakley, ‘Legitimation’. 181 E.g., Partridge, Consent, 11–22; Struve, ‘The Importance’; Nederman, ‘The Physiological Significance’. 182 Monahan, Consent, esp. 209–229; Boone, A la recherche, 39–40. 183 Braekevelt, et al., ‘The Politics’, 17–18. 184 Thrupp, ‘The Gilds’, 235; Black, Guild, 5, 19. Quote in Boone and Prak, ‘Rulers’, 104. 185 Boucheron and Menjot, ‘La ville’, 497–479. 186 Boucheron and Menjot, ‘La ville’, 499ff. 187 Black, Guild. 188 E.g., Savy, ‘Politisation’. 189 Braekevelt et al., ‘The Politics’, 26–28. 190 E.g., Rubinstein, ‘Marsilius of Padua’; Nederman and Brückmann, ‘Aristotelianism’; Blythe, ‘Aristotle’s Politics’; Syros, Die Rezeption. 191 Quoted in Oakley, ‘Legitimation’, 317. Also: Gerwith, Marsilius; Monahan, Consent, 209–229. 192 Nederman, Community, 61. Black, Guild, 86–95. 193 The procession of Corpus Christi and the Holy Blood often drew on Palm Sunday traditions, in which Christ’s entry into the heavenly city of Jerusalem was re-enacted. This was the case with the Holy Blood procession in Bruges, as Andrew Brown has argued. Brown, Civic Ceremony, 67–70.

Communal Revolts and the Politicization of Labor  63 194 Vandenbroeck, ‘Stadscultuur’, 80–82; Zika, ‘Hosts’, 37; Rubin, Corpus Christi, 244–245; Cartwright, ‘Forms’, 120–121; Brown, Civic Ceremony, 67–68. 195 Examples in Lis and Soly, Worthy Efforts, 346.

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Communal Revolts and the Politicization of Labor  67 Favresse, Félicien. L’avènement du régime démocratique à Bruxelles pedant le Moyen Age (1306–1423). Brussels: Marcel Hayez, 1932. Foronda, François, Genet, Jean-Philippe and Nieto Soria, José Manuel eds. Avant le contrat social: Le contrat politique dans l’Occident médiévale, XIIIe XVe siècle. Paris: Publication de la Sorbonne, 2008. Friedrichs, Christopher R. The Early Modern City, 1450–1750. London and New York: Longman, 1995. Genet, Jean-Philippe. ‘Du contrat à la constitution.’ In Foronda, François, Genet, Jean-Philippe and Nieto Soria, José Manuel eds. Avant le contrat social: Le contrat politique dans l’Occident médiévale, XIIIe XVe siècle. Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2008, pp. 687–705. Genet, Jean-Philippe. ‘Political Theory and Local Communities in Later Medieval France and England.’ In Highfield, John R.L. and Jeffs, Robin eds. The Crown and Local Communities in England and France in the Fifteenth Century. Gloucester: Alan Sutton, 1981, pp. 19–32. Gerwith, Alan. Marsilius of Padua: The Defendor of Peace. 2 vols. New York: Columbia University Press, 1951–1956. Godding, Philippe. Le droit privé dans les Pays-Bas méridionaux du 12e au 18e siècle. Brussels: Palais des Académies, 1987. Guignet, Philippe. Le pouvoir dans la ville au XVIIIe siècle: Pratiques politiques, notabilité et éthique sociale de la part et d’autre de la frontière franco-Belge. Paris: Éditions de l’EHESS, 1990. Guyotjeannin, Olivier. ’1060–1285.’ In Contamine, Philippe, Guyotjeannin, Olivier and Le Jan, Régine eds. Le Moyen Age: Le roi, l’église, les grands, le peuple 481– 1514. Paris: 2002, pp. 173–208. Haemers, Jelle. ‘Bloed en inkt: Een nieuwe blik op opstand en geweld te Leuven, 1360–1383.’ Stadsgeschiedenis 7 (2012) 2: 141–164. Haemers, Jelle. De Gentse Opstand, 1449–1453: De strijd tussen rivaliserende netwerken om het stedelijke kapitaal. Kortrijk-Heule: 2004. Haemers, Jelle. ‘Factionalism and State Power in the Flemish Revolt.’ Journal of Social History 42 (2009) 4: 1009–1033. Haemers, Jelle. For the Common Good: State Power and Urban Revolts in the Reign of Mary of Burgundy, 1477–1482. Turnhout: Brepols, 2009. Hansotte, Georges. ‘Naissance et développement des métiers liégeois (XIIIe et XIVe siècles).’ Bulletin de la société d’art et d’histoire du Diocèse de Liège 36 (1950): 1–34. Harrington, Joel F. ‘Escape from the Great Confinement: The Genealogy of a German Workhouse.’ Journal of Modern History 71 (1999): 308–345. Heers, Jacques. Parties and Political Life in the Medieval West. Amsterdam and New York: North-Holland, 1977 (Europe in the Middle Ages, Selected Studies 7) (trans. by David Nicholas). Hyde, J.K. Society and Politics in Mediaeval Italy. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1973. Isenmann, Eberhard. ‘Bürgerrecht und Bürgeraufnahme in der spätmittelalterlichen und frühneuzeitlichen Stadt.’ In Schwinges, Rainer Christophe ed. Neubürger im späten Mittelalter: Migration und Austausch in der Städtelandschaft des alten Reiches (1250–1550). Berlin: Duncker and Humblot, 2002, pp. 203–249. Jacobs, Marc. ‘De ambachten in Brabant en Mechelen (12de eeuw-1795).’ In De gewestelijke en lokale overheidsinstellingen in Brabant en Mechelen tot 1795. Brussels: Algemeen Rijksarchief, 2000, pp. 558–624.

68  Communal Revolts and the Politicization of Labor Keller, Hagen. ‘ “Kommune”: Städtische Selbtsregierung und mittelalterliche “Volksherrschaft” im Spiegel italienischer Wahlverfahren des 12.-14. Jahrhunderts.’ In Althoff, Gerd, Geuenich, Dieter and Oexle, Otto Gerhard eds. Person und Gemeinschaft im Mittelalter. Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 1988, pp. 573– 616 (Zum fünfundsechzigsten Geburtstag Karl Schmid). Kuijpers, Erika and Prak, Maarten. ‘Burger, ingezetene, vreemdeling: Burgerschap in Amsterdam in de 17e en 18e eeuw.’ In Kloek, Joost and Tilmans, Karin eds. Burger: Geschiedenis van het begrip van de Middeleeuwen tot deeenentwintigste eeuw. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2002, pp. 113–132. Lanaro, Paola. ‘At the Centre of the Old World: Reinterpreting Venetian Economic History.’ In Lanaro, Paola ed. At the Centre of The Old World: Trade and Manufacturing in Venice and the Venetian Mainland. Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2006, pp. 19–69. Lantschner, Patrick. ‘Revolts and the Political Order of Cities in the Late Middle Ages.’ Past and Present 225 (November 2014): 3–46. Lestocquoy, Jean. Les villes de Flandres et d’Italy: aux origins de la bourgeoisie. Paris: Presses Universitaires De France, 1952. Liddy, Christian and Haemers, Jelle. ‘Popular Politics in the Late Medieval City: York and Bruges.’ English Historical Review 128 (2013) 533: 771–805. Lis, Catharina and Soly, Hugo. Worthy Efforts: Attitudes to Work and Workers in Pre-Industrial Europe. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2012. Mackenney, Tradesmen, pp. 23–28. Mackenney, Richard. Tradesmen and Traders: The World of the Guilds in Venice and Europe, c. 1250—c. 1650. London and Sydney: Croom Helm, 1987. Meier, Ulrich. ‘Gemeinnutz und Vaterlandsliebe: Kontroversen über die normativen Grundlagen des Bürgerbegriffs im späten Mittelalter.’ In Schwinges, Rainer Christophe ed. Neubürger im späten Mittelalter: Migration und Austausch in der Städtelandschaft des alten Reiches (1250–1550). Berlin: Duncker and Humblot, 2002, pp. 53–81. Mertens, P.H. and Torfs, K.L. Geschiedenis van Antwerpen sedert de stichting der stad tot onze tyden. 8 vols. Antwerp: Uitgeverij C. de Vries-Brouwers, 1975 (1st ed. Antwerp, J.P. Van Dieren, 1845). Monahan, Arthur P. Consent, Coercion, and Limit: The Medieval Origins of Parliamentary Democracy. Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1987. Munro, John H. ‘Before and After the Black Death: Money, Prices, and Wages in Fourteenth-Century England.’ In New Approaches to the History of Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Selected Proceedings of Two International Conferences at The Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters in Copenhagen, Historisk-filosofiske Meddelser, 104 (2014), pp. 335–364. Murray, James M. Bruges, Cradle of Capitalism, 1280–1390. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Nederman, Cary J. Community and Consent: The Secular Political Theory of Marsiglio of Padua’s Defensor Pacis. London: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 1995. Nederman, Cary J. ‘The Physiological Significance of the Organic Metaphor in John of Salisbury’s Concept of Liberty.’ Vivarium 24 (1986): 128–142. Nederman, Cary J. and Brückmann, John J. ‘Aristotelianism in John of Salisbury’s Policraticus.’ Journal of the History of Philosophy 21 (1983) 2: 203–229. Nicholas, David. Medieval Flanders. London and New York: Longman, 1992.

Communal Revolts and the Politicization of Labor  69 Nicholas, David. The van Arteveldes of Ghent: The Varieties of Vendetta and the Hero in History. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988. Oakley, Francis. ‘Legitimation by Consent: The Question of the Medieval Roots.’ Viator: Medieval and Renaissance Studies 14 (1983): 303–335. Oexle, Otto Gerhard. ‘Die mittelalterlichen Gilden: ihre Selbtsdeutung und ihr Beitrag zur Formung Sozialer Strukturen.’ In Zimmerman, Albert ed. Soziale Ordnungen im Selbstverständnis des Mittelalters. Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 1979, pp. 203–226 (Miscellanea Mediaevalia. Band 12). Olson, Mancur. The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965. Ostrom, Elinor. Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Partridge, Percy H. Consent and Consensus. London: Pall Mall, 1971. Petit-Dutaillis, Charles E. Les communes françaises: Caractères et evolution des origines au XVIIIe siècle. Paris: Albin Michel, 1947. Pirenne, Henri. Economic and Social History of Medieval Europe. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co, 1947 (trans., 1st English ed. 1936). Pirenne, Henri. Histoire de Belgique; tome II: du commencement du XIVe siècle à la mort de Charles le téméraire. Brussels: Henri Lamertin, 1908 (2nd ed.). Pirenne, Henri. Les anciennes démocraties des Pays Bas. Paris: Ernest Flammarion, 1917 (1st ed. 1910). Pirenne, Henri. Les villes et les institutions urbaines, tome I. Brussels and Paris: Alcan/NSE, 1939. Planitz, Hans. Die deutsche Städt im Mittelalter: Von der Römerzeit bis zu den Zunftkämpfen. Graz-Cologne: Böhlau, 1954. Planitz, Hans. ‘Kaufmannsgilde und städtische Eidgenossenschaft in niederfränkischen städten im 11. und 12. Jh.’ Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, Germanistische Abteilung 60 (1940): 1–116. Prak, Maarten. ‘Corporate Politics in the Low Countries: Guilds as Institutions.’ In Prak, Maarten, Lis, Catharina, Lucassen, Jan and Soly, Hugo eds. Craft Guilds in the Early Modern Low Countries: Work, Power and Representation. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006, pp. 74–106. Prevenier, Walter. ‘Bevolkingscijfers en professionele strukturen der bevolking van Gent en Brugge in de 14de eeuw.’ In Album aangeboden aan Charles Verlinden ter gelegenheid van zijn dertig jaar professoraat. Gent: Universa, 1975, pp. 269–303. Prevenier, Walter. De leden en de staten van Vlaanderen (1384–1405). Brussels: Paleis der Academiën, 1961 (Verhandelingen van de Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België). Prevenier, Walter and Boone, Marc. ‘De “stadstaat”-droom.’ In Decavele, Johan ed. Gent: Apologie van een rebelse stad. Antwerp: Mercatorfonds, 1989, pp. 80–105. Quillet, Jeannine. ‘Community, Counsel and Representation.’ In Burns, James H. ed. The Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought, c. 350—c. 1450. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988, pp. 520–545. Rigaudière, Albert. ‘Kommune, II Frankreich.’ In Lexikon des Mittelalters, V. München: 1991, kol. 1287–1289. Rouhart-Chabot, Juliette and Hélin, Etienne. ‘Comment devenait-on bourgeois de la cite de Liège?’ Bulletin de l’Institut archéologique liègeois 76 (1963): 91–114.

70  Communal Revolts and the Politicization of Labor Rubin, Miri. Corpus Christi: The Eurcharist in Late Medieval Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Rubinstein, Nicolai. ‘Italian Political Thought, 1450–1530.’ In Burns, James H. ed. The Cambridge History of Political Thought, 1450–1700. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991, pp. 30–65. Rubinstein, Nicolai. ‘Marsilius of Padua and Italian Political Thought of His Time.’ In Hale, John, Highfield, Roger and Smalley, Beryl eds. Europe in the Late Middle Ages. London: Faber, 1965, pp. 44–75. Saint-Denis, Alain. ‘L’apparition d’une identité urbaine dans les villes de commune de France du Nord aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles.’ In Boone, Marc and Stabel, Peter eds. Shaping Urban Identity in Late Medieval Europe. Leuven: Garant, 2000, pp. 65–87. Savy, Pierre. ‘Politisation des conflits, politisation par le conflit et participation au politique dans l’Occident des XIIIe-XVe siècles.’ In Bourquin, Laurent and Hamon, Philippe eds. La politisation. Conflits et construction du politique depuis le Moyen Âge. Presses Universitaire de Rennes, 2010, pp. 21–38. Schilling, Heinz. ‘Gab es im späten Mittelalter und zu Beginn der Neuzeit in Deutschland einen städtischen “Republikanismus”? Zur politischen Kultur des alteuropäischen Stadtbürgertums.’ In Koenigsberger, Helmut G. ed. Republiken und Republikanismus im Europa der Frühen Neuzeit. Munchen: R. Oldenburg Verlag, 1988, pp. 101–143 (Schriften des Historischen Kollegs 11). Schulz, Knut. Denn sie lieben die Freiheit so Sehr. . .: Kommunale Aufstände und Entstehung des europaïschen Bürgertums im Hochmittelalter. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1992. Schulz, Knut. ‘Die politische Zunft: Eine die spätmittelalterliche Stadt prägende Institution?’ In Ehbrecht, Wilfried ed. Verwaltung und Politik in Städten Mitteleuropas: Beiträge zur Verfassungsnorm und Verfassungswirklichkeit in altständischer Zeit. Cologne: Böhlau, 1994, pp. 1–20. Sewell, William H. Jr. Logics of History: Social Theory and Social Transformation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005 (Chicago Studies in Practices of Meaning). Skinner, Quentin. The Foundation of Modern Political Though: Vol. I: The Renaissance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Stabel, Peter. Dwarfs Among Giants: The Flemish Urban Network in the Late Middle Ages. Leuven: Garant, 1997. Stabel, Peter. ‘Stedelijke instellingen (12de eeuw-1795).’ In Prevenier, Walter and Augustyn, Beatrijs eds. De gewestelijke en lokale instellingen in Vlaanderen tot 1795. Brussels: Algemeen Rijksarchief, 1997, pp. 247–276. Struve, Tilman. ‘The Importance of the Organism in the Political Theory of John of Salisbury.’ In Wilks, Michael ed. The World of John of Salisbury. Oxford: Blackwell, 1984, pp. 303–317. Syros, Vasileios. Die Rezeption der aristotelischen politischen Philosophie bei Marsilius von Padua. Leiden: Brill, 2007. Thijs, Alfons K.L. ‘Minderheden te Antwerpen (16de-20ste eeuw).’ In Soly, Hugo and Thijs, Alfons K.L. eds. Minderheden in Westeuropese steden (16de-20ste eeuw). Brussels: Gemeentekrediet, 1995, p. 42. Thrupp, Sylvia L. ‘The Gilds.’ In Postan, M.M., Rich, E.E. and Miller, Edward eds. The Cambridge Economic History of Europe: Volume III: Economic Organization

Communal Revolts and the Politicization of Labor  71 and Policies in the Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971, pp. 230–280. Trio, Paul and Bijsterveld, Arnoud-Jan. ‘Van gebedsverbroedering naar broeder-schap: De evolutie van het fraternitas-begrip in de Zuidelijke Nederlanden in de volle Middeleeuwen (I).’ Jaarboek voor Middeleeuwse Geschiedenis 6 (2003): 7–48. Van Bavel, Bas. Manors and Markets: Economy and Society in the Low Countries 500–1600. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Van Den Heuvel, N.H.L. De ambachtsgilden van ‘s-hertogenbosch vóór 1629: Rechtsbronnen van het bedrijfsleven en het gildewezen. Utrecht: Kemink en zoon, 1964. Van Honacker, Karin. Lokaal verzet en oproer in de 17de en 18de eeuw: Collectieve acties tegen het centraal gezag in Brussel, Antwerpen en Leuven. Heule: UGA, 1994. Van Uytven, Raymond. ‘Beroering onder de Brabantse steden.’ In Van Uytven, Raymond ed. Geschiedenis van Brabant van het hertogdom tot heden. Leuven: Davidsfonds, s.d., pp. 171–179. Van Uytven, Raymond. ‘Het gewicht van de goede steden.’ In Van Uytven, Raymond ed. Geschiedenis van Brabant van het hertogdom tot heden. Leuven: Davidsfonds, s.d., pp. 118–124. Van Uytven, Raymond. ‘Plutokratie in de “oude demokratieën der Nederlanden”: Cijfers en beschouwingen omtrent de korporatieve organisatie en de sociale struktuur der gemeenten in de late middeleeuwen.’ Handelingen van de Koninklijke Zuidnederlandse Maatschappij voor Taal- en Letterkunde en Geschiedenis 16 (1962): 373–409. Van Uytven, Raymond. ‘Peter Couthereel en de troebelen te Leuven van 1350 tot 1363. Kritische nota over de persoon van een hertogelijk ambtenaar en zijn rol in de politieke geschiedenis van Brabant en Leuven.’ Mededelingen van de Geschieden Oudheidkundige Kring voor Leuven en omgeving 3 (1963): 63-97. Van Zanden, Jan Luiten and Prak, Maarten. ‘Towards an Economic Interpretation of Citizenship: The Dutch Republic Between Medieval Communes and Modern Nation-States.’ European Review of Economic History 10 (2006) 2: 111–145. Vandecandelaere, Hans. ‘Een opstand in “zeven aktes”: Brussel 1303–1306.’ Brusselse Cahiers bruxellois 40 (2008–2009): 3–67. Vandenbroeck, Paul. ‘Stadscultuur: Tussen bovengrondse eenheid en onderhuidse strijd.’ In Van Der Stock, Jan ed. Stad in Vlaanderen: Cultuur en maatschappij, 1477–1787. Brussels: Gemeentekrediet, 1991, pp. 77–92. Vandewalle, André. ‘De Brugse stadsmagistraat en de deelname van de ambachten aan het bestuur, 14de-15de eeuw.’ In Prevenier, Walter and Augustyn, Beatrijs eds. De Vlaamse instellingen tijdens het ancien régime: recent onderzoek in nieuw perspectief. Brussels: Algemeen Rijksarchief en Rijksarchief in de provinciën, 1999, pp. 27–40. Verhavert, Jan. Het ambachtswezen te Leuven. Leuven: Universiteitsbibliotheek, 1940. Verhulst, Adriaan. The Rise of Cities in North-West Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Waley, Daniel Ph. The Italian City-Republics. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969. Withington, Phil. The Politics of Commonwealth: Citizens and Freemen in Early Modern England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

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2 The Fabrication of the Urban Body Politic

In 1649, the Antwerp mercers’ dean Andries Cobbe argued in the Monday Council, in which the guilds normally had a large say, that the guilds’ deans were not present there as ‘boys but rather as men, voice per voice and man per man’.1 In so doing the dean merged patriarchal sensitivities with what could be seen as a modern sense of representation, to be summed up in the adage ‘one man one vote’. While such a modern sense of political participation was still, of course, foreign to these deans, Cobbe’s rendering may nonetheless also have been at odds with a corporative or republican conception of politics, in which representatives emanated from a corporative group and embodied the body politic as a whole. Had the conception of the body politic changed compared to the late medieval period? Wim Blockmans among others has claimed that party struggles, urban rebellions and civil war in the cities revolved around the question of access to the city’s economic and financial resources—rather than around ideological issues.2 In this regard, the urban political communities, which took shape in the late Middle Ages, could be considered the result of compromises between the different power groups involved and, eventually, the incorporation of manufacturing groups—with the exception of women, journeymen and marginal groups. These manufacturing artisans were then represented politically in the local councils through a system of elections in which the guilds’ general assemblies were implicated. The compromise between the different groups, including the feudal rulers, would have materialized through mixed and multi-stage election mechanisms, in which power and leverage could be carefully balanced. Eventually power was typically shared between three groups: guild-based artisans, the patrician lineages, and a feudal lord or prince. While power had to be balanced between guilds and patrician families, the guilds and the patriciate had to compromise with the feudal or princely ruler. The latter were mostly represented by one of their delegates, which in the county of Flanders were called bailiff (baljuw) or rear (schout) and in the duchy of Brabant steward or sheriff (meier or amman). The struggles between these groups were typically played out at two levels. First, the three groups tried

74  The Fabrication of the Urban Body Politic to influence access to and the election of the representatives in the municipal councils. A second bone of contention between the guilds and other legislative bodies, such as the municipalities or a princely or territorial state, was the appointment of the guild board. Guilds officials could either be elected by all members of the corporation—as was the case in thirteenth-century Florence in the wake of the communal revolutions there—or appointed by a representative of the King, such as the French prévot, who named the jurés in Paris with the King’s approval. The different realities in this respect were again the outcome of very contingent contexts—although there appear to have been patterns as well. Smaller towns such as the medieval towns in England and the so-called home towns in Germany may have been more ‘democratic’.3 However, scale and power relations do not tell the whole story. Behind conflict management and the claims of the different power groups lurked different views on society and politics too. John M. Najemy in his case study on Florence has notoriously framed this in terms of an opposition between ‘corporatism’ and ‘consensus’. The claims of the manufacturing artisans or the popolo would have been based on the ideal of equal participation of guild members whose power was delegated to consuls through general elections by the universitas or tota ars. Guilds, in this view, did not so much guarantee the equal participation of all members, but were rather considered the constitutive ‘members’ of the urban Republic, which was seen as a federation of autonomous corporations.4 In contrast, the oligarchic elites— notwithstanding their often being members of the same guilds—opposed to this a view in which the body politic was not the sum of autonomous members but rather a harmonious and organic whole similar to a family. This body was said to naturally produce an elite of experienced leaders who embodied the common good—and which were of course equated with the oldest and most prominent families in the city.5 As is well known, the latter view came to prevail during the fourteenth century in Florence. The electoral mechanisms transformed in such a way that the guilds were out-ruled, while a broader participation of citizens in elections and office was reconciled with the firm grip on politics and elections of a small elite from the great families, who controlled the economy and the financial system and ruled the city as if it was their own household.6 This is consistent with a large part of contemporary political thinking. Under the influence of the Aristotelian tradition, the polis was seen as a partnership similar to a household, which was to be ruled accordingly. While civic humanists saw office-holding as representing ‘the universal persona of the entire city’, public office and lordship were naturally in the hands of those with the reason and virtue to rule in the name of the common good, and citizens were defined as those with the natural inclination to be political subjects.7 In the Southern Netherlands, the situation was more complicated. As Jan Dumolyn and Elodie Lecuppre-Desjardin have argued, the concept of bonum

The Fabrication of the Urban Body Politic  75 commune (common good) was less central in political discourse compared to Italy (at least in the county of Flanders). As a possible explanation, the authors refer to the different political structures in the Low Countries, in which privileges of cities and guilds were emphasized without really contesting the feudal dominance of the prince.8 Nevertheless, the guilds retained more political clout in the Low Countries. In line with Marsiglio’s ideas on ‘corporatism’ they typically became firmly entrenched as a part of the body politic. Fundamental questions remain however. How exactly was the body politic composed and through what mechanisms did the guilds participate? What exactly was the political rationale behind it? Although according to Marsiglio ‘the absolutely better method of establishing governments is election’ he is not very specific on how this should be organized.9 Were decisions to be made with unanimity or according to majority vote? Were elections at all necessary or could consent be given by acclamation? How did the general or popular will translate into governance and law-making in theory and practice? Late medieval thinkers—even when arguing in favor of popular consent as the basis of government—did not see the general or popular will as an aggregation of individual wills. As political theorists have argued, these scholars often had ‘naturalistic’ ideas about the origin of a political community (as opposed to a ‘conventional’ origin), in which the political community was a unified and cohesive whole embodied by existing institutions, rational rulers acting in favor of the common good, and custom.10 In this vein, it is not at all obvious that representatives of urban communes or guilds were to be elected by a general assembly (the sworn association) as would have derived from Germanic and ecclesiastical sources—the latter stressing the fellowship (communio) of Christians and the so-called libertas ecclesiae (liberty of the church) which materialized in the liberty of appointment and investiture. In the Roman tradition—in its mixture with Christian sources—indirect democracy and the idea of just rule and accountability were rather prevalent. In practice, this would have translated into mechanisms of consultation, rather than decision-making being based on common consent among the members of the commune.11 The distinction between the Germanic and the Roman tradition, as sketched by Antony Black, roughly corresponds to the difference between the Republican city states in northern and central Italy and the corporative tradition north of the Alps. While Black himself admits that in practice these different traditions intermingled (with the ecclesiastical tradition as a kind of lubricant) this has seldom been examined empirically.12 Did the Southern Netherlands differ from the Italian city states, and if so in what way? Belgian historians have recently gone to great lengths already to surpass political thought as a ‘high theory’ which was traditionally approached as an intellectual history, to include the discourses and discursive practices of lower and middle classes so as to write a ‘practical theory of political

76  The Fabrication of the Urban Body Politic actions’.13 Among other things, they have shown that both political revolts and political participation more generally followed a set of rituals and repertoires, which to a large extent were derived from custom and customary law. Among the ingredients were marches on order behind the guilds’ banners, armed gatherings in the main square of the city, the ostentatious swearing of oaths of unity and loyalty, the occupation of strategic places in the city, and so forth.14 Rather than bureaucratic and formulaic events, popular consent, representation and participation were embedded in a vibrant political culture involving general meetings in the public sphere, where decisionmaking involved speech acts, cries and acclamation. I will link up with this historiography but focus on the ‘traditional’ political mechanisms of representation and delegation. Starting from a more traditional overview of the political mechanisms in the cities (including interventions by princely rulers and centralizing tendencies), I will in the second section reveal the rationale of the election and power-sharing mechanisms as they materialized in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. I will argue that the institutional appearance of the body politic and the mechanisms with which it was formed was fundamentally shaped by corporative ideas and the strong involvement of guilds. In addition to the ‘member-structure’ of the inner and outer councils of urban government, such mechanisms as rotation of office, crossed elections and unanimous voting not only served to balance power but also to form the members (guilds as well as other corporative groups) and to incorporate them, and, thus, to fabricate the body politic corporatively. Subsequently, I will delve deeper into the imaginaries related to the formation of consent and the general will at the urban and the guild level, so as to grasp how guild members really imagined the body politic and political participation. In the last two sections, I will point at the transformations befalling these political practices and imaginaries from the long sixteenth century on. While first tackling the transformations related to the conception of the body politic and political participation in a more general sense, I will zero in on the so-called Calvinist Republics, arguing that they should not be seen a return to the corporative past—let alone as the apogee of corporatism—but rather heralded the oligarchic and businesslike rule to come.

Power, State Formation and the Urban Body Politic Let me first recall the political position of artisans after the acquiescence of the revolts. In the Hanseatic towns in the north of the German area, artisans often failed to gain representation in municipal government, as town councils typically remained patrician. In contrast, in a range of towns in the west and southwest, guildsmen were more successful. In Strasburg and Basel, among other cities, they did gain access to town councils, although they had to share power with patrician groups. In cities like Ravensburg in 1346 and Cologne in 1396, they even succeeded in monopolizing all seats to the exclusion of all other groups.15 In Castile, in contrast, durable

The Fabrication of the Urban Body Politic  77 artisanal participation in urban governments was not achieved despite similar claims from the part of artisans. Many guilds in the Spanish peninsula sought shelter from town controls and appealed to royal protection, but this yielded them only religious and fraternal privileges.16 Likewise, in France, the crown granted the guilds royal charters and the right to elect their own officers, but this was to the detriment of the autonomy of urban policy makers.17 In Italy, the powerful position guilds had acquired in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, was for the most part lost by about 1400, at least in those cities that became city-states themselves—as the examples of Venice and Florence illustrate.18 In comparison, the guilds in the leading cities in the Southern Netherlands were eventually more successful. Guilds mostly succeeded in gaining access to the municipal government, where they typically shared power with the patrician families. Only exceptionally and even then, only temporarily, did they seize absolute power in the local benches of aldermen, as was the case in Liège in 1313 and 1384 and in Tournai in the early fifteenth century.19 As a rule, sophisticated mechanisms to distribute and balance power were installed. In Brussels from 1421 important decisions had to be endorsed by three members. The first member, the magistracy, was composed of ten patricians and nine representatives of the commoners (plus the amman). The second member, the so-called wider council (Wijde Raad), gathered the outgoing representatives from the first member and the deans of the cloth guild. The third member was composed of all sworn men of the nine naties (nations)—i.e., the nine umbrella guilds in which all guilds were clustered—plus the heads of the city’s militias (the so-called hundredmen).20 This constellation ensured that the commoners were part of the body politic without gaining real power. The patrician families had the majority not only in the inner council but in the wider council as well—and increasingly so: while the councilors from the patrician families became members for life, the councilors of the nations could only be a member for one year. Moreover, only the aldermen (i.e., members of the patrician families) could take the initiative to convene the councils, while the guilds’ officials lacked voting rights in the inner council. Even when the guilds’ officials convened their own group, the council had to be informed.21 The power of the guilds tended to wane moreover. While in Ghent, patrician families continued to stand out in the benches of alderman notwithstanding the guilds’ far-reaching rights,22 the ratio of nine guild members to four patricians that had come about after 1302 would soon have disappeared in practice in Bruges. In the course of the fourteenth century the positions of the guilds were increasingly filled in by members of the mercantile and financial elites, such as the powerful cloth merchants, who registered in a textile guild in order to become electable, and the hostelers, who registered in the guild of the brokers. The Burgundian Duke Philip the Bold disregarded the distinction altogether as soon as 1399. And if the guild-based artisans continued to be represented, it was often the most wealthy and powerful among them that acted as their spokesmen.23

78  The Fabrication of the Urban Body Politic These transformations occurred in a context of princes and territorial states downgrading the autonomy of both cities and guilds. After the establishment of separate benches of aldermen for cities or the merging of the representatives of the sworn communes with the aldermen of the princely ruler, the latter mostly continued to appoint the aldermen, as was enacted in the so-called Grote Keure (Large Charter) granted by Count Philip of Alsace between 1165 and 1177. In Bruges, for example, thirteen aldermen were appointed for life by the count.24 This system was contested by the large cities. After the death of the count in 1191, the aldermen of Ghent obtained the right to elect their successors themselves. As these aldermen were also appointed for life, the power of the count was thus passed over.25 In many cities, appointment by the count was in fact replaced by a system of cooptation, which tended to concentrate power in the hands of (a part of) the patrician elite. In Douai in 1228, the count of Flanders even relinquished direct intervention in the appointment of aldermen and electors.26 In the long run, however, the feudal lords prevailed in the appointment of burgomasters and aldermen nevertheless. In most Flemish cities, the count of Flanders had already regained control over the nomination of the aldermen during the fourteenth century. After their defeat at the battle of Cassel in 1328, in which the Bruges guilds had participated, the count of Flanders (Louis of Nevers) resumed his right to appoint the Bruges aldermen for a period of ten years. Subsequently, the revolutionary reign of the accomplices of Jacob of Artevelde, returned to the principles of 1304, which continued until 1382. At that time, the Flemish cities were defeated by the count of Flanders (Louis of Male) and his French allies in the battle of Westrozebeke. In 1387 the members of the bench of aldermen were appointed by the duke; while the burgomaster and the aldermen only had the right to replace unwanted persons from the list presented by the duke’s commissioners.27 This time the duke resumed his right to appoint the aldermen in a more or less definitive way. Only in 1477 was there a short return to the principles of 1304.28 As is well known, the centralizing forces gained muscle under Burgundian rule (which took root in Flanders and Artois from 1384). Duke Philip the Good (1396–1467) not only brought most principalities in the Low Countries under Burgundian rule (including Brabant, Hainaut, Namur and Limburg, next to such northern territories as Zeeland, Holland and WestFrisia), but he also fiercely fought ambitious cities. After his victory in the famous Ghent revolt around the mid-fifteenth century (1449–1453) he tried to suppress the regime of the three members there. He also replaced the powerful guild-based deans (which were elected by the guilds) with electors (kiesmannen) of his own. In 1467 Philip’s son Charles the Bold even appointed the aldermen himself, and from 1469 he installed five royal commissioners for the yearly assignment of aldermen without the intervention of other electors.29 Paradoxically, the power of the cities and the guilds was yet to reach its pinnacle at that time. After the unexpected death of Charles the Bold in

The Fabrication of the Urban Body Politic  79

Figure 2.1 This miniature in the Priviligiën en Statuten van Gent en Vlaanderen (Privileges and Statutes of Flanders and Ghent) pictures the submission of Ghent after the famous Battle of Gavere on 23 July 1453. Kneeled and dressed in white sheets members of the city council present their banners (some of which clearly refer to manufacturing guilds) to duke Philip the Good. Austrian National Library, Vienna (ÖNB/Wien, Cod. 2583, fol. 349v).

1477, rebellions in virtually all large cities erupted. They resulted in the so-called ‘Great Privilege’ (later also referred to as ‘the Magna Carta of the Netherlands’),30 in which not only were the constitutional rights of cities and principalities (in legal and fiscal issues) confirmed, but significant political concessions were also granted. In Brussels, Charles’ unmarried daughter Mary was forced to concede the exclusive right of the election of burgomasters, aldermen and officials of the cloth guild (the achten) to the nations on 4 June 1477. On 19 June 1477, the Antwerp guilds obtained their so-called

80  The Fabrication of the Urban Body Politic Great Privilege (Groot Privilege), which stipulated that two thirds of the seats in the bench of aldermen were reserved for them.31 In Ghent an indirect system with electors to favor the guilds (through the power of the guilds’ upper deans) was partly reintroduced on 18 February 1477.32 But, the concessions of 1477 were soon rolled back by Maximilian of Austria, the later emperor of the Holy Roman Empire who married Mary of Burgundy in 1477 and became a widower with a minor heir (the later Philip the Fair) after the death of Mary in 1482. The harsh repression exercised by Maximilian provoked new revolts in several cities, but these were mostly unsuccessful.33 After the Peace of Cadzand in 1492 the dominance of the princely commissioners returned in Ghent—they now acted as electors along with four municipal electors.34 In Brussels the (patrician) aldermen in 1481 obtained the exclusive right to decide in guild matters, while the power of the guilds themselves was limited to filing propositions.35 The loss of power of the guilds was an incremental and complex process, involving the confiscation of houses, arms, weapons, rents and archives, and a range of institutional measures,36 but the most conspicuous bone of contention was election procedures.37 The most cited example in this vein is Ghent, where the so-called Carolinian Concession (a range of measures imposed by Charles V after yet another defeat of Ghent in 1540) fundamentally restricted the autonomy and power of both city and guilds. While the system of the three members was abolished, the yearly election of the aldermen became the exclusive privilege of the Duke of Burgundy’s commissioners—the indirect system with electors being abolished. The wider council (Collatie) remained in existence, but on this level as well, the system of the three members perished. The trades were regrouped into twenty-one guilds which even lost the power to elect their own board. Henceforth their governors were appointed jointly by the delegate of the count (baljuw) and the aldermen, who chose them from the local burghers who did not profess a trade themselves and were nominated by the outgoing governors.38 The guilds perceived this new system as very humiliating, as would become clear during the events leading up to the Calvinist Republic—which will be elaborated later in this chapter.39 The evolution was similar in the Duchy of Brabant. In Antwerp the grip of the representative of the Spanish crown (the Duke of Alva) on the appointment of a range of officials, including the guilds’ deans, increased in 1567–1568.40 However, this is not to say that the historical narrative is exhausted with reference to the gradual shift in power from the local to the central level.41 An adequate understanding of the contemporary sense of representation and community requires delving deeper into the practices of electing and decision making, so as to shed light on the body politic implied. On the surface, this question comes down to examining to what extent lower or middling groups had a sort of participation and voice. Tackling this, historians have often sketched or assumed a distinction between top-down and bottom-up procedures. The former materialized in either the top-down appointment

The Fabrication of the Urban Body Politic  81 by a princely ruler (who for example elects aldermen or magistrates himself) or a procedure of cooptation by the sitting board (of either a bench of aldermen or a guild). Yet these are ideal typical situations which seldom existed in pure form in reality. In the early Italian communes, decisions by the consuls appear to have been approved by collective acclamation, so that a top-down and bottom-up influence would seem to have been integrated at least symbolically. Moreover, and more importantly, by the thirteenth century very complex, multistage and mixed systems were mostly in place. They typically involved indirect procedures in which either an election committee was first installed, or officials were elected from a list drawn up by the other party. In Florence in 1292 an assembly of large guilds notoriously needed twenty-four different procedures to elect the urban consuls.42 These complex systems have often been seen as the result of compromising and balancing the interests and power of the different groups, but this does not necessarily mean that mixed and multi-stage systems were at odds with the ideas and ideals of the groups involved—including the guilds. In the following section, I will instead argue that the election system installed helped to create the body politic as imagined by the guilds and other corporative groups—i.e., as a body with different members.

Electing the Urban Community Medieval writers remained safely in the theoretical domain when writing about the ideal form of government. While extensively theorizing about the limits of power and the necessity of popular consent, they seldom set out in detail how this consent was to materialize in practice. Even Marsiglio of Padua, for whom the populus was the legislator humanus, did not venture beyond the idea of an abstract persona ficta with a degree of active and voluntary consent.43 Perhaps this is because a political community was seen as neither an aggregate of individual wills choosing representatives or delegates nor the simple sum of different power groups. In Aristotelian fashion, a political community was not per definition the result of elections, but an abstraction to be embodied by a ruler, an oligarchy or a general assembly.44 Elections may thus have served a different purpose from that in present-day democracies, and the political participation of guild-based groups is perhaps not properly understood if we reduce their efforts to obtaining a majority in either the number of representatives or as part of the constituency. Instead, it is indispensable to capture the political mechanisms and practices in relation to the very concept of the body politic. Procedures for scrutinizing the ‘collective will’ often took shape during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.45 In order to prevent a concentration of power, yearly mandates and elections (periods of two or three years were possible as well) substituted lifelong appointments. In Bruges, yearly renewal of the bench of aldermen was for instance installed in 1241.46 This was often accompanied with the rule that outgoing councilors had to respect

82  The Fabrication of the Urban Body Politic a waiting period (wepeltijd) of one year or more before they could hold office again.47 Cooptation often remained an important practice however. In Ypres, a yearly system of indirect cooptation by the residing aldermen was installed in 1209.48 In Ghent in 1228 the so-called ‘regime of the XXXIX’ was introduced. The residing aldermen appointed five electors, who in turn elected three groups of thirteen members each—one group of aldermen, one group of councilors and one out-of-charge group. These groups then rotated, so that every member group had formed the bench of aldermen and the council every three years (with each year another group being out of office). Deceased members were replaced through cooptation.49 In Brabant as well, lifelong mandates were already replaced with mandates for shorter periods in the thirteenth century, often also one year—as was the case in Brussels in 1235.50 In all likelihood, this was a concession to the duke (next, perhaps, to a number of patricians without access to formal political power).51 As a rule, the patrician lineages strove for lifelong appointments, which tended to secure their grip on urban government and rule out the count and (later) the duke of Burgundy.52 Shorter terms or annual elections, in contrast, facilitated the entrance of new social groups. In Douai, the traditional bench of aldermen, dominated by patricians, was partly replaced around 1300 by so-called homines novi (new men) who supported the party of the count of Flanders (traditionally referred to as the Clauwarts) against the party of the French King (the Leliarts). These could be merchants new to the city, next to such prosperous artisans as brewers, butchers, and goldsmiths.53 In this vein, the question who exactly would embody the urban body politic was far more important than electoral principles. And here the guilds come in. Political guilds did not gain ground in Douai, but elsewhere guilds mostly managed to enter the local benches of aldermen. According to the charter of 1304, the Bruges guilds moreover appointed their own representatives, while the four representatives of the patricians in the bench of aldermen continued to be nominated by the count of Flanders (out of a list of eight presented to him). The four representatives of the patricians in the wider council were subsequently appointed by these four aldermen. The burgomaster of the bench of aldermen was chosen by the members of the inner council themselves (from the members of the council), the mayor of the wider council by the members of both councils (again from the members of the council).54 In Ghent during the regime of the three members, the guilds had a large say in the elections as well. The final election of the inner council (bench of aldermen) was the prerogative of an election committee (with the proviso that the duke had to consent), with four electors of the count and four of the city, but the candidates for the guilds were first nominated by the two upper deans (in consultation with the outgoing aldermen)—one from the weavers and one from the small trades. These upper deans moreover appointed the four municipal electors.55 Still, this is not to say that these complex systems can be reduced to the result of power balances. For starters, they served to curtail factionalism.

The Fabrication of the Urban Body Politic  83 In the early communes in Italy, this had involved the appointment of socalled podestà, i.e. professional rulers from outside the city who were chosen because of their neutrality and with an eye on more stability (compared to the consuls). Rather than a prince or feudal ruler of sorts, he was a type of salaried administrator representing the emperor, elected for short periods only, often six months.56 North of the Alps, this strategy was rarely used; in the Low Countries, it was non-existent. Nevertheless, in the Low Countries as well, election procedures were geared towards pacifying internal conflict. As elsewhere, they were deeply marked by mixed and indirect elections, next to rotation systems and crossed election mechanisms. In the Ghent system with the eight electors, which came about after the Ghent Revolt in 1453, the guilds’ two upper deans had a great deal of power. Not only did they actually appoint the four municipal electors, but they also proposed two lists of thirteen names to the ruler (who decided which names would be connected to which bench). These lists were drawn up in ex ante meetings between, on the one hand, the upper deans and the aldermen of their respective group and, on the other, the electors of the prince and the members of the patriciate. Subsequently, the two upper deans met the commissioners of the prince to finalize the list.57 In Brussels, where the guilds gained access to the inner council in 1421, the jurés of the nations presented a list of three candidates per nation to the seven sitting magistrates, who then picked one burgomaster, two treasurers and six councilors to represent the commoners. The burgomaster of the patricians was also elected by the jurés of the nations, out of a list of three nominated by the (patrician) aldermen. The burgomasters of the patrician families were thus elected by two committees: the primary one was composed of the sitting aldermen, the secondary comprised the sworn of the guilds. The representatives of the so-called nations were likewise elected by two committees, the first of which gathered the so-called jurés and the second the aldermen.58 In 1422, the nations moreover obtained the right to nominate three candidates (out of the list of twenty-seven) for the position of burgomasters, thus further restricting the autonomy of the patrician aldermen.59 In Bruges, where a more or less durable political system crystalized around the mid-fourteenth century, elections were mixed and indirect too.60 Such indirect and mixed electoral systems really pervaded the political system to the core, right down to the choice of deans of the nations. In Brussels, the magistracy could choose out of a list of people nominated by the outgoing deans—with the exception of St. Christopher and St. Lawrence, the deans of which were elected by the outgoing deans and the eight governors of the cloth guild.61 Even on the level of the guilds as such, indirect electoral mechanisms were in place. In fifteenth-century Ghent, the guild members sometimes first elected a number of electors, who then designated the sworn. Distribution keys were installed whenever the guilds concerned gathered different occupational groups.62

84  The Fabrication of the Urban Body Politic Rotation systems and waiting periods were installed in order to prevent the domination of one faction.63 A new ruling in Brussels in 1306 forbade the aldermen from accepting two yearly installments successively. In 1333 outgoing aldermen even faced a waiting period of six years before they were eligible again. The same applies to the board of the merchant guild and the sworn men of the guilds depending on it.64 Nor was this limited to a struggle between the patriciate and the guilds. Within these groups as well factionalism had to be vanquished. In Ghent, among other cities, it was typically prohibited to serve several successive terms as a dean or sworn of a guild, although the terms could differ substantially from guild to guild. Sometimes relatives could not serve simultaneously.65 In Brussels in 1356 a rotation system was established for the distribution of seats in the urban council among the patrician families, with the result that a certain automatism took over—including for the lower offices, the holders of which were elected by the aldermen from the same family.66 A rotation system within the nations was installed there in 1422, on the occasion of the addition of a captain (the commander of the civic militias) to the wider council in which the nations now had the same number of votes as the patrician families. Henceforth, the nations presented lists of candidate burgomasters, treasurers and councilors separately, while the final nomination had to correspond to a rotation system.67 This certainly does not amount to breaking intra-urban corporations at all costs. The idea was, rather, to subsume and integrate the guilds and lineages into the large municipal commune. This was achieved with the help of crossed electoral systems. In Leuven, as we have seen, the guilds obtained three out of seven seats in the inner council (temporarily after the victory of Coutereel and permanently from 1378). They were elected as follows: The non-patrician members of the merchant guild along with the members of the ten nations elected the representatives of the patrician families (geslachten) while at the same time nominating three people from their own groups, out of which the families could subsequently pick the representatives of the non-patrician. The following day, the representatives of the patrician picked one mayor out of the representatives of the non-patrician and vice versa.68 On the level of the councilors (jurés) a similar crossed mechanism was put in place. There were now twenty-one jurés (who gathered in a premature wider council) of which the guild had the right to nominate ten. The eleven jurés of the patrician families were appointed by the members of the merchant guild who were not themselves part of the patrician families, while the ten nations could each nominate one. Lower offices were again equally partitioned among both groups; and in the merchant guild itself a crossed election system operated.69 The Colnere and Blankaerden families each provided two deans and the non-patrician four, but the families presented a list from which the other party could choose and vice versa.70 In Bruges a crossed system was even in place for the participation of the journeymen in the fullers’ guild in 1303. The aldermen elected eight sworn (four masters and four journeymen) from two lists presented by each group separately, the masters presenting a list of journeymen and vice versa.71

The Fabrication of the Urban Body Politic  85 Clearly then, power struggles and factionalism were pacified with the allocation of seats to different factions and groups, and indirect and multistage elections, which enabled extremely refined systems of checks and balances. In addition, however, there were rotation systems and, especially, crossed election mechanisms which betray a wish to incorporate and integrate groups in the body politic while leaving these groups themselves intact. On the one hand crossed election systems obligated the different ‘members’ involved to interact; on the other rotation mechanisms within these groups aimed at involving broader segments of the groups—implying that, theoretically at least, anyone within the groups could act as a delegate. Thus, these systems cannot be understood with modern notions of representation-delegation. It resembles rather the idea of representation-figuration, in which a representative literally embodies or personifies the community involved.72 In the cities studied here, this is to be understood in a deeply corporative sense, which was also deeply hierarchical. Pacifying factionalism and building the urban body politic involved meticulously constructing hierarchy. In the Ghent benches of aldermen, the rotation system was extended to the level of places literally attributed to the alderman. While the patrician burghers (poorters) held seats 1, 4 and 7, the weavers and the small trades changed seats every year—with the weavers taking seats 2, 5, 8, 10 and 12 in the even years and 3, 6, 9, 11 and 13 in the uneven years (and vice versa for the small trades).73 This betrays a strange mix of egalitarianism and hierarchy, which can only be understood properly from the perspective of contemporary political thought. In short, the explanation of such mixed, indirect and crossed systems is not exhausted with reference to the need for power sharing, conflict management and compromise. What materialized in the Low Countries was a body politic based on corporations. On the one hand, it differed from present-day liberal democracies based on autonomous individuals because it built on corporate groups, guilds as well as patrician groups. On the other hand, it also differed from Italian republicanism in which the urban body politic was embodied by one oligarchic group of citizens. In the Low Countries, such ‘partnerships’ (in the Aristotelian sense) materialized primarily on the level of corporative groups themselves, which is evidenced by two additional characteristics of the electoral systems in the cities under scrutiny here. First, it is important to note that these electoral systems didn’t usually involve geographical repartitions. Although urban districts could sometimes be represented by a captain or dean in wider councils, occupational groups and families rather than quarters and districts formed the basis of not only popular mobilization but (indirect) election systems as well. In Liège, districts (vinâves or quartiers) formed the basis for the election of the representatives of the lineages, but guilds had recourse to a geographical logic only exceptionally.74 For practical reasons, the large guild of the wool weavers in Ghent was partitioned in twenty-three districts, which were all represented in the guild board with two to four sworn (until the Carolian Concession).75 And in Bruges, councils were operative on the level of urban quarters

86  The Fabrication of the Urban Body Politic (zestendeelen). Yet on the whole, a ‘corporative’ rather than a ‘territorial’ logic prevailed in cities with strong guilds. The Bruges neighborhood councils were themselves composed of poorters and guildsmen, for instance.76 And attempts by the Burgundian dukes to substitute geographical entities for corporative groups on the occasion of such civic ceremonies as the Holy Blood procession in Bruges typically failed. In the late fourteenth century (probably 1385) Duke Philip the Bold and the town council removed the right to carry torches and participate as a group, replacing them with groups of citizens hailed from their respective quarters; to no avail in the longer run.77 Only from the sixteenth century on did a geographical logic sometimes prevail. When in Ghent the representation of the guilds in the wider council was abolished in 1540, a system was installed in which the council was formed on a territorial basis, based on the parishes.78 Secondly, election by lot and chance as well materialized only at the level of the corporative groups, as was the case with the patrician members of the inner council in Brussels. Hazard there determined who was to be part of the election committee, in which four members subsequently decided by majority vote. When a majority was not reached, a fifth member was added, which was also determined by hazard.79 On the guild level as well, hazard sometimes played a role in election procedures of the guilds, but in the end the search for consensus often prevailed.80 In contrast, choosing by lot was practiced in many Italian city-states until well into the fourteenth century. In the early commune of Lucca hazard designated 500 citizens who could each choose one representative from their own district to be part of the council.81 In Vincenza hazard chose twenty men, eight of which were then selected to be able to propose three names for the position of podestà.82 In theory choosing by lot could be based on an extremely individualistic view of society, in which each individual is ultimately considered to have the same utility-maximizing impulses, but in the medieval and late medieval urban context it is more likely to have been inspired by republican values—as appears to have been the case in Florence, where the election of the municipal magistracy involved hazard in 1328 and the Florentine popolo replaced elections with a more egalitarian system of choosing by lot during the republican interregnum between 1494 and 1512.83 This strategy was rather rare in the Low Countries too, although electors were often designated by lot—as was the case in such Ghent guilds as the carpenters’, where in the fifteenth and sixteenth century a basket with tokens (of which six were marked) was passed around.84 In such cases, it did not really matter who represented the community, given that each single member was supposed to be enthused by the common spirit of the corporative body of which he was part. The fact that choosing by lot has never been dominant in the municipal election procedures in the Low Countries and existed more on the level of the separate corporations is therefore proof that the urban communes in the Low Countries were not ideal typical communes of equal citizens, but rather a federation of corporations which jointly formed the urban body politic.

The Fabrication of the Urban Body Politic  87

Unanimity and Majority Voting and the Imagination of the Communal Will The proof of the pudding would be to know how guild members conceived elections themselves. In the absence of written sources, some of their practices can perhaps help to lift the curtain a bit. In the late medieval period, guilds often organized their elections in the chambers of such mendicant orders as the Franciscans and the Dominicans, which are considered to have been pioneers in ‘democratic’ electing and decision-making procedures. In Ghent, the fifty-three deans of the small guilds elected their upper dean in a secret election in the rooms of the local Augustinian monastery.85 In Brussels the representatives of the nations in the fifteenth century convened in the cloister of the Friars Minor, who are renowned for their ‘democratic’ attitude too.86 This has led political historians to observe that the principle of quod omnes tangit ab omnibus tractari et approbari debet (‘what concerns all must be approved by all’) was and remained important here.87 Yet, in all likelihood, this vision amounts to a projection of normative ideals into the distant past. As we have seen, such ideas would have had roots in the Germanic tradition of the sworn commune, the ecclesiastical tradition of the general council and—to a lesser degree—Roman private law. In the early Italian communes, the commune would have been characterized by a type of parliament, i.e., the arenza of all citizens. This is recorded for instance for Orvieto for 1170.88 In cities in Brabant and the North of France, reference is often made to ‘sworn’ members of the community (jurati or jurés), which hints at the idea of a commune as a group of sworn equals who decide in consensus.89 From the fourteenth century on, they mostly gathered in wider councils, which often had an advisory and controlling function and could be implicated in elections of aldermen and burgomasters.90 These councils as well were typically composed of representatives of corporative groups. In Ypres, the Great Council (Grote Raad), which was formed in the fourteenth century, was initially composed of the warden (voogd, a type of burgomaster?), the aldermen, the councilors, the sworn of the guilds, the headmen (responsible for the military) and toute la communiteit de la vile (the whole community of the city).91 In Ghent, the wider council (Brede Raad or Collatie), which mirrored the system of the three members of the benches of aldermen, was introduced in 1349.92 In Bruges in the fifteenth century a wider council (Grote Raad) existed in which the guilds were represented along the aldermen, burgomasters and notables of the city.93 In the duchy of Brabant wider councils were less developed, but a similar tendency existed in all large cities, including Mechelen.94 In Leuven the wider council (buitenraad) was first mentioned in the charter of 1378. In it, the officials of the guilds had an important role as the so-called third member alongside the Saint Petermen or patrician families and the merchant guild.95 This council not only had a great deal of power (including approving taxes), but it also involved the wider community. While the duke had to accept

88  The Fabrication of the Urban Body Politic and confirm the choice of the members, their names were read aloud at the town hall in the presence of ‘the common’.96 In Antwerp, the Wider council (Brede Raad) embodied the ‘tota communitas’ in a corporative way too. It was composed of the magistracy, the former aldermen, the district masters and headmen of the poorterij (the patriciate) and the representatives of the guilds.97 This council convened only at the initiative of the magistracy and very irregularly until the second half of the sixteenth century, but the guilds were also represented at the so-called Monday council in Antwerp, which was responsible for economic regulation, fiscal matters, and law enforcement. As the guilds delivered twelve to thirteen of the twenty-two members (the three upper deans of the umbrella guilds, one dean of the gardeners and eight to nine deans of the subaltern guilds, according to a rotation system) they had a large say in these matters.98 In these councils, more than in the benches of aldermen, vestiges of a genuine sense of commune could be sought, but even these councils were caught up in a broader set of municipal political institutions and practices. This is even the case for the general assemblies of the guilds, which are supposed to elect the guilds representatives and to have served as a decisionmaking organ. Their meetings were held at least yearly in most guilds, with attendance often being obligatory.99 A guild was to a large degree synonymous with the right to hold meetings, given that the right to gather and meet was often withdrawn from them in the event of political turmoil. This was for instance the case in Brussels in 1282 when the fullers were prohibited from gathering, filing requests and collecting money after their rebellion. In 1306, the right to convene (and to hold a common bourse) was abolished altogether in Brussels and Leuven. Henceforth guilds were only allowed to convene with the consent of the duke and the magistracy and in the presence of the aldermen and the duke’s steward.100 Similar measures are recorded— for the same period—for Antwerp, Bruges, Tienen, Zoutleeuw and Liège, among other cities with ambitious guilds.101 However, this is not to say that an aboriginal type of guild dominated before other actors came on the scene. While the benches of aldermen were basically princely institutions by the thirteenth century, the repertoires of action of the guilds were coached in customary law at the communal level.102 More often than not, they had governors appointed by the municipality before they were recognized as a corporative group too. In Flanders, Artois, and Hainaut the colleges who monitored the cloth industry were established by the municipal government, or else by the Merchant guild, as was the case in Mechelen.103 Before the recognition of guilds, both masters and journeymen fell under the authority of the municipal government and its officials in Flemish cities.104 And even afterwards, guilds were only one actor among many to monitor economic activity. In Brussels, two different types of guilds materialized in the fifteenth century: guilds depending on the municipality and (textile) guilds depending on the merchant guild. None of these guilds could enact statutes or elect governors autonomously. The latter were vested

The Fabrication of the Urban Body Politic  89 by either the bench of aldermen or the merchant guild after nomination by the board.105 In the textile industry, guilds were part of a larger range of institutional layers to control product quality and discipline labor, including such municipal organizations as the draperies or a merchant guild.106 Although the vinders and warandeerders were mostly members of the guilds or the guilds’ boards, they acted under the supervision of the municipality.107 Taking the first written documentation at face value, a mixed system was often in place from early on. According to the 1303 charter of the Bruges fullers, guild representatives were nominated by the aldermen, who chose them from a list presented by the guild.108 The same principle applied in Oudenaerde, Kortrijk and Brussels.109 Thus, although the system was based on a general assembly in which representatives were elected, this was caught up in a vertical structure in which the city and the princely lord were implicated.110 In the first extensive guild charters, self-rule and political privileges came along with engagements to the towns as a political body—such as military responsibilities, and the obligation to participate in urban parades and processions.111 The twenty-five occupational groups recorded for Leuven in 1267 not only had their own deans, but they also paraded as a group during processions.112 Moreover, they were both profoundly religious and hierarchical. On the one hand, guilds were often already brotherhoods, which attached a great deal of importance to masses and the common burial of brothers.113 On the other hand, their practices were leavened with acts of subservience. In Leuven, general meetings would have commenced with a bell, after which the members were to remain silent. In addition, there were fixed places, assigned according to age, which implies a patriarchal foundation.114 Nor do their decision-making procedures allow us to sketch an idealized image. In thirteenth-century Europe, the adage ‘quod omnes tangit ab omnibus tractari et approbari debet’ is said to have emerged and been put into practice.115 Originally, this implied unanimity in decision making, which is said to have had canonical roots that spilled over into lay procedures.116 Unanimity and consensus imply the ideal of a perfectly harmonious society, as presented in The Rule of St. Augustine. Some communities may have tried to enforce these ideals, as is suggested by the existence of penalties— banishment among other things—in the codes of Germanic law for community members who persisted in their eccentric or minority ideas. In the early Italian city-communes, decision making by unanimity often prevailed, with minorities very quickly joining the majority so as to produce a consensus.117 In the Low Countries, one could expect this to be even more pronounced, given that the Germanic tradition in particular would seem to entail electing by common consent or unanimity. While representation presupposes that a small minority acts on behalf of the majority, the principle of unanimity strictly speaking does not need representation at all—given that any­ body can act on behalf of the collective.118 In contrast, the Roman and also ecclesiastical traditions are considered the source of the idea of consent by

90  The Fabrication of the Urban Body Politic a majority. While the glossators mentioned the dictum that ‘all must be summoned, two-thirds must attend, and a majority of these must consent’, Italian towns appear to have adopted the practice of majority voting from at least the twelfth century on.119 However, most indications in the Low Countries point in the direction of majority voting too. In Brussels, the seven aldermen elected their successors by majority vote as early as 1306.120 The deans and the eight of the merchant guild as well were determined (by the aldermen) by majority voting.121 In the wider council in Leuven, every member—notwithstanding the number of members present—had one voice, which also seems to imply majority voting.122 Even in the guilds, communities par excellence, majority voting was dominant in most of the period studied here. While in the fifteenth century, reference is sometimes made to a ‘common voice’ (gemijnen voise) of the guild members,123 the votes often appear to have been counted in the eighteenth century.124 The political positions of the guilds during the Calvinist Republic in Ghent—a context in which the guilds had a great deal of political power and desired to return to the corporative tradition— materialized through majority voting in the respective guilds separately.125 In addition, the position of the fourth member (the guilds) in the Antwerp wider council was based upon a majority reached in ex ante meetings (achterraden) of the representatives of the umbrella guilds with the representatives of their subaltern guilds.126 This is consistent with the wider trend of majority voting that became dominant during the middle ages, with the council of Trent eventually recognizing the principle of majority voting around the mid-sixteenth century.127 In lay organizations as well, the principle of unanimity gradually turned in the direction of majority voting. Among other things, it became popular for the election of municipal magistrates, who in Ghent were already elected by majority vote in 1191 (and also in 1228 and 1301).128 Still, this does not imply that the idea of unanimity was absent. The use of the term majorité in medieval French sources is not necessarily to be understood as we do at present. From a juridical angle, there could just as well be a commitment to consensus and unanimity, even though this was difficult for practical reasons. In the tanners’ guild in Mechelen, some decisions (related to the quality of the leather) did require unanimity in 1764, and in the absence of unanimity, the right to decide could be transferred to the ‘warrantor’ (the warandijn) or a (former) dean.129 Thus, majority voting may have been a pragmatic solution, as was the abandonment of the general meeting (among others on the urban level) for the principle of delegation.130 According to the Belgian historian Walter Prevenier a certain distrust with regard to the law of the number persisted, which to an extent explains the use of indirect elections and the prevalence of the most powerful in a specific group. Moreover, unanimity persisted in discourse and terminology, as the omnipresence of references to concord (eendracht) and unanimitas illustrates.131 As an ideal, unanimity was, thus, tenacious, and even in practice

The Fabrication of the Urban Body Politic  91 it often persevered. While in Liège the principle of unanimity continued to be important, in the Estates of Brabant it returned as late as the eighteenth century.132 In this vein, indirect election and decision-making procedures, next to acclamation, could be seen as instruments with which unanimity—and thus, the unity of the urban communities—was safeguarded, if only on a symbolic level. Perhaps not coincidentally, the principle of consensus and unanimity was more prominent in election committees and representative bodies in which different power groups were represented, such as the Estates of Flanders.133 Moreover, it should be kept in mind that from its very inception majority voting co-occurred with qualitative factors in which the most important rather than the largest part prevailed. While bishops were originally elected with unanimity, the practice of electing by the sanior et major pars had materialized between the eleventh and thirteenth century already.134 And while according to Jan Dumolyn reaching consensus was often a goal in the rebellious guilds in the early fourteenth century, the voices of the most wealthy and most prestigious members are likely to have prevailed most often.135 This may be connected, moreover, to the specific conditions in which decision making materialized. In April 1477, a turbulent period as we have seen, a wooden stage called ‘park’ (parc) was erected on the Great Market square in Bruges with the aim of enabling the guild members to ‘speak together, have council daily, and advise each other’.136 This stage, which had seats for the deans of the guilds, not only allowed the latter to voice their grievances about urban politics, but also attributed to them greater control. Moreover, politics here is highly theatrical, the whole scene invoking cries and acclamation rather than electing in a formal and bureaucratic manner.137 According to Margit Thøfner, even an urban procession can be seen as a ‘quasi-democratic mechanism for soliciting the consent of the citizenry’.138 The importance of both the maior et sanior pars and acclamation betray a hierarchical and oligarchic type of thinking. In Venetian humanism, the ideal of a mixed constitution included unanimity in decision-making, which was considered to be best secured by the nobility there.139 This is different in our case study, but according to Cary J. Nederman, Marsiglio also ‘rejects in principle majoritarian and representative doctrines of political decision making. Rather, the Defensor Pacis evinces a confidence in the competence and reasonableness of the citizen body—and hence in its ability to identify its own shared interests’.140 Politics, in this vein, was not about proportional representation, but about ‘discovering’ the best laws and the best characters for governance. In terms of representation and delegation, this does not permit representatives to have an independent role. It rather implies a unity of interests and desires, so that representation in its modern sense does not apply at all.141 In the longer run, the power of this fiction must have waned nonetheless. In the run up to the Ghent Revolt of 1539, when Ghent was the only

92  The Fabrication of the Urban Body Politic city to refuse a tax request by the Habsburg territorial rulers, the principle of unanimity in the Estates of Flanders was set aside by governess Mary of Hungary, who claimed that the consent of three of four members was sufficient.142 In Brussels majority voting prevailed as a proposition was accepted once it was approved by either the first two members (magistracy and wider council) plus four nations or by one of the first two members and five nations. This shift from unanimity towards majority on the level of the estates is seen by Karin Van Honacker as a way of circumventing the veto power of the guilds—as would have happened in 1619, when the rule that the three members had to consent was lifted because consent of the third member of Brussels (the nations) was lacking.143 However, new conceptions of the body politic may have been responsible for this as well.

From Oligarchic Communities to Bureaucratic Societies? Ever since the days of Henri Pirenne and his ideas about urban communes and guilds, both political and social historians have assumed that a certain oligarchization was imminent from the late Middle Ages on. In the long run, political participation narrowed socially in the early modern period. While in Rouen around 1200, city officials were elected from a body of 100 citizens, this had fallen to twenty-five at the end of the century.144 Gradually, meetings appear to have been reserved for la plus saine partie in France, among other things under the impulse of Colbert. On the occasion of the restoration of the French guilds in 1777 (after their abolition by Turgot), only the first 25 masters could cooperate politically in the guild directly; the other were represented by two 2 deputies.145 Notwithstanding the very different political context, the trend was similar in the Low Countries.146 In late medieval Leuven, the wider council was conceived as a general meeting of citizens, in which every citizen was in principle expected to attend. Yet in the sixteenth century, the number of participants was reduced through a system of delegation, with four to eight representatives for both the patrician families and the merchant guild, and fifty to sixty representatives of the trades (more or less the deans of all the guilds).147 In Brussels the number of members of the meetings of the nations and the so-called ‘backroom council’ (achterraad) was cut in 1545, 1586, 1594 and 1619, while the presence of the amman was made obligatory and the competencies of the council were limited. In 1619, membership of the back room council was reduced from all ex-deans to all outgoing deans, i.e. to a maximum of about 280 persons. In 1700 the size of the Wider Council (Wijde Raad) was reduced too, to twelve patricians and twelve guild-based artisans.148 In Antwerp the reduction of the size and competencies of the third member (the headmen and district masters) and the fourth member (the deans) was on the agenda both in the mid-seventeenth and mid-eighteenth century. The number of district masters in the third member was reduced from twenty-six to thirteen in 1765.149 Nor did all this fail to

The Fabrication of the Urban Body Politic  93 provoke dissent. At the turn of the sixteenth century already, the mastertailors in Antwerp complained about a lack of voice and participation in the election of their deans—who were co-opted rather than elected.150 Processes of oligarchization co-emerged with state formation. This was surely the case in Northern Italy, where power was soon concentrated in four dominant cities: Florence, Venice, Milan and Genoa. Within these cities, power was usurped by such seigniorial lords as the Medici (Florence), the Visconti (Milan) and the Sforzas (Milan and Genoa).151 But, all over Europe the balance shifted in favor of territorial princes in the late medieval period. In Augsburg, where a bloodless guild revolution had secured guild representatives direct access to municipal government, with even a majority in both the Broad Council and the Inner Council, this was ended rather drastically in 1549 by Charles V after the Schmalkaldic War.152 The situation in the Low Countries was similar, as the events in Ghent and other cities in the county of Flanders have shown. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the military power of the guilds was broken for good. Henceforth, their political struggle was mostly fought on the juridical terrain, although such tactics as the refusal to ‘form an opinion’ (when they were to concede taxes) or to simply stay in their meeting room in the town hall (thus occupying a public place), could be effective too—the latter often heralding social protest and street violence.153 Related to this, processes of oligarchization have been recorded at the level of the representative institutions, where a rather small elite tended to dominate the available mandates in the estates.154 Within cities as well oligarchies re-emerged soon after the revolutions. In spite of the requirement that offices rotate, they were often monopolized by certain families—as were the seats reserved for guildsmen.155 In the early modern period, this process intensified. The recruitment base of the inner councils in Brussels, Mons and Tournai narrowed during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and even more with regard to the representatives of the guilds and nations.156 Johan Dambruyne and Harald Deceulaer have evinced this with the use of a ‘participation-index’ (the number of representatives multiplied by one hundred and divided by the number of mandates). Declining figures were registered for, among other groups, the Ghent tailors (from forty-five in 1500–1540 to 28.5 in 1732–1779).157 In Brussels this was even more outspoken, with a drop to 20.7 in the eighteenth century. The average waiting period between entry to mastership and political office simultaneously increased, as a result of which the guild boards were subject to aging.158 From at least the sixteenth century on decision-making procedures which implied the exclusion of regular masters also emerged. In 1618 the deans of the Antwerp tailors declared that they invited all former deans on the occasion of important debates and deliberations—adding that this was the custom in other guilds.159 The political clout of middling groups was often curtailed at the instigation of the central authorities in Brussels or Vienna, more often than

94  The Fabrication of the Urban Body Politic not because the former used their veto rights when new taxes were to be approved. This is why the central authorities tried to concentrate power in the hands of the first member in Antwerp and why Charles of Lorraine tried to merge the second and third member there.160 While large meetings were increasingly seen as a thread to social peace, the Privy Council among other central organs increasingly considered the mandatory consent of guild-based nations outrageous.161 Apparently, the central authorities were not contradicted in this by large parts of the municipal political elites. In the powerful guild of the brewers in Leuven, the general meeting of the circa 300 members was replaced with a smaller consortium, founded by the burgomaster and the magistracy.162 At the close of the seventeenth century, the Brussels nations proposed a ban on the accumulation of offices and a waiting period for outgoing aldermen—clearly in order to oppose power concentration. This conflict escalated and culminated in the execution of the famous guild dean and rebel leader Frans Anneessens in 1719. In Leuven, municipal elections were passed over altogether in this period in order to prevent social unrest.163 All this suggests that oligarchization was more comprehensive a process than the procedures related to the appointment of municipal officials suggest. In England, a distinction emerged between ‘yeomen’ and ‘masters of the livery’ from at least the fifteenth century on. While the former could receive some privileges as well, the right to wear the livery was restricted to a group of masters who monopolized the board and controlled the guild. In this context, the election procedures among the London carpenters went from election ‘by common consent’ to ‘such as the livery think convenient’ in 1487.164 In Rome during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries it became customary for the notables of the guilds to list candidates worthy of office every three years. From these lists, new officials were drawn by the current officials every year.165 Such systems of cooptation mostly co-occurred with a growing impact of either the municipal government or the territorial prince or state, or both, but they cannot be reduced to it. For one thing, oligarchization could be connected to economic transformations too. From at least the sixteenth century on, but probably sooner as well, the economic and political elites in guilds largely overlapped.166 Moreover, as social and economic historians have shown, a divergence often grew between the more substantial masters, from whom the officials were usually drawn, and journeymen and small masters. Marxist historians have therefore tended to connect oligarchization to economic concentration.167 Steven Kaplan in his research on eighteenth-century Paris has revealed a gap between large and small masters and, simultaneously, the absence of general meetings. In the Southern Netherlands, the boards of such guilds as the Antwerp mercers were dominated by large merchants, among which the silk merchants were overrepresented—the latter moreover being connected through marriage with the political elite.168 Others have, however, argued that conflicts between the guild boards and general membership cannot be

The Fabrication of the Urban Body Politic  95

Figure 2.2 Board of the Mechelen tailors’ guild gathered around a table. Oil painting on canvas of Egidius Joseph Smeyers, 1735. © Stad Mechelen—Museum Hof van Busleyden, inv. nr. S/237.

reduced to social polarization either, if only because these tensions existed in guilds without economic concentration too.169 So, arguing that public office simply resulted from economic success would be jumping to conclusions too fast as well. The Ghent example is very instructive because of the marked distinction between inheritable mastership and purchased mastership (mastership purchased by newcomers for one generation only). In almost all trades in Ghent office holding was dominated by the inheritable masters (who had obtained mastership by birth). On average 87.7% of the guild officials emerged from their ranks before 1540.170 In this respect, the Concessio Carolina in 1540 was a real fault line, as Charles V drastically reduced the entrance fees for noninheritable masters (six Carolinian guilders across all guilds) and abolished inheritable mastership by enacting that one could henceforth only buy mastership for oneself and not as an intergenerational title.171 While access to the guild for non-masters’ sons was thus facilitated, political oligarchization— measured in terms of the portion of inheritable masters in the boards and the turnover of office holding—declined.172 However, this is not to say that the new situation was simply more ‘democratic’. Rotation and turnover of office was actually larger in closed inheritable groups such as the free skippers, the butchers and the shipmakers. In the period 1506/7–1511/12, only the free skippers’ guilds elected a new dean every year, and not a single dean occurred twice on the lists examined by Dambruyne.173 It would seem that

96  The Fabrication of the Urban Body Politic exclusivity to newcomers went hand in glove with a relatively large political equality internally. The point I want to make here is that in addition to changing power balances—whether political, economic or both—changing conceptions of politics and participation are to be accounted for. On the one hand, inheritable master status gradually disappeared in the seventeenth century owing to Charles V’s measures to crush the guilds’ power.174 On the other hand, however, an ever smaller number of families assumed an ever larger share of the available offices. From the seventeenth century on, complaints ‘that the trade is governed now for twelve, fifteen and more years by the same persons, whom reciprocally elect each other and pass from one office to another’ abounded.175 In such sectors as tailoring and construction, office holding was eventually monopolized by the economically most powerful families. While the number of master tailors in Gent assuming more than ten mandates was rather insignificant in the sixteenth century (1%), this reached levels between 20% and 30% in the eighteenth century. The number of office holders with one or two mandates declined from almost 67% in the sixteenth century to 15% to 18% in the eighteenth.176 It would thus seem that money and economic wealth were a substitute for inheritable master status in the long run. In my view, this was related to different conceptions of community and the body politic. From at least the seventeenth century on, political participation and office holding would seem to have been measured in pecuniary terms. In Harald Deceulaer’s rendering, claims for participation and voice from the part of masters were triggered by financial and fiscal issues in the seventeenth century. As a result of financial problems, the Antwerp tailors’ guild in 1635 introduced a yearly tax of ten stuyvers. Around the same period, the guilds members became more involved in internal politics. In 1628, they were involved in the election of new deans and in 1646 and 1656 mention was made of ‘good men’ appointed by the masters who were to control the guild board. In 1656 masters appear to have elected their board directly.177 For Brussels in the second half of the eighteenth century, Deceulaer found a correlation between the presence of masters at guild meetings and financial and fiscal issues being on the agenda.178 By the midseventeenth century already, the guild deans themselves were very explicit about the connection between voice and participation on the one hand and financial responsibility on the other. The Antwerp deans argued that the amount of money going from the guild box to the city should be in proportion to the extent that ‘their feelings’ were transferred to the Monday Council as well.179 Moreover, office holding increasingly yielded a certain wage or financial compensation. In the guild of the old shoemakers in Leuven, the steward (knaap) received ten guilders a year; in the guild of the ‘fat wares’ this was ten guilders every three months.180 Entrance fees for masters in the eighteenth century typically included so-called ‘vacations’ (vacatien), i.e., monetary

The Fabrication of the Urban Body Politic  97 remuneration for such duties as attending the presentation of trial pieces.181 As well as confirming the loss of appeal and the shift towards a plutocratic and pecuniary approach to office holding and politics, an increasing need for technical expertise may have been involved. In 1599 the Nurnberg Rat urged the trades of the city not to elect the richest but the most competent masters as governors.182 In Leuven in 1727 the election of two upper deans was opposed because they were unable to read and write.183 This suggests that the long-term development cannot simply be described with reference to a conception of oligarchization similar to the process described in the case of Italian city-states. What we notice, rather, is a process of professionalization and bureaucratization, which accompanies processes of oligarchization and exclusion. What disappeared was a corporative sense of politics and the body politic, in which political participation was a matter of being part of the corporation, whether it be by birth or membership. This view is corroborated by in-depth research on the largest and most important guild in Antwerp, the mercers’ guild. This guild was one of the three umbrella guilds, which on the urban level grouped the other, subaltern guilds. Mid-seventeenth century conflicts about the guild’s say in financial and fiscal issues—including the right to check the municipal accounts— reveal that the gap between the urban government and the subaltern guilds had widened. During these conflicts, the umbrella guild not only transformed from an ally of the city to an institution representing the interests of the subaltern guilds, the very distinction between umbrella guild (literally ‘head guild’) and ‘member guilds’—which had formed the basis of the Antwerp political system since the fifteenth century—was questioned.184 Although rhetorically reference was made to the city as a body (i.e., the requests of the subaltern guilds for instance being discarded as subjecting the ‘head’ to the ‘members’) representation was gradually cast in more ‘modern’ terms. The guilds of the mercers argued for example that they were capable of representing the commoners (de gemeynte) because through their daily contact they knew the minds of the people.185 So, when in 1649 the mercers’ dean Andries Cobbe argued in the Monday Council that the guild deans were to act not as ‘boys but rather as men, voice per voice and man per man’, he did so in a context in which the sense of politics and the body politic was transforming. While referring to a patriarchal context, he may willy nilly have distanced himself from an organic conception of the body politic, where guild representatives were only ‘members’ of the larger household of the city. The idea of the city as a household was still present, as the reference to the urban government as a ‘wicked stepmother’ suggests.186 But at the same time, there was reference to a ‘one man one vote’ idea of sorts—while in the past, voting in all likelihood hardly existed. The latter is at least suggested by the existence of disputes in the seventeenth century about the number of votes the guilds had a right to in the Monday Council (was it one or rather one per guild representative?).187 From this angle, voting as a practice may have been a substitute

98  The Fabrication of the Urban Body Politic for an organic conception of the body politic in which the city was a body, the different members of which were supposed to act in perfect harmony or concordia. In the eighteenth century, the vertical and pyramidal structure of the urban body politic was in any case largely replaced with a three-tier horizontal structure in which the urban government, the guild boards and the regular masters represented different social strata. This is clearly revealed in recent research on Mechelen of Maïka De Keyzer, who has moreover shown that these groups had recourse to different political languages and even referred to a different past in order to legitimize their claims. While the urban magistracy invoked an authoritarian and more exclusive aristocratic or oligarchic model, the guild deans had recourse to republican arguments about self-rule and autonomy, which in their discourse served to protect the extensive privileges obtained in the seventeenth century to the prejudice of regular masters. Regular masters, in turn, invoked more ‘democratic’ principles so as to regain some of their former voice and oppose what they called the ‘tyranny’ of the deans.188 In their rendering decisions were to be made by ‘convocation of the whole guild’, while they considered it ‘natural that the deans, which are representatives of the members, are to be elected by the latter’.189 In order to corroborate their claims, the guild members did not refer to recent but rather to fifteenth-century privileges. They even invoked the precorporative phase, referring to the old brotherhood of Saint Eloy. But of course, their discourse was an eighteenth-century one. It included both the idea of natural rights and the legitimate power of the absolute prince, who ruled in the name of the people. Likewise, the more modern idea of electing the most competent (instead of the most virtuous) surfaced. While the guild deans used it to defend their position, the regular masters pointed out that—due to the guild often being ruled by people who did not exercise the trade—the deans were not familiar enough with the technicalities to govern their guild.190

Guilds and the Calvinist Republics (1577–1585) When examining ‘political culture’ it is of course difficult to pinpoint fault lines, but there is much to be said for the argument that the ‘long sixteenth century’ was a turning point of sorts. While the corporative body politic came to full fruition in the fifteenth century, the seventeenth century was a scene of oligarchization and the emergence of new political discourses. The sixteenth century moreover witnessed the pinnacle of the clash between republican and corporative conceptions of urban society on the one hand, and princely rule and state formation on the other.191 Furthermore, this is the era of religious turmoil too, while the political and the religious cannot be separated in this period. During the Iconoclasm in 1566 not only religious images and statues perished in Ghent but those of Emperor Charles V and

The Fabrication of the Urban Body Politic  99 his successor (his brother Ferdinand) too.192 Peter Blickle has even coined the term ‘communal Reformation’ so as to inscribe the religious in his program on the communes as instances of an inherent striving for self-rule and independence.193 If such ‘communal Reformation’ had been present in the Southern Netherlands, it would be in the so-called Calvinist Republics— the radical but short-lived experiments with Calvinist rule in a range of cities between 1577 and 1585. Ever since the 1970s, the Reformation has been addressed from not only a religious but also from social and political perspectives as well. At first, social historians pointed to a connection between events such as the Iconoclasm in 1566 and such determinants of material circumstances as grain prices.194 The sixteenth century was not only a period of religious turmoil but social unrest as well. For Antwerp, socially inspired protest movements have been recorded among the masons and the carpenters (in 1522, 1532 and 1552), the journeymen dyers (1553, 1560 and 1563) and the cloth dressers (1565 and 1574); for Mechelen a prolonged strike of fullers and wool weavers is recorded in 1524–1525.195 Given that the Reformation was an assault on (clerical) hierarchies and authority, the movement could moreover be appropriated by social groups in search of emancipation or the recovery of lost rights. In an in-depth study of Augsburg, Philip J. Broadhead has shown that different corporative groups in a city could adopt entirely different attitudes towards religious reform, depending on their power interests. While the butchers in Augsburg favored religious tolerance for business reasons, the weavers seized the opportunity to defend their privileges and communal values in their strife against merchants.196 In a similar vein, Heinz Schilling’s well-known study of Emden has shown that Calvinism was appropriated by mobilizing citizens in defense of civic republicanism against a Lutheran prince, while in Lemgo Lutheran citizens stood up against a Calvinist prince.197 However, the connection between religious feelings and political interests may not be exhausted by such a reading. The Reformation has also been addressed as a deep socio-cultural process. It has been seen as a process of social discipline and a striving for a new social order in a context of social polarization and moral confusion.198 In this approach, the political influence of the Reformation is not reduced to the sublimation of a social process or an instrument in the hands of different power groups. Yet here, debate arose about the precise nature of the cultural transformation. On the one hand, the religious transformations have been considered part of a process of bourgeois disciplining in the tradition of Max Weber and Norbert Elias. Others have however interpreted it as a liberation of sorts from traditional feelings of guilt, the dominance of clerical institutions and the obligation to perform useless rituals and offer fees and gifts. In comparison with the obligation to obey traditions and lead a perfect life so as to escape Purgatory and Hell, the maxim that faith in God and his word alone sufficed was perhaps reassuring indeed.199

100  The Fabrication of the Urban Body Politic Still closer to the aim of this book is research in which religious reform is connected to the wider context of civic development in general and the concept of community in particular, to be found specifically in the German context.200 While, according to Steven Ozment, townspeople considered Protestantism a religion in which the clergy was committed to the community, Bernd Moeller has observed that the political context in a city to a large extent determined the accommodation of different religious strands. Cities with a strong tradition of political participation (a range of cities in Germany and Switzerland) would have been more open to the teachings of Ulrich Zwingli and Martin Bucer, rather than to Lutheranism, because of the stress on brotherly love and unity and on the duty of government to care for the spiritual well-being of its subjects in the former. Zwingli in particular assumed a strong connection between the duties of a secular government and the duties of Christians in a community.201 A Christian according to Zwingli was to see a community as one large household, of which all members shared joys and sorrows.202 According to Heinz Schilling, there was a correspondence between communal-corporative political traditions and the protestant ideas of salvation for the Christian community in both Zwinglian and Lutheran strands.203 Bringing these views to a head, one might go so far as to claim that religious reform and the transformation of the body politic in the sixteenth century were two sides of the same coin. For the Southern Netherlands, the hypothesis has been advanced that the Revolt and the Reformation were embedded in the long-term process of emancipating middling groups, which saw their wealth and power threatened in the short run.204 Yet exactly what political ideas were invoked and furthered in the context of religious reform remains a matter of debate. For German artisans and guildsmen, it has been noticed that, before Calvin at least, a desire existed to return to the original principles of civic brotherhood and the Christian ideals underlying the constitutional community as expressed in the notions Gemeinde and universitas.205 To what extent was this the case in the Southern Netherlands? The history of the Calvinist Republics in the Southern parts of the Low Countries is not very helpful in finding an unambiguous answer—in fact to the contrary. A superficial scanning of the large diversity of the Calvinist Republics in the Southern Netherlands—in particular when comparing the two most important cases, Antwerp and Ghent—confirms that new religious ideas could be appropriated to defend entirely different— indeed opposed—political positions. As will become clear below, this may be due to a certain path dependency related to earlier processes of state formation and rebellion. Of all Calvinist Republics in the county of Flanders and the duchy of Brabant the Ghent Republic was the more radical, in both a political and religious sense.206 As soon as 1579—i.e., two years before the so-called Plakkaat van Verlatinghe, in which the Revolting principalities abjured the rule of Philip II—Ghent had ceased to recognize the dominance of the Spanish king.207 And while a field of tension existed between

The Fabrication of the Urban Body Politic  101 so-called ‘orangists’ in favor of religious peace and ‘radicals’ who refused to compromise with Catholics, the latter emanated more often from the guild milieu.208 To a degree, this may have had a political origin. More than any other city, Ghent tried to regain its autonomy when central power weakened in the 1570s. This, in turn, can be explained by the more radical measures with which both the political autonomy of Ghent and the power of the guilds within the city had been curtailed with the Peace of Cadzand (1492) and the Carolinian Concession (1540).209 The Great Privilege of 1477 was invoked as an ideal one century later.210 Pressured by the wider council (the so-called collatie)—in which guilds held the majority of seats—the Ghent Calvinist republic tried to restore ancient privileges.211 To a large degree, the Revolt against Spanish Rule in the Low Countries as a whole was an attempt to restore ancient ‘liberties’, which were in turn secured in privileges and guarded by the Estates.212 According to Heinz Schilling, this period moreover witnessed a revival and intensification of communalcorporative thinking (gemeindlich-genossenschaftliche Denken) in response to the encroachment of territorial states.213 Yet this is not to say that the political idea(l)s of the late sixteenth century were identical to those of the late fifteenth.214 On the surface, the Calvinist Republics returned to older ‘democratic’ practices of popular participation. In Antwerp, the Wider Council (Brede Raad)—considered to embody the corpus of the city—convened more frequently than ever after 1577. While it had only convened sporadically before, it developed into a quasi-permanent assembly, which moreover decided by consensus. In addition, the traditional patrician elites had to endure the ascension of new elites to the magistracy, including university trained Calvinists and Merchants.215 However, corporative views often clashed with a more mercantile conception of urban Republicanism. In Antwerp (and also Valenciennes for example) power was eventually seized not by manufacturing masters but by powerful merchants. When in February 1578 a new magistracy of eight colonels was installed in Antwerp, all of these emanated from the mercantile milieu.216 These colonels not only clashed with the Wider Council, but may have embodied another political idea as well. In Ghent in August 1579 strong man Jan Van Hembyze not only referred to Ghent as ‘an invincible city in favor of its commune’ but he also declared a desire to transform Ghent into ‘a merchant city like Geneva’.217 The guilds supported this to a degree, but they were less inclined to open up the city and the guilds to Calvinist refugees. While upper alderman (voorschepen) Van Hembyze wanted to lower the entrance fee for immigrants to 240–360 Flemish groats, the guilds refused.218 It remains to be seen, therefore, whether the Calvinist Republics restored corporative— or guild-based—concepts of governance at all. In other case studies, historians have already pointed out that Protestants were over-represented among the mercantile and learned elites, as was the

102  The Fabrication of the Urban Body Politic case in Lyon.219 In Ghent Van Hembyze was accused of betraying his own social group (the patrician elite), while lawyers had been even more important than inheritable masters in the Iconoclasm.220 Yet in the Low Countries as a whole, revolts were more frequent in cities in which the guilds were part and parcel of the political structures, such as ‘s-Hertogenbosch, Antwerp and Ghent.221 This is consistent with the finding in recent studies that the attraction for Calvinism was often most outspoken among artisans—as was for instance the case in France.222 Large parts of the politically active groups in Ghent moreover strove for the rehabilitation of the regime of the three members. This was particularly the case for the inheritable masters, some of which even hoped to re-abolish non-heritable master status altogether. These inheritable masters constituted an important part of the sixteenth-century protest movements, although larger parts of the guilds were surely involved as well. Thirteen of the seventeen beheaded rebels from the revolt of 1539 were guild masters. Of these only a minority had assumed political office before, and the most active groups were not those who held seats in the benches of aldermen most frequently. During the Iconoclasm (1566), guild-based masters still formed the core of the protest movement, but the inheritable masters—who had lost a great deal of their power in 1540—were now overrepresented (70% of the convicted master-Calvinists were inheritable masters).223 What is clear, then, is that corporatist middling groups rather than impoverished and proletarianized workers were the driving force behind the revolts. The Ghent Calvinists in 1577 re-installed all important corporatist symbols, including the system of the three members and inheritable mastership. The famous Committee of XVIII counted eight burghers and ten masters. In June 1579, the wider council decided unilaterally that the Committee of XVIII was to be composed of six burghers, six representatives of the weavers and six representatives of the small guilds. In addition, the old (single and double) system of indirect election of the guilds’ sworn and deans, in which the deans were eventually picked from a list presented by the guilds to the magistrates, was re-introduced.224 Nevertheless, as argued by Anne-Laure Van Bruaene, we should not mistake the corporative symbols and rhetoric for the real politic transformations. Underneath the surface, guilds, brotherhoods and other corporative organizations did not thrive and the political outlook of even the most radical rebel city was changing for good.225 In recent essays Van Bruaene has already pointed to the waning of such civic processions as the Ghent Auweet and the procession of Saint Lieven and the decline of traditional fraternalism as practiced in voluntary associations like religious brotherhoods.226 Moreover, not only would the Calvinist guild regime be abolished in 1584 in Ghent after the defeat by the Spanish, the Calvinist republic in itself was more republican (and oligarchic) than corporatist. While for instance, the sworn of the guilds were again elected autonomously by the guilds’ members, this was only partly the case for the dean.227 In Antwerp and Brussels, the guild-based middling groups lacked the power to restore old privileges altogether. In Brussels, the committee of

The Fabrication of the Urban Body Politic  103 XVIII (installed in August 1577) did count representatives from the ‘nations’ but above all a social shift had occurred in which the old magistrates from the lower and landed aristocracy was partly replaced by homines novi with a rebellious and Calvinist past.228 In Antwerp, the new Calvinist deans in the early 1580s were accused by guild masters of disregarding old customs related to election procedures. One example was the top-down nomination of a ‘box master’ in the guild of barbers and surgeons, which according to the older (Catholic) elite in the guild had to be elected by common consent (gemeyne voyse).229 Thus, the return to olden privileges and the growing importance of wider councils does not necessarily imply a return to a corporative conception of the body politic, and perhaps even the contrary. More likely, it resembled a shift towards a Republic comparable to the Italian Republics in which guilds had long since lost their power—which is also how it eventually materialized in the Dutch republic, the autonomous cities of which lacked strong guilds and a powerful guild ethic.230 In the Southern principalities an evolution towards a more Republican and less guild-based conception of the body politic can be discerned in the very details of the restoration movement in Ghent. The new ruling about the election of the guild officials among the Ghent hosiery makers in 1579 failed to really return to the situation before the Peace of Cadzand, when the deans were elected by the guild members (or the sworn of the guild). In the new ruling three electors were first appointed by lot. These electors then each appointed one ‘sworn’, who then elected three candidate-deans. Their names were then submitted to the alderman who picked one.231 This largely corresponded to the acts of the Peace of Cadzand and, hence, contradicted corporative ideals. In the long run, then, the corporative conception of the body politic may have waned. While religious brotherhoods and such traditional religious symbols as the guilds’ patron saints perished before and during the Calvinist Republic, the Virgin of Ghent gained prominence as the secular civic symbol in Ghent—confirming that changing political sensitivities were related to religious transformations.232 This shift may have cut deep into the contemporary imaginary of the body politic. In an eye-opening article on early modern Lyon, Natalie Zemon Davis has pointed to the impact of religion on the experience and perception of the city even as a material reality. Catholic rituals according to Davis implied the city as a material reality, for instance attributing a central role to the two rivers (the Saône and the Rhone), the bridges and the surrounding hills. In contrast, Protestants had a different attitude in which the city was not only purified from Catholic images but was more abstracted as well. While the idea that the sacred could be present in a thing (a relic) was idolatry to them, the streets they paraded when singing their psalms had lost their sacred sense too. They were reduced now to avenues which facilitated the communication of their religious messages.233 While the guilds defended a closed city of sorts, Protestants have thus facilitated the transformation of the city into a ‘permanent market’:

104  The Fabrication of the Urban Body Politic ‘Protestants were opening urban space and making it more uniform and available for exchange, traffic and human communication’.234 In addition, the bodily metaphor so prominent in the guilds’ political imaginary may have lost importance. The social body according to Davis had decomposed not only into a head and members now, but into ligaments, nerves, the senses, muscles and the voice, etc. as well.235 Eventually, it may have been the Protestant dictum that ‘the finite cannot contain the infinite’ and their drawing of a boundary between the spiritual and the material worlds which impacted on the communal and corporative conception of society.236 In the following chapters I will in any case further pursue transformations related to such deep cultural and mental frameworks. Did the organic conception of the body politic really wane, and if so what was the impact thereof on political mechanisms and practices? Was there a disenchantment of sorts, as a result of which social groups could no longer be seen as being connected through one soul? Was the connection of individuals and social groups with the city as a material (but enchanted) reality perhaps replaced by persons oriented to God in an individual way?

Conclusion In conclusion, it is difficult to establish whether the Germanic and Christian traditions really made a difference in my case study—and if so, to what extent. Following Black, the Germanic tradition of common consent in a general assembly should be prominent in the early period at least. Communal ideals would imply that the whole community and nothing but the community was involved in the election procedures as appears to have been the case with the tanners in Liège at the end of the thirteenth century.237 Yet, given the ubiquity of references, by canonists and others, to the maior et sanior pars of an association, we could just as well hypothesize that a small elite inside the guild obtained the power to decide from early on.238 Moreover, it is important to recall here that one could only be represented through membership of the group, not on an individual basis—and this is not to mention the exclusion of women, unskilled workers and the poor and destitute.239 Nor did the appropriation of the Aristotelian concept of civitas from the twelfth century lead to ‘democratic’ forms of governance. While such twelfth- and thirteenth-century scholars as John of Salisbury, Thomas Aquinas, Henry of Ghent and John of Paris continued to adhere to monarchial forms of governance,240 the concept of citizen did not necessarily overlap with an inclusive conception of populus. From an Aristotelian perspective populus refers to a body of citizens who act reasonably in the name of the common good—not to the ‘many-headed monster’ who rebelled to be included.241 This is why the late medieval oligarchies in Venice and Florence were at the same time considered legitimate Republics.

The Fabrication of the Urban Body Politic  105 Nevertheless, the guilds in the Low Countries successfully fought for the inclusion of manufacturing artisans—people working with their hands—in the political body. What this chapter has shown is that their political views and goals moreover had an enduring impact on the urban body politic. Instead of transforming, from early on, into city-states ruled by an oligarchic elite legitimized by a discourse on civic republicanism, most larger cities in the Low Countries developed into political federations with a genuine corporative structure. The body politic was not only imagined but also formed as a body with members, the latter being guilds next to patrician families. The different corporations formed the building blocks of a body with a head (the inner council, or a burgomaster) and different members, with the members themselves being composed in turn of a head (the guild board) and members (the individual masters). Whenever necessary an intermediate structure was created, notably the umbrella guilds or nations which grouped the guilds to be included in the body politic. In this context, searching for such modern political mechanisms as general voting is cumbersome, and so is framing the extremely complex systems of electing and decision making which actually materialized. While bottomup electing of deans or governors could accompany top-down nomination of candidates, cooptation may have involved acclamation. The difference between top-down and bottom-up is, thus, less clear cut than it may seem on the surface. Moreover, indirect elections, rotation systems, and crossed systems of electing and nominating did not simply serve to strike compromises and balance power. These mechanisms corresponded to a corporative view of the urban body politic in which the whole was not simply created by a system of proportional representation. Rotation and crossed systems not only served to maintain peace, but beyond that enabled the formation of one body while simultaneously leaving its ‘members’ intact. Indirect elections moreover meant that the ideal of unanimity was maintained notwithstanding practical obstacles and the involvement of different communities. In this vein, it is also instructive to look at what generally did not materialize (on the urban level), namely choosing by lot and geographical repartitions, which would both be somewhat at odds with the idea of the city as a federation of corporations. Not coincidentally, perhaps, geography mattered more from the sixteenth century on, the period in which other conceptions of the urban body politic took root. All this is not to romanticize the medieval cities or guilds as types of communes or brotherhoods. My aim is rather to draw attention to the obvious fact that the power-sharing and pacifying mechanisms were influenced by contemporary political thinking and religious sensibilities. What is clear, in my view, is that the imaginary and discourse of the city as an organic whole, with the corporations as its members, had a real impact. In medieval political thinking, a commune was a natural entity which coincides and coemerges with the rationality or purpose of the actors and actors’ groups to embody it. Individual wills or group interests did not in theory precede the body politic, and political strife was not only about gaining a share. This

106  The Fabrication of the Urban Body Politic will be further examined in chapters 4 and 5, which will take into account in more detail the patriarchal and religious contexts respectively. While the idea of the father as the head of the household was fundamental for the corporative ideology, the metaphor of the body was closely connected to the Christian faith, which centered on the body of Christ. In mass, the host not only symbolized or represented Christ’s body: it was that body. God was immanent, present in all things on earth, which entails that each individual is part of the same spirit, through the soul. In chapter 5 we will see that these ideas also materialized in such civic ceremonies as Corpus Christi processions.242 For now, it is important to emphasize that the mechanisms described above transformed in the late medieval and early modern period. Perhaps counterintuitively, majority voting would seem to have prevailed from early on, while consensus seeking through unanimity (e.g., in election committees), acclamation or obedience to the voice of the most wealthy or prestigious in all likelihood remained important. Indeed, it may have become more important owing to oligarchization, which had a profound impact on the mechanisms and procedures of electing and decision-making. Both were gradually more limited to a small elite on the urban as well as the guild level, while mechanisms of cooptation increasingly prevailed. This was legitimized with reference to ideas on civic republicanism, but a major difference with the Italian city-states was the continuing field of tension between the cities and the central states—with the latter incrementally encroaching upon the autonomy and self-rule of the urban communes. Beyond oligarchization and state formation, however, may have lurked a transformation in which the city as a commune or a federation of communes dissolved. While, as we will see below, a great deal of guild-based masters stopped being interested in political participation or public office, pecuniary mechanisms and financial and economic interests may have been a substitute for both inheritance and virtue as a motivation. In the history of political thought, the replacement of the principle of unanimity by majority voting was linked to the profound crisis of authority in the late medieval period.243 This is said to have resulted in the so-called conciliar movement, in which the organic conception of society was called into question by William of Ockham (ca. 1288–1347) and others. Ockham rejected the idea of a collective personality and the related notion of an artificial moral person.244 His individualistic ideas resulted in a certain tension between representation by delegation on the one hand, and unanimous consent on the other.245 This tension was also present in our case study, with majority voting prevailing in the long run. It remains to be seen, however, to what extent individualistic ideas emerged and when. Nor is it clear how these ideas linked up with economic transformations. In the next two chapters, I will look at these issues through the prism of master status and how it was obtained through either inheritance or apprenticeship. In chapter 4 in particular, I will examine how ‘possessive individualism’ became more

The Fabrication of the Urban Body Politic  107 important for guild-based artisans in both their economic practices and the relation to their guild. Chapter 3 first zeroes in on the rationale of the regulatory framework. The ultimate aim is to shed light on the long-term transformations related to the ultimate building block of the corporative commune, the master—who was head of the household and the family firm simultaneously.

Notes   1 ‘jongers, maar als mannen, voix voor voix, ende man voor man’. Van Elsacker, ‘ “Secretelijck opgegeten” ’, 151.   2 Blockmans, ‘Vete’, esp. 32–33. See also the critical comments of Braekevelt et al., ‘The politics, 24–28.  3 Farr, Artisans, 160. Also Walker, German Home Towns.  4 Najemy, Corporatism, esp. 9–10. Also: Idem, ‘Guild Republicanism’, 55–60.  5 Najemy, Corporatism, esp. 13.  6 Najemy, Corporatism, esp. chs. 7, 8 and the Epilogue. See also Baker, ‘Discursive Republicanism’.   7  Quote in Rubinstein, ‘Italian Political Thought’, 38.   8 Dumolyn and Lecuppre-Desjardin, ‘Le bien commun’, 262–263. Also: CrouzetPavan and Lecuppre-Desjardin, ‘Introduction’.   9  Quoted in Monahan, Consent, 213. Also: Nederman, Community, ch. 5. 10 Partridge, Consent, ch. 1; Monahan, Consent, 209–229. 11 Black, Guild, 52–63. Also Coornaert, Les corporations, 213–220. 12 Black, Guild, esp. chs. 3 and 4. Also Black, ‘Christianity’. 13 Dumolyn, ‘Privileges’, 8. Also: Jan Dumolyn, ‘ “Our Land” ’ and Dumolyn and Haemers, ‘A Bad Chicken’. 14  Liddy and Haemers, ‘Popular Politics’; Dumolyn, ‘The Vengeance’. Also: Arnade, ‘Crowds’; Boone, ‘Armes’; Haemers, ‘A Moody Community’, 63–81; Haemers, ‘Bloed’. 15 Farr, Artisans, 177. 16 Thrupp, ‘The Gilds’, 240; Farr, Artisans, 183. 17 Thrupp, ‘The Gilds’, 242. 18 Farr, Artisans, 164–165, 166. Also Mackenney, Tradesmen and Najemy, Corporatism. 19 In Utrecht (Holland) as well, the guilds sometimes gained absolute control over the municipal institution for short periods of time, as was the case in 1274 and 1304. Dumolyn, ‘Guild Politics’. 20 Des Marez, L’organisation, 379–380, 383; Van Honacker, Lokaal verzet, 93–135. 21 Favresse, L’avènement, 225–228, 230–233; Jacobs, ‘De ambachten’, 560; Van Uytven, ‘Beroering’, 178. 22 Blockmans, ‘Flemings’, 324–325. 23 Vandewalle, ‘De Brugse stadsmagistraat’, 32–33. 24 Mertens, ‘Bestuursinstellingen’, 323. For Ghent, see Van Werveke, Gent, 30. 25  Planitz, ‘Kaufmannsgilde’, 61; Decavele, ‘Bestuursinstellingen’, 277; Trio, ‘Bestuursinstellingen’, 337. 26 Guignet, Le pouvoir, 55. 27 Blockmans, De volksvertegenwoordiging, 74, 76–77. 28 Vandewalle, ‘De Brugse stadsmagistraat’, 30–31. 29 Decavele, ‘Bestuursinstellingen’, 279, 282–284; Blockmans, De volksvertegenwoordiging, 73–75.

108  The Fabrication of the Urban Body Politic 30 Boone and Prak, ‘Rulers’, 109–111. 31 Des Marez, L’organisation, 127–128; Boumans, Het Antwerps stadsbestuur, 27; Van Honacker, Lokaal verzet, 95; Jacobs, ‘De ambachten, 562. 32 Decavele, ‘Bestuursinstellingen’, 279, 283. 33 Boone and Prak, ‘Rulers’, 111–112. A detailed account in Haemers, For the Common Good. Decavele, ‘Bestuursinstellingen’, 279, 283. Ghent was also forced then to 34  renounce its militia and extra-urban jurisidiction. Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 613ff. 35 Des Marez, L’organisation, 160–161. 36 Boone, A la recherché, 46. 37 Decavele, ‘Bestuursinstellingen’, 277. See also the very detailed analysis for Florence in Najemy, Corporatism. 38 Decavele, ‘Bestuursinstellingen’, 279, 284; Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 34–38, 294–295. 39 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 323–328. 40 Jacobs, ‘De ambachten’, 564. 41 A focus on the stability and resilience of the urban elites and power mechanisms in Valenciennes in Junot, Les bourgeois, esp. chs. 4–6. 42 Hyde, Society, 63; Théry, ‘Moyen Âge’, 673; Monahan, Consent, 153. 43 Genet, ‘Political Theory’, 25. 44 See e.g. Monahan, Consent, 209–229. 45 Examples from German cities in Schulz,‘Wahlen’. 46 Mertens, ‘Bestuursinstellingen’, 323. 47 Stabel, ‘Stedelijke instellingen’, 254–245. 48 Trio, ‘Bestuursinstellingen’, 337. 49 Decavele, ‘Bestuursinstellingen’, 278, 280. For Douai, see Guignet, Le pouvoir, 55–56. 50 Favresse, L’avènement, 39, 43. 51 Favresse, L’avènement, 43ff. 52 Braekevelt et al., ‘The Politics’, 29. 53 Howell, ‘Achieving’, esp. 110–115. 54 Vandewalle, ‘De Brugse stadsmagistraat’, 28. 55 Decavele, ‘Bestuursinstellingen’, 282. 56 Cf. Skinner, The Foundation, 3–4. 57 Boone, Gent, 33–48; Decavele, ‘Bestuursinstellingen’, 279, 282–284; Blockmans, De volksvertegenwoordiging, 73–75. Other examples in Guignet, Le pouvoir, 41–72. 58 The inner council thus comprised ten patricians (one burgomaster, seven aldermen and two treasurers—with the latter being elected as before) and nine ‘commoners’ (one burgomaster, two treasurers and six councilors. Favresse, L’avènement, 226–227; Des Marez, L’organisation, 379; Van Uytven, ‘Beroering’, 178; Van Honacker, Karin, Lokaal verzet, 95. 59 Des Marez, L’organisation, 382. 60 Brown, Civic Ceremony, 29; Murray, Bruges, 113–114. 61 Van Honacker, Karin, Lokaal verzet, 94. 62 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 270–272. 63 E.g., Guignet, Le pouvoir, 45. 64 Favresse, L’avènement, 67, 75, 87–88. 65 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 273–274, 277, 283. Also, Boone, Gent, 58–92. 66 Favresse, L’avènement, 139–144. 67 Van Uytven, ‘Beroering’, 178.

The Fabrication of the Urban Body Politic  109  68 Verhavert, Het ambachtswezen, 98–99.  69 Cuvelier, Les institutions, 256; Verhavert, Het ambachtswezen, 101–102.  70 Cuvelier, Les institutions, 218–220.  71 Van werveke, ‘De medezeggenschap’, 18–19; Blockmans, De volksvertegenwoordiging, 76.   72 Cf. Quillet, ‘Community’; Théry, ‘Moyen Âge’, 671–672.  73 Blockmans, De volksvertegenwoordiging, 73.  74 Xhayet, Réseaux, 81–83.   75 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 271, 274–275, 295 (including other examples).  76 Murray, Bruges, 114.  77 Brown, Civic Ceremony, 54. Also: Dumolyn, ‘Guild Politics’.   78 Decavele, ‘Bestuursinstellingen’, 294.  79 Favresse, L’avènement, 148.   80 E.g., Dumolyn, ‘Guild Politics’.   81 Waley, The Italian City-Republics, 63; Théry, ‘Moyen Âge’, 673; Monahan, Consent, 152–153.   82 Théry, ‘Moyen Âge’, 673.   83 Théry, ‘Moyen Âge’, 673. More detail in Keller, ‘Wahlformen’.  84 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 270, 277.   85 Decavele, ‘Bestuursinstellingen’, 282.  86 Des Marez, L’organisation, 383.  87 Boone, Gent, 29; Idem, ‘ “In den beginne” ’, 348.  88 Monahan, Consent, 151.   89 Planitz, ‘Kaufmannsgilde’, 52–76.   90 Stabel, ‘Stedelijke instellingen’, 256–257. Also: Guignet, Le pouvoir, 44.   91 Trio, ‘Bestuursinstellingen’, 335–336.   92 Decavele, ‘Bestuursinstellingen’, 278.   93 Mertens, ‘Bestuursinstellingen’, 326–327.   94 References in Cuvelier, Les institutions, 172.  95 Cuvelier, Les institutions, 172–173; Verhavert, Het ambachtswezen, 101–102.  96 Cuvelier, Les institutions, 218–220.   97 The old alderman and the representatives of the patriciate are often seen as one and the same member at the time.  98 Boumans, Het Antwerps stadsbestuur, 21–32; Van Honacker, Lokaal verzet, 137–142; Jacobs, ‘De ambachten’, 564–565; Van Elsacker, ‘ “Secretelijck opgegeten” ’, 136–140.  99 Coornaert, Les corporations, 217–218; Black, Guild, 61. 100 Des Marez, L’organisation, 15; Favresse, L’avènement, blz. 48, 66–67; Cuvelier, Les institutions, 242–243; Verhavert, Het ambachtswezen, 23. 101 Des Marez, L’organisation, 10; Verhavert, Het ambachtswezen, 35–36; Blockmans, ‘Het vroegste’, 193; Hansotte, ‘Naissance’, 12; Xhayet, Réseaux, 80–81. Also Dumolyn and Haemers, ‘Reclaiming’. 102 Dumolyn, ‘The Vengeance’. 103 Coornaert, Les corporations, 215. 104 Coornaert, Les corporations, 215; Van Werveke, ‘De medezeggenschap’, 6. 105 Favresse, L’avènement, 80–81. 106 Espinas, Les origines, Tome I, 1098ff; Des Marez, L’organisation, 10; Verhavert, Het ambachtswezen, 22. 107 Stabel, ‘Stedelijke instellingen’, 257. 108 Van werveke, ‘De medezeggenschap’, 18–19. 109 Des Marez, L’organisation, 166, 262, 271, 278, 281. Also: Hansotte, ‘Naissance’, 22.

110  The Fabrication of the Urban Body Politic 110 Verhavert, Het ambachtswezen, 112–123. Also: Junot, Les bourgeois, 189. 111 E.g. the first charter in Leuven, of the weavers, on 13 October 1360. Verhavert, Het ambachtswezen, 23, 39. 112 Cuvelier, Les institutions, 242–243. 113 Espinas, Les origines, Tome I, 1066–1067. 114 Verhavert, Het ambachtswezen, 56. Quillet, ‘Community’, 554–572, 555; Théry, ‘Moyen Âge’, 667–678, 668; 115  Blockmans, ‘Representation’, 49. 116 Monahan, Consent, 133–143. According to Pirenne ‘le système primitif de décision dans les assemblées publiques, est la décision à l’unanimité’. Pirenne, ‘Les origines’, 686. 117 Monahan, Consent, 137–138. Nonetheless, instances of majority voting can be found already in the twelfth century (e.g. Genoa in 1143) and the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries (Parma 1231 and Venice 1326). 118 Quillet, ‘Community’, 554–572, 556. 119 Keller, ‘Wahlformen’, 361; Black, Guild, 24–25, 61–62. More on discussions among medieval scholars about the required quorum see: Rigaudière, ‘Voter’; Monahan, Consent, 136. 120  Each year seven members are elected out of the seven families. Favresse, L’avènement, 67. 121 De aldermen first nominated the eight, after which the eight appointed two deans. Favresse, L’avènement, 67. 122 Cuvelier, Les institutions, 178. 123 E.g., City Archives Antwerp (CAA), Gildes and Trades (GT) 4267, fo 7v, Ordinance of the Antwerp masons for the erection of a poor box (1493). 124 E.g., City Archives Mechelen (CAM), Old Archive, Brewers, Statutes and Privileges, XIV, nr. 416, 1732; CAA, GT 4113, Extract, 11 November 1754; Also: Verhavert, Het ambachtswezen, 104. 125 Hesters, ‘  “Zoot hier voortijts geweest hadde” ’, 44. 126 Boumans, Het Antwerps stadsbestuur, 33. 127 Esmein, ‘L’unanimité’, 379–381. 128 Prevenier, De leden, 140–141. 129 CAM, Tanners, nrs 271–281, Ordinance 1764. 130 Rigaudière, ‘Voter’, 1459–1469. 131 Prevenier, De leden, 140–141. 132 Pirenne, ‘Les origines’. 133 Riguadière, ‘Voter’, 1467–1468; Prevenier, De leden, 135, 139. 134 Esmein, ‘L’unanimité’; Monahan, Consent, 133–143. 135 Dumolyn, ‘Guild Politics’. 136 ‘Om dagelicx same te sprekene, raet ende advijs met malcanderen te nemene.’ Quote in Liddy and Haemers, ‘Popular Politics’, 784. 137 Ibidem. 138 Thøfner, A common Art, 20. Comp. with Van Leeuwen, ‘Ritueel’. 139 Rubinstein, ‘Italian Political Thought’, 31 (with additional references). 140 Nederman, Community, 75. Also: Monahan, Consent, 133–143, 209–229. 141 Nederman, Community, 85–88. 142 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 617–619. 143 Van Honacker, Lokaal verzet, 94, 99. 144 Clark, European Cities, 96. 145 Coornaert, Les corporations, 218. 146 For a detailed analysis of the early period, see Van Uytven, ‘Plutocratie’. 147 Cuvelier, Les institutions, 178. 148 Van Honacker, Lokaal verzet, 93–95, 100. 149 Van Honacker, Lokaal verzet, 142–144, 151–162, 222–226.

The Fabrication of the Urban Body Politic  111 150 Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 354–345. 151 Chittolini, ‘Cities’, 34ff; Clark, European Cities, 97. 152 Farr, Artisans, 167. 153 See e.g., Van Honacker, Lokaal verzet, 104–105, 109–110, 112–123, 141–162, etc. 154 Blockmans, ‘Flemings’; Idem, ‘Representation’. 155 Farr, Artisans, 176. 156 Guignet, Le pouvoir, 318–344 and ‘Les apports’. 157 Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 353. Also Dambruyne, ‘Guilds’, 56. 158 Dambruyne, ‘De Gentse bouwvakambachten’, 77–78; Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 353–354. 159 ‘gelyck oock in andere ambachten wordt gebruyckt’. Quoted in Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 354. 160 Van Honacker, Lokaal verzet, 224. 161 Van Honacker, Lokaal verzet, 135, 186. See also De Keyzer, ‘Opportunisme’, 21. 162 Van Honacker, Lokaal verzet, 186. Other examples in Verleysen, Het hemelse festijn, 41, 43–47. 163 Van Honacker, Lokaal verzet, 123–131, 176–177, 181ff, 205, 218. 164 Quoted in Leeson, Travelling, 47 and Farr, Artisans, 161. 165 Farr, Artisans, 162. 166 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 484–491. Kaplan, ‘The Character’, 635; Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 115–116. 167  Comp. with Prak, ‘Een verzekerd bestaan’, 53–54. 168 Van Elsacker, ‘ “Secretelijck opgegeten” ’, 136, 138–141. 169 Verleysen, Het hemelse festijn, 39–40. 170 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 286–287. 171 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 179, 194–199. 172 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, ch. 2.3.2 and 334. 173 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 284–285. 174 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 318–319. 175 ‘dat de zelve neerijnghe nu twelf, vijftien ende meer jaeren gheduerich is gheregeert geworden door de zelve persoonen, die elckanderen gheduerich kiesen, ende van het een leth in het andere passeren. . .’ Verleysen, Het hemelse festijn, 39. 176 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 315–316. Also: Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 352–353. 177 Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 354–356. Similar arguments in Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 271–272. 178 Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 356–357. 179 ‘hun gevoelen’. Van Elsacker, ‘ “Secretelijck opgegeten” ’, 144, noot 64. 180 Verhavert, Het ambachtswezen, 110–111. 181 De Munck, Technologies, 88. 182 Kluge, Die Zünfte, 356. 183 Van Honacker, Lokaal verzet, 191. 184 Van Elsacker, ‘ “Secretelijck opgegeten” ’, 143–146. 185 Van Elsacker, ‘ “Secretelijck opgegeten” ’, 143–144. 186 Van Elsacker, ‘ “Secretelijck opgegeten” ’, 155. Also: Vandenbroeck, ‘Stadscultuur’, 78. 187 Van Elsacker, ‘ “Secretelijck opgegeten” ’, 148. 188 De Keyzer, ‘Opportunisme’. 189 ‘convocatie van geheel het ambacht’ and ‘omdat het natuerelijk is dat de dekens sijnde de representanten van de supposten door de selve gekosen worden’. De Keyzer, ‘Opportunisme’, 23.

112  The Fabrication of the Urban Body Politic 190 De Keyzer, ‘Opportunisme’, 18–25 (with additional references). 191 Schilling, ‘Gab es’. 192 Dambruyne, ‘De middenstand’, 107; Van Bruaene, ‘A Breakdown’, 283. 193 Blickle, Communal Reformation. 194 E.g., Kuttner, Het hongerjaar. 195 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 678–679 (with additional references). 196 Broadhead, ‘Guildsmen’. 197 Schilling, ‘Reformation’, and Konfessionskonflikt Also: Hsia, Social Discipline, 3–4. 198 E.g., Brady, ‘In Search’. 199 Cf. Hsia, Social Disciplining, 1–9; Ozment, The Reformation. Bossy, Christianity describes a shift from a focus on the seven deadly sins to a focus on the Ten Commandments and the bible 200 E.g., Broadhead, ‘Guildsmen’, 577–578. 201 Moeller, Reichstadt, 34–66; Ozment, The Reformation; Broadhead, ‘Guildsmen’, 578. 202 Broadhead, ‘Guildsmen’, 586. 203 Schilling, ‘Gab es’, 115, 140. Recent views and references in Isaiasz and Pohlig, ‘Soziale Ordnung’. 204 Van Der Wee, ‘The Economy’; Marnef, ‘The Towns’, 87. 205 Moeller, Reichstadt; Ozment, The Reformation, Black, ‘Christianity’, 652. 206 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 636; Van Bruaene, ‘A Breakdown’, 284. A detailed account in Decavele, ‘ “Genève” ’ and Van Bruaene, ‘De Calvinistische Republiek’. 207 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 660 (with additional references). The broader tradition of revolt in which this was coached is sketched in Blockmans, ‘Alternatives’ and Boone and Prak, ‘Rulers’. 208 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 661–662. Also: Dambruyne, ‘De middenstand’ and Decavele, ‘ “Genève” ’, 51. 209 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 646ff. 210 Marnef, ‘The Towns’, 89. In both Ghent and Brussels, the Committee of Eighteen favored the renewal of the treaty of 1339. Marnef, ‘The Towns’, 99. 211 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 647–649. 212 Van Gelderen, The Political Thought; Arnade, Beggars. 213 Schilling, ‘Gab es’, 104, 115–117, 137–138. 214 Schilling, ‘Gab es’, 117ff. 215 Marnef, ‘The Process’, esp. 29–30. In Brussels, the wider council (Brede Raad), which included guild and district members, gained political clout too. Marnef, ‘Brabants calvinisme’, 19, Ftn 39. 216 Marnef, ‘Brabants calvinisme’, 14; Marnef, ‘The Towns’, 94–95, 99. 217  Marnef, ‘The Towns’, 99. Quote (‘Ghent een coopstadt te makene ghelyc Genève, eene onwinnelycke stad ten voordele vanden ghemeente’) in Decavele, ‘ “Genève” ’, 37; Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 664; Van Bruaene, ‘A Breakdown’, 285 and Van Bruaene, ‘De Calvinistische Republiek’, 37. 218 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 668. 219 Davis, ‘The Sacred’, 47–49. Also Marnef, ‘The Process’, 29. 220 Van Bruaene, ‘The Adieu’, esp. 217–219; Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 644. 221 Marnef, ‘The Towns’, 90. In the Northern principalities the shooting guilds were prominent. See Boone and Prak, ‘Rulers’, 115–120 and Van Nierop, ‘Popular Participation’. 222 Farr, Hands, 231. 223 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 622–634, 641–644, 650–652, 656, and ‘De middenstand’.

The Fabrication of the Urban Body Politic  113 224 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 38, 198–201, 295–296, 622–634, 641–644, 652–654, 656. 225 Van Bruaene, ‘De Calvinistische Republiek’, 43–45. 226  Van Bruaene, ‘A Breakdown’, 286–288; Van Bruaene, ‘De Calvinistische Republiek’, 46–48. 227 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 38, 198–201, 295–296. 228 Marnef, ‘The Towns’, 99. 229 Verleysen ‘ “Pretense Confrerieën” ’, 158–159. 230 Darby, ‘Introduction’, 6. 231 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 296. 232 Van Bruaene, ‘A breakdown’, 286; Van Bruaene, ‘De Calvinistische Republiek’, 49–50. 233 Davis, ‘The Sacred’, 58. 234 Davis, ‘The Sacred’, 59–60. 235 Davis, ‘The Sacred’, 62–68. 236 Muir, Ritual, 181. 237 Hansotte, ‘Naissance’, 11. 238 Quillet, ‘Community’, 554–572, 556–557, 557ff; Théry, ‘Moyen Âge’, 670. 239 Boucheron and Menjot, ‘La ville’, 508ff, 516. 240 Monahan, Consent, Part 3. 241 Keller, ‘ “Kommune” ’, 606; Genet, ‘Political Theory’, 25. 242 Vandenbroeck, ‘Stadscultuur’, 82–84; Mervyn, ‘Ritual’; Davis, ‘The Sacred’; Zika, ‘Hosts’; Muir, Ritual, ch. 5. The archetypical form is of course mass, in which the social body of the community was literally gathered in communion to consecrate the body of Christ. Mervyn, ‘Ritual’, 9. See also: Bossy, ‘The Mass’. 243 Quillet, ‘Community’, 554–572, 556. 244 Quillet, ‘Community’, 561–567; Théry, ‘Moyen Âge’, 672ff. 245 Quillet, ‘Community’, 554–572, 564.

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The Fabrication of the Urban Body Politic  117 Haemers, Jelle. ‘A Moody Community: Emotion and Ritual in Late Medieval Urban Revolts.’ In Lecuppere-Desjardin, Élodie and Van Bruaene, Anne-Laure eds. Emotions in the Heart of the City (14th‑16th century). Turnhout: Brepols, 2005, pp. 63–81. Haemers, Jelle. ‘Bloed en inkt: Een nieuwe blik op opstand en geweld te Leuven, 1360–1383.’ Stadsgeschiedenis 7 (2012) 2: 141–164. Haemers, Jelle. For the Common Good: State Power and Urban Revolts in the Reign of Mary of Burgundy, 1477–1482. Turnhout: Brepols, 2009. Hansotte, Georges. ‘Naissance et développement des métiers liégeois (XIIIe et XIVe siècles).’ Bulletin de la société d’art et d’histoire du Diocèse de Liège 36 (1950): 1–34. Hesters, David. ‘Zoot hier voortijts geweest hadde:’ De rol van de stedelijke corporaties in de Gentse calvinistische republiek (1577–1584). Ghent, 2009 (Unpublished master’s thesis, University of Gent). Howell, Martha C. ‘Achieving the Guild Effect Without Guilds: Crafts and Craftsmen in Late Medieval Douai.’ In Lambrechts, Pascale and Sosson, Jean-Pierre eds. Les métiers au Moyen Age: Aspects économiques et sociaux. Louvain-La-Neuve: Université Catholique de Louvain, 1994, pp. 109–128. Hsia, Ronnie Po-Chia. Social Discipline in the Reformation: Central Europe, 1550– 1750. London and New York: Routledge, 1989. Hyde, J.K. Society and Politics in Mediaeval Italy. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1973. Isaiasz, Vera and Pohlig, Matthias. ‘Soziale Ordnung und Ihre Repräsentationen: Perspektiven der Forschungsrichtung “Stadt und Religion“.‘ In Isaiasz, Vera, Lotz-Heumann, Ute, Mommertz, Monika and Matthias, Pohlig eds. Stadt und Religion in der frühen Neuzeit: Soziale Ordnungen und ihre Repräsentationen. Frankfurt and New York: Campus Verlag, 2007, pp. 9–32. Jacobs, Marc. ‘De ambachten in Brabant en Mechelen (12de eeuw-1795).’ In De gewestelijke en lokale overheidsinstellingen in Brabant en Mechelen tot 1795. Brussels: Algemeen Rijksarchief, 2000, pp. 558–624. Junot, Yves. Les bourgeois de Valenciennes: Anatomie d’une élite dans la ville (1500–1630). Villeneuve d’Ascq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2009. Kaplan, Steven L. ‘The Character and Implications of Strife Among the Masters Inside the Guilds in Eighteenth-Century Paris.’ Journal of Social History 19 (1986): 631–647. Keller, Hagen. ‘ “Kommune”: Städtische Selbtsregierung und mittelalterliche “Volksherrschaft” im Spiegel italienischer Wahlverfahren des 12.-14. Jahrhunderts.’ In Althoff, Gerd, Geuenich, Dieter and Oexle, Otto Gerhard eds. Person und Gemeinschaft im Mittelalter. Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 1988, pp. 573– 616 (Zum fünfundsechzigsten Geburtstag Karl Schmid). Keller, Hagen. ‘Wahlformen und Gemeinschaftverständnis in den italienischen Stadtkommunen (12./14. Jahrhundert).’ In Schneider, Reinhard und Zimmerman, Harald eds. Wahlen und Wählen im Mittelalter. Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 1990, pp. 345–374. Klüge, Arnd. Die Zünfte. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2009. Kuttner, Erich. Het hongerjaar 1566. Amsterdam: 1949. Leeson, R.A. Travelling Brothers. The Six Centuries Road from Craft Fellowship tot Trade Unionism. London: Allen and Unwin, 1979. Liddy, Christian and Haemers, Jelle. ‘Popular Politics in the Late Medieval City: York and Bruges.’ English Historical Review 128 (2013) 533: 771–805.

118  The Fabrication of the Urban Body Politic Mackenney, Richard. Tradesmen and Traders: The World of the Guilds in Venice and Europe, c. 1250—c. 1650. London and Sydney: Croom Helm, 1987. Marnef, Guido. ‘Brabants calvinisme in opmars: de weg naar de calvinistische republieken te Antwerpen, Brussel en Mechelen, 1577–1180.’ Bijdragen tot de geschiedenis 70 (1987) 1/2: 7–2 (Special issue: ‘Religieuze stromingen te Antwerpen voor en na 1585). Marnef, Guido. ‘The Process of Political Change Under the Calvinist Republic in Antwerp (1577–1585).’ In Weis, Monique ed. Des villes en révolte: Les “répu­ bliques urbaines” aux Pays-Bas et en France pendant la deuxième moitié du XVIe siècle. Turnhout: Brepols, 2010, pp. 25–33. Marnef, Guido. ‘The Towns and the Revolt.’ In Darby, Graham ed. The Origins and Development of the Dutch Revolt. London and New York: Routledge, 2001, pp. 84–106. Mertens, Jacques. ‘Bestuursinstellingen van de stad Brugge.’ In Prevenier, Walter and Augustyn, Beatrijs eds. De gewestelijke en lokale instellingen in Vlaanderen tot 1795. Brussels: Algemeen Rijksarchief, 1997, pp. 323–332. Mervyn, James. ‘Ritual, Drama and Social Body in the Late Medieval English Town.’ Past and Present 98 (February 1983): 3–29. Moeller, Bernd. Reichstadt und Reformation. Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1962. Monahan, Arthur P. Consent, Coercion, and Limit: The Medieval Origins of Parliamentary Democracy. Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1987. Muir, Edward. Ritual in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Murray, James M. Bruges, Cradle of Capitalism, 1280–1390. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Najemy, John M. Corporatism and Consensus in Florentine Electorial Politics, 1280–1400. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982. Najemy, John M. ‘Guild Republicanism in Trecento Florence: The Successes and Ultimate Failure of Corporate Politics.’ American Historical Review 84 (1979): 53–71. Nederman, Cary J. Community and Consent: The Secular Political Theory of Marsiglio of Padua’s Defensor Pacis. London: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 1995. Ozment, Steven E. The Reformation in the Cities: The Appeal of Protestantism to Sixteenth-Century Germany and Switzerland. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975. Partridge, Percy H. Consent and Consensus. London: Pall Mall, 1971. Pirenne, Henri. ‘Les origines du vote à la majorité dans les assemblées publiques.’ Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire IX (1930): 685–686. Planitz, Hans. ‘Kaufmannsgilde und städtische Eidgenossenschaft in niederfränkischen städten im 11. und 12. Jh.’ Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, Germanistische Abteilung 60 (1940): 1–116. Prak, Maarten. ‘ “Een verzekerd bestaan”: Ambachtslieden, winkeliers en hun gilden in Den Bosch (ca. 1775).’ In De Vries, Boudien et al. eds. De kracht der zwakken: Studies over arbeid en arbeidersbeweging in het verleden, Amsterdam: Stichting Beheer IISG, 1992, pp. 49–78. Prevenier, Walter. De leden en de staten van Vlaanderen (1384–1405). Brussels: Paleis der Academiën, 1961 (Verhandelingen van de Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België).

The Fabrication of the Urban Body Politic  119 Quillet, Jeannine. ‘Community, Counsel and Representation.’ In Burns, James H. ed. The Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought, c. 350—c. 1450. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988, pp. 520–545. Rigaudière, Albert. ‘Voter dans les villes de France au moyen age (XIIIe-XVe siècle).’ Comptes rendus des séances de l’Académie des Inscriptions et belles-lettres 144 (2000) 4: 1439–1471. Rubinstein, Nicolai. ‘Italian Political Thought, 1450–1530.’ In Burns, James H. ed. The Cambridge History of Political Thought, 1450–1700. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991, pp. 30–65. Schilling, Heinz. ‘Gab es im späten Mittelalter und zu Beginn der Neuzeit in Deutschland einen städtischen “Republikanismus”? Zur politischen Kultur des alteuropäischen Stadtbürgertums.’ In Koenigsberger, Helmut G. ed. Republiken und Republikanismus im Europa der Frühen Neuzeit. Munchen: R. Oldenburg Verlag, 1988, pp. 101–143 (Schriften des Historischen Kollegs 11). Schilling, Heinz. Konfessionskonflikt und Staatsbildung: Eine Fallstudie über das Verhältnis von religiösem und sozialem Wandel in der Frühneuzeit am Beispiel der Grafschaft Lippe. Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus Mohn, 1981. Schilling, Heinz. ‘Reformation und Bürgerfreiheit: Emdens Weg zur Calvinistischen Stadtrepublik.’ In Moeller, Bernd ed. Stadt und Kirche im 16. Jahrhundert. Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus Mohn, 1978, pp. 128–161. Schulz, Knut. ‘Wahlen und Formen der Mitbestimmung in der mittelalterlichen Stadt des 12./13. Jahrhunderts: Voraussetzungen und Wandlungen.’ In Schneider, Reinhard und Zimmerman, Harald eds. Wahlen und Wählen im Mittelalter. Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 1990, pp. 323–344. Skinner, Quentin. The Foundation of Modern Political Though: Vol. I: The Renaissance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Stabel, Peter. ‘Stedelijke instellingen (12de eeuw-1795).’ In Prevenier, Walter and Augustyn, Beatrijs eds. De gewestelijke en lokale instellingen in Vlaanderen tot 1795. Brussels: Algemeen Rijksarchief, 1997, pp. 247–276. Théry, Julien. ‘Moyen Âge.’ In Perrineau, Pascal and Reynié, Dominique eds. Dictionnaire du vote. Paris : Presses Universitaires de France, 2001, pp. 667–678. Thøfner, Margit. A Common Art: Urban Ceremonial in Antwerp and Brussels During and After the Dutch Revolt. Zwolle: Waanders, 2007. Thrupp, Sylvia L. ‘The Gilds.’ In Postan, M.M., Rich, E.E. and Miller, Edward eds. The Cambridge Economic History of Europe: Volume III: Economic Organization and Policies in the Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971, pp. 230–280. Trio, Paul. ‘Bestuursinstellingen van de stad Ieper.’ In Prevenier, Walter and Augustyn, Beatrijs eds. De gewestelijke en lokale instellingen in Vlaanderen tot 1795. Brussels: Algemeen Rijksarchief, 1997, pp. 333–360. Van Bruaene, Anne-Laure. ‘A Breakdown of Civic Community? Civic Traditions, Voluntary Associations and the Ghent Calvinist Regime (1577–1584).’ In Eckstein, Nicholas and Terpstra, Nicholas eds. Sociability and Its Discontents: Civil Society, Social Capital and Their Alternatives in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Turnhout: Brepols, 2009, pp. 273–291. Van Bruaene, Anne-Laure. ‘De Calvinistische Republiek in Gent (1577–1584): De stedelijke samenleving onder hoogspanning.’ In Praet, Danny ed. Protestantisme: Aspecten van de Reformatie tussen Humanisme en Verlichting. Gent: Academia Press, 2014, pp. 37–57.

120  The Fabrication of the Urban Body Politic Van Bruaene, Anne-Laure. ‘The “Adieu” and “Willecome” for Jan van Hembyze, or: The Battle Between Script and Print in Calvinist Ghent’. Archive for Reformation History 105 (2014): 206–229. Van Der Wee, Herman. ‘The Economy as a Factor in the Revolt in the Southern Netherlands.’ Acta Historiae Neerlandicae 5 (1971): 52–67. (Reprinted in Van Der Wee, Herman. The Low Countries in the Early Modern World. Aldershot: Variorum, 1993, pp. 264–278). Van Elsacker, Bert. ‘ “Secretelijck opgegeten” of “ongeruste geesten”? De politieke participatie van het bestuur van het Antwerpse meerseniersambacht in de zeventiende eeuw.’ Tijdschrift voor Sociale Geschiedenis 26 (2000): 129–163. Van Gelderen, Maarten. The Political Thought of the Dutch Revolt, 1555–1590. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Van Honacker, Karin. Lokaal verzet en oproer in de 17de en 18de eeuw: Collectieve acties tegen het centraal gezag in Brussel, Antwerpen en Leuven. Heule: UGA, 1994. Van Leeuwen, Jacoba. ‘Ritueel en publiek: De rol van toeschouwers bij de wetsvernieuwing in Gent, Brugge en Ieper in de vijftiende eeuw.’ Tijdschrift voor geschiedenis 117 (2004) 3: 321–337. Van Nierop, Henk. ‘Popular Participation in Politics in the Dutch Republic.’ In Blickle, Peter ed. Resistance, Representation and Community. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997, pp. 272–290. Van Uytven, Raymond. ‘Beroering onder de Brabantse steden.’ In Van Uytven, Raymond ed. Geschiedenis van Brabant van het hertogdom tot heden. Leuven: Davidsfonds, s.d., pp. 171–179. Van Uytven, Raymond. ‘Plutokratie in de “oude demokratieën der Nederlanden”: Cijfers en beschouwingen omtrent de korporatieve organisatie en de sociale struktuur der gemeenten in de late middeleeuwen.’ Handelingen van de Koninklijke Zuidnederlandse Maatschappij voor Taal- en Letterkunde en Geschiedenis 16 (1962): 373–409. Van Werveke, Hans. ‘De medezeggenschap der knapen in de middeleeuwsche ambachten.’ Mededeelingen van de Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schoone Kunsten van België, Klasse der Letteren 5 (1943) 3: 5–24. Van Werveke, Hans. Gent: Schets van een Sociale Geschiedenis. Gent: Boekhandel Rombaut-Fecheyr, 1947. Vandenbroeck, Paul. ‘Stadscultuur: Tussen bovengrondse eenheid en onderhuidse strijd.’ In Van Der Stock, Jan ed. Stad in Vlaanderen: Cultuur en maatschappij, 1477–1787. Brussels: Gemeentekrediet, 1991, pp. 77–92. Vandewalle, André. ‘De Brugse stadsmagistraat en de deelname van de ambachten aan het bestuur, 14de-15de eeuw.’ In Prevenier, Walter and Augustyn, Beatrijs eds. De Vlaamse instellingen tijdens het ancien régime: recent onderzoek in nieuw perspectief. Brussels: Algemeen Rijksarchief en Rijksarchief in de provinciën, 1999, pp. 27–40. Verhavert, Jan. Het ambachtswezen te Leuven. Leuven: Universiteitsbibliotheek, 1940. Verleysen, Frederik. Het hemelse festijn: Religieuze cultuur, sociabiliteit en sociale relaties in de corporatieve wereld van Antwerpen, Brussel en Gent (ca. 1585—ca. 1795). Brussels, 2005 (Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Free University of Brussels, VUB).

The Fabrication of the Urban Body Politic  121 Verleysen, Frederik. ‘ “Pretense Confrerieën”? Devotie als communicatie in de Ant­ werpse corporatieve wereld na 1585.’ Tijdschrift voor sociale geschiedenis 27 (2001) 2: 153–171. Waley, Daniel Ph. The Italian City-Republics. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969 Walker, Mack. German Home Towns: Community, State, and General Estate, 1648–1871. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1971. Xhayet, Geneviève. Réseaux de pouvoir et solidarités de parti à Liège au Moyen Age (1250–1468). Genève: Librairie Droz, 1997. Zika, Charles. ‘Hosts, Processions and Pilgrimages: Controlling the Sacred in Fifteenth-Century Germany.’ Past and Present 118 (1988): 26–64.

3 The Political Economy of Freeman Status

In a request to the urban authorities from 1582 the Antwerp diamond cutters applied for the establishment of a guild in their trade. Their argument was that ‘it happened daily that some were cutting stones that were not capable to do so nor had learned it, contracting work from merchants (who did not know them) and employing apprentices who had just begun to learn’.1 In a nutshell these artisans thus summarized the grievances of a broad range of established artisans in sixteenth-century Antwerp and other cities in the Southern Netherlands. They argued that unqualified entrepreneurs had deprived them of their apprentices before they had finished learning, and were therefore producing stones of inferior quality. In 1533, the Antwerp silk weavers also requested the establishment of a guild arguing that their journeymen and apprentices were being lured away.2 In 1574, the camlet dyers argued in favor of a guild because in their eyes product quality had become a problem, owing to the increased number of dyers.3 All these artisans thus envisaged a certain distinctiveness, which they justified with the idea that they could guarantee product quality while others could not. In concrete terms, they requested both a monopoly on the production of a range of products and a labor market monopsony—including the exclusive right to train apprentices. Addressing this from the perspective of the recent debate between Stephan R. Epstein and Sheilagh Ogilvie it is difficult to choose sides.4 On the one hand, there is a certain exclusivity involved. While the diamond cutters referred to merchants unknown in the city, the camlet dyers complained about the swelling of their ranks. This would seem to confirm Ogilvie’s position that guilds basically installed rent-seeking cartels. On the other hand, however, once established the guilds of diamond cutters, silk weavers and others may have helped solve economic problems. The guilds as they were envisaged by these artisans (and eventually granted by the urban authorities) were to regulate product quality and prescribe apprenticeship requirements. Standard among the guilds at the end of the sixteenth century were minimum terms to serve as an apprentice, the obligation to make a master piece (both were mandatory for obtaining master status) and the definition of product standards—often including the obligatory use of quality marks such as seals or stamps.

124  The Political Economy of Freeman Status Hence guilds may have stimulated the training of a skilled workforce and helped increasing product quality. As apprentices typically compensated their masters’ investments (at least partially) with work below market wage in the later years of their contract, they were inclined to abscond once they had learned enough to earn a wage elsewhere. This must have either held back masters from engaging apprentices or made apprenticeship contracts expensive and strict in payment modalities (apprentices typically had to pay up front). Theoretically, a guild could solve this problem with minimum terms of apprenticeship. In addition, following Epstein, registration fees—to be paid to the guild at the start of the term—may have served as a type of bond, which ensured masters that the apprentices would serve their contract. On top of this, there were end-term rewards such as a privileged entrance to the labor market or the possibility to become master after finishing the term, again a reassurance to the masters that the apprentices would not abscond.5 On the product market, guilds may moreover have helped solve the problem of information asymmetry. While product standards and sanctions for fraudulent masters increased product quality, quality marks helped customers to assess and eventually trust product quality, thus increasing market transparency.6 And indeed, guilds did devise rules with an eye to solving economic problems purposefully. Standard among guilds in the sixteenth and early seventeenth century was the prohibition on masters luring away apprentices from other masters and hiring apprentices who had not served their term with their previous master.7 The Antwerp coopers even regulated the payment modalities for apprentices, ruling—in their ordinances of 1533 and 1580—that the fee (to the master) was to be paid in two equal parts, one at the start of the first year and the other at the beginning of the second year (if not, there was to be a guarantee).8 Nevertheless, even when these motivations were authentic, an exclusionary dimension may have been involved. For who was entitled to define what a good product was? The text of the diamond cutters’ founding ordinance does not include any criteria, not even where the master piece is defined. Those in the trade apparently knew what was meant by phrases like ‘well and carefully cut’.9 Rather than specifying product quality and explaining what exactly was wrong with the diamonds cut and polished by moonlighters and sold by the ‘unknown’ merchants, the established masters distinguished those who were not ‘in the trade from childhood’ from those ‘who had exercised in the art since their early days’.10 It would thus seem that a group of artisans—probably some families that passed the trade from father to son—pretended to be the sole warranty for a good product. A good product is a product made according to certain conventions as defined by either a group of customers or a group of producers or middle men.11 Hence the need to always connect the economic rationale to the sociopolitical context while taking into account conventions, mentalities and traditions. When and why exactly was there a need for a guild, or for formal

The Political Economy of Freeman Status  125 and collective regulations rather than an informal or contract-based organization of apprenticeship and product quality? And how did guild regulations evolve in the late medieval and early modern period? The most striking case of regulation related to apprenticeship is without doubt the English Statute of Artificers (1563), which has mostly been framed by historians as part of the regulation of labor and the disciplining of workforce,12 although recently an economic rationale has been identified as well—with Jane Humphries arguing that the Statute helped to transfer labor from agriculture to industry.13 On the continent, no comparable statute existed, but uniform apprenticeship terms at the level of the guilds were standard, next to masters’ trials and other entry requirements introduced by either the guilds or the municipal authorities. Although the exact terms and modalities differed from trade to trade and from city to city, the existence of such formal obligations was almost universal north of the Alps. This chapter will address the question why and in what context they come about. It will do so both empirically and from a long-term perspective. In the first section, I proceed from the reality guild-based artisans faced when establishing guilds and guild regulations. I will zoom in on the interaction between, on the one hand, economic and demographic transformations and, on the other, the agency, power and self-interest of established groups of artisans. In a sense, one could expect the history written through such a lens to be reducible to some causal mechanisms such as increasing exclusivity resulting from economic hardship in a given trade. Yet, I will argue that the erection of guilds was a complex and multi-layered process which touched upon economic and demographic transformations while simultaneously being connected to redefinitions of group cohesion and community. Guilds were unstable and—above all—transforming institutions, an adequate understanding of which requires a long-term view. Such a view will be elaborated with regard to the introduction of entry requirements like the apprenticeship terms, master pieces, and entrance fees, to which I will turn subsequently. First, I will maintain that the emergence of uniform apprenticeship terms and standardized master pieces should be understood from an economic and socio-political logic simultaneously. Secondly, I will argue that entrance fees served to raise income from the guilds, owing to complex path-dependent circumstances. Eventually, I will in this chapter show how guild-based masters and their governors connected their privileged economic position to the city as a political community, notably through apprenticeship, making a master piece and, last but not least, burghership. Tellingly, the producers in the diamond sector not only referred to their ‘love for the noble stones’, but they linked this, in turn, to ‘the honour of the city’.14 Thus, they deliberately connected their claims about skills and product quality to the urban body politic. Specifically, as this chapter will show, guild-based masters often invoked their own political status as the ultimate guarantee of a superior product. As the section on migration will show, this is not to be understood as exclusion

126  The Political Economy of Freeman Status in any straightforward way. It rather followed the logic of incorporation sketched in the previous chapters.

Gilding Golden Ages Earlier, historians have discerned a transition from a pre-corporative to a corporative phase owing to the urban revolts in the late thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth century. In Leuven, twenty-five professional groups were recorded as early as 1267. They would have had their own deans already, and they paraded as a group during processions.15 However, they lacked political power before the fourteenth century and were only recognized and certified during and after the revolts.16 Subsequently guilds were seen—at least in the older literature—as having grown inert and rigid from the fifteenth century on. Beginning with the renowned Belgian historian Henri Pirenne, they were seen as having increasingly closed ranks and inhibited market flexibility.17 As is well known, a whole generation of historians has now revised this view. Since about the 1980s, social and economic historians have pointed to the flexibility of guilds in adapting to changing market circumstances and to astonishing differences in the entry requirements and the resulting social mobility in trades.18 In order to explain both the flexibility and the differences in access to the trades, reference has often been made to a certain gap between rules and reality. Among others, Peter Stabel called for a confrontation between the normative outlook of guild regulations and the actual implementation thereof in the face of demographic realities such as high mortality and immigration rates.19 While research on such normative sources as guild statutes and ordinances almost per definition leads to the perception of guilds as rigid and closed organizations, Stabel maintains that the social and demographic realities may have forced them to be open and flexible.20 In a similar vein, Catharina Lis and Hugo Soly have urged an examination of what was not regulated as well. Analyzing the complexity of labor relations in guildbased industries, they have specifically pointed out that subcontracting was perfectly legal, so that small, proletarianized masters could work for a larger master—even exclusively so—without transgressing any rule.21 I endorse these views, although adding that the rules too changed rather drastically in the late Middle Ages and the early modern period—especially in the sixteenth century. In my view, the establishment and development of guilds was an incremental process that reached its peak as late as the late seventeenth or perhaps even early eighteenth century. To begin, the foundation of guilds was a process that didn’t climax until the sixteenth century. As is shown in Table 3.1, the guilds in such renowned industrial centers as Ypres and Bruges in medieval Flanders were mostly erected before 1400. However, in a broad range of cities, including Antwerp and Brussels in the duchy of Brabant and Ghent in the county of Flanders, almost half of the guilds were erected between 1400 and 1560. In relatively large cities like Mechelen and

The Political Economy of Freeman Status  127 Table 3.1  Numbers of new guilds in a range of cities in the Southern Netherlands City

- ca. 1400

Ca. 1400—ca. 1560

Ca. 1560—ca. 1670

Ca. 1670—ca 1795

Antwerp Bruges Brussels Ghent Leuven Liège Mechelen Mons Namur Ypres

24 55 26 23 36 32 11 2 12 52

21 13 23 26 6 0 29 19 8 0

5 4 3 1 0 0 4 5 2 0

1 4 2 2 1 0 4 3 4 0

Source: Figures based on De Munck, Lourens and Lucassen, ‘The Establishment’ and the database ‘Craft Guilds Flanders’, http://hdl.handle.net/10411/10053 Website Institutions for Collective Action, 2011.

Mons (Hainaut), the number of guilds established between 1400 and 1560 significantly exceeded the number of guilds established before 1400. On the face of it, this on-going process could be explained by demographic and economic circumstances. Both in the late medieval Flemish cities and Brabantine cities such as Antwerp, Brussels, Leuven and Mechelen, it would appear that the establishment of guilds was related to economic prosperity and demographic growth. This is evidently so in Antwerp, where important guilds were erected in the sixteenth century, as happened with the wool dyers in 1521, the silk weavers in 1533, the ribbon makers in 1556, the camlet dyers in 1574 and the diamond cutters in 1582.22 From a European perspective too, it would be easy to argue that the establishment of guilds followed local changes in economic trends and leadership. In 1600, 306 of the 767 guilds then recorded in the Italian regions, were based in the three most important commercial centers: Venice, Milan and Genoa.23 In the Low Countries, guilds first emerged in the textile centers near the coast of the North Sea in the county of Flanders and Artois. Bruges already boasted some fifty-two guilds around 1300, Ypres hosted the same number at the beginning of the fifteenth century, and Ghent had at least twentythree guilds before 1400.24 However, scale and proximity to the sea were surely not the only factors. Further inland, the spreading of guilds happened almost simultaneously. Brussels is said to have hosted thirty-six professional groupings around 1306.25 And even in smaller cities guild density could be rather large from early on. The small port city Nieuwpoort counted at least five guilds around 1400 and fourteen before 1500, while this little town had no more than about 5000 inhabitants. Nor did the expansion and distribution of guilds

128  The Political Economy of Freeman Status

Figure 3.1 (a+b) Inside wings of the triptych of the Brussels Guild of the Four Crowned (gathering the masons and other crafts in the construction trades), ca. 1560. Museum van de Stad Brussel-Broodhuis (City Archive Broodhuis Brussels), inv. nr. K 1884/2.

simply follow demographic and economic trends. In Italy, guild density increased from one guild for every 6,805 inhabitants around 1300 to one per 1,260 inhabitants in 1700.26 In the Low Countries, guild density was markedly higher, although it witnessed the same trend—increasing from one guild per 814 inhabitants around 1400 to a ratio of one to 513 around

The Political Economy of Freeman Status  129

Figure 3.1 (a+b) Continued

1784 in the county of Flanders (i.e., current day provinces of East and West Flanders). In the duchy of Brabant (i.e., current-day provinces of Antwerp and Flemish-Brabant), guild density decreased somewhat from the sixteenth century on (the ratio was one to 669 around 1400 and one to 810 around 1784), owing to the population growth in sixteenth-century Antwerp and, later, Brussels.

130  The Political Economy of Freeman Status Apparently, the number of guilds peaked at a certain point and no longer increased once a certain number was reached. One hypothesis could be, then, that the rising number of guilds may have corresponded to the increased diversification of the economy in the Low Countries during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. While the economy in the large cities in the twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries was mostly dominated by one large sector—typically cloth weaving—industrial centers such as Bruges in the fifteenth century and Antwerp in the sixteenth hosted a more variegated range of industries, including a large number of luxury industries such as silk weaving, diamond cutting and gold- and silversmithing.27 This connects, in turn, to the fact that newly established guilds in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were often in fact demergers of other guilds.28 In Antwerp, this was the case with the ribbon makers, which demerged from the mercers’ guild in 1563; the cabinet makers, demerging from the Coopers in 1497; and the Gold- and Silversmiths, demerging from Saint Luke’s Guild in 1454.29 In Brussels the tapestry weavers separated from the wool weavers in 1451 and the copper smiths from the blacksmiths in 1447.30 Up to a certain degree, then, both scale and the economic orientation of a city may have played a role. However, the extent to which artisans worked in a corporative context could itself change. Unfortunately, we do not have exact figures about the degree to which economic activity was ‘incorporated’, but estimates suggest that in the sixteenth century the overwhelming majority of the male active population worked in a trade regulated by a guild. In large and middlerange cities, it is estimated that 25 to 30% of the male population lived in a household with a guild member.31 This does not include journeymen, which in seventeenth-century Amsterdam comprised 50% to 60% of the active male population.32 While this suggests that up to 80% or more of the active male population worked in a guild context, it must have differed greatly across cities too. Collecting figures for a range of European cities, James Farr found ratios of guild-based artisans (relative to the taxpaying male household heads) between 21.3% and 83.3%.33 In addition, the ratios changed over time. In the Southern Netherlands, they were higher in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. For Ghent, Johan Dambruyne has estimated for 1572– 1584 that 42.9% of the total active population were guild-based masters (journeymen excluded).34 In 1738, this had declined to 25%.35 In Brussels, around 1615 38%, of the total active population would have worked in an incorporated trade; in 1738 this would have dropped to 22–24%.36 It would seem that, at least in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, a guild was founded as soon as a certain threshold in the number of artisans active in a certain trade was exceeded. While guilds soon became a universal feature in European cities, they appear to have remained rare in towns with fewer than 1,000 inhabitants.37 Tellingly, the number of applicants for the Antwerp diamond cutters’ guilds in 1577 was thirty to forty.38 But, this was connected to discussions about the actual boundaries of the monopoly on

The Political Economy of Freeman Status  131 the product market and, hence, on the skills and expertise around which the groups organized. Discussion and legal disputes between the Antwerp cabinet makers and the carpenters illustrate the often artificial character of the boundaries between guilds. While in the fifteenth century these groups basically served the same markets and customers—both being involved in the building and furnishing of homes—an emergent new material culture led to fierce disputes between these two groups about precisely who had the right to perform exactly what type of work. In the course of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries a range of rulings were passed which defined the boundaries based on the types of tools used (with cabinet makers working with plane, chisel, and glue) and the type of products made (with cabinetmakers making furniture and carpenters immovable constructions and fixtures).39 Consequently, the guilds as they are listed here reflect both the existence of certain industries and a willingness and degree of success in becoming accredited as an organized group with political rights attached to a range of skills. Political factors mattered from the start. In Bruges, the first charters surfaced shortly after 1302, and the first groups to be recognized were also the most revolutionary.40 In Brussels, a range of guilds was officially acknowledged after a successful revolt in 1365.41 Political factors must have mattered even beyond the urban revolts. The first to appear as organized groups in the sources often hailed from outside the export sector, typically including alimentation—i.e., brewers, bakers and butchers.42 Nor was this a bottomup process exclusively. While guilds in the textile industry could be utilized by the merchant guilds to regulate the production process and discipline the workforce, inspection was entrusted to municipal officials (so-called esgardeurs) nominated by the aldermen in such textile centers as Douai.43 Likewise, the municipal government could set and enforce standards and regulate prices of corn, bread and meat through guilds. On top of this, the very first guilds had often received their charters from a feudal lord rather than from the municipal government, as was the case with the minters and silversmiths in Brussels and a great many of the butchers and fishmongers.44 Alternatively, in the eighteenth century, new industries appeared which were not incorporated at all. While non-guild-based work such as spinning also existed in the sixteenth century, this was mostly limited to female and low-skilled work, but in the eighteenth century a range of new industries appeared, such as cotton printing which nonetheless operated outside the guild framework.45 In summary, it is important to acknowledge that the existence of such groupings is not a natural given, and nor is their number to be explained by an optimal equilibrium of sorts. Even after their establishment the boundaries of these groups were anything but stable. While the ebony makers around 1600 clearly mastered a new type of skills (the inlaying of wood), they were included in the existing guild of the cabinet makers after arriving in Antwerp with this new technology.46 Moreover, in the eighteenth century, guilds were often merged, for political reasons, notwithstanding their

132  The Political Economy of Freeman Status often more diverse professional activities. The Antwerp cabinet makers, for instance, again merged with the carpenters around the mid-eighteenth century—in an attempt to solve their financial problems (which were often due to legal disputes) and temper the entrance fees for prospective masters.47 When looking at guilds from a long-term perspective, even the nature of their boundaries appears to have changed. Guilds founded around 1600 immediately received the whole range of regulations which are traditionally taken for granted in late medieval and early modern guilds. Their founding ordinances almost universally mention such typical features as standardized apprenticeship terms, master pieces, registration and entrance fees, and a maximum number of apprentices per master—next to the obligation to become a burgher for masters and, most often, standards related to product quality. However, guilds founded before the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century often lacked features we tend to consider crucial for a guild. If we want to tackle the rationale of guilds, it is also therefore essential to capture the process by which such features as a uniform apprenticeship term and a standardized master piece materialized.

Beyond the Guild Debate In the earliest ordinances of the fourteenth century hardly any entry requirements are found. While it was often stated that one had to be a member in order to be entitled to exercise the profession, entry requirements were mostly limited to swearing an oath and being a burgher in the city.48 In addition, entrance fees and yearly taxes were often required. From very early on, members had to pay an entry tax, a yearly tax and an exit tax. Soon, moreover, distinctions were made between fees for apprentices, journeymen and masters—with apprentices paying less, while masters often paid the fees for their apprentices and journeymen as well. In turn, within these categories a distinction was made according to birth. While masters’ sons often paid less or nothing at all, aliens sometimes paid more.49 Yet this was far from general in the early guilds; nor was this an unchangeable reality as we will see below. A standardized apprenticeship term was mostly absent in the first written regulations. Close scrutiny of the guild ordinances reveals that the uniform apprenticeship term was not universally prescribed before the fifteenth century. While in Mechelen apprentices were hardly mentioned in the guild statutes up to and including the fifteenth century,50 in Antwerp uniform apprenticeship requirements were mostly not prescribed up until the first decades of the fifteenth century. Typically, the only requirement was for guilds to notify the municipal government about prospective masters. Whenever a new member was registered, the guilds’ officials had to inform the city magistrates ‘what person that is’.51 Maybe, this practice developed with an eye to product quality when integrating newcomers unknown to the local authorities. The Antwerp linen weavers worried about the skills of the wool weavers and outsiders entering their guild in 1430.52 In Brussels

The Political Economy of Freeman Status  133 the millers introduced an apprenticeship term so as to address a lack of competence in 1466.53 And when the Antwerp barbers and surgeons first mentioned an apprenticeship term in 1513, they complained about the skills of immigrants who wanted to become masters.54 By the seventeenth century a uniform apprenticeship term was a standard requirement for every prospective master in a certain guild—except in a range of guilds concentrating on trade and retail and some hereditary guilds as the butchers and fishmongers. Mercers and old cloth sellers typically lacked apprenticeship requirements, while gardeners and fruit sellers are often part of this category too.55 This seems to suggest that skills—hands-on skills in particular—were indeed the issue. While in the literature opinions differ as to whether the length of the term was connected to the difficulty of the trade (or rather served exclusionary purposes) my case study points to a correlation at least at the time of their introduction.56 Gold- and silversmiths typically learned longer than did bakers and tailors.57 In fifteenth-century Brussels, the minimum terms to serve mostly ranged between one and four years, with four years being typical in luxury trades requiring sophisticated skills like silversmiths, painters, glass makers and belt makers.58 In Leuven weavers learned four years, masons, hat makers, millers and saddle makers, two years, and fullers only one year.59 Even so, the introduction of uniform apprenticeship terms on the level of the trade may have been correlated to demographic and economic developments too. In Antwerp, the introduction of a uniform apprenticeship term in the fifteenth and early sixteenth century coincided with the first phases of its spectacular economic and demographic growth. Perhaps due to increasing numbers of newcomers it simply became impractical to check each immigrant’s antecedents and experience ad hoc? The latter is at least suggested by the transformations related to the master piece. Master piece requirements were more often than not absent until the late fifteenth century. In Brussels and Leuven, standardized master trials emerged in the guilds’ ordinances in the fifteenth century, in Ghent and Mechelen in the sixteenth (to become widespread only around 1600 in Ghent).60 In Antwerp too, an obligatory and standardized master trial became standard during the sixteenth century. The cabinet makers first mentioned a master piece in 1497, the pewterers in 1523, the gold- and silversmiths in 1524, the linen weavers in 1528, the carpenters in 1543, the shoemakers and tanners in 1583, the twiners in 1639, and the small and tick weavers, the stone cutters, slaters and road pavers even later in the seventeenth century.61 According to the literature, this is to be attributed to either a willingness to close the guild or to increase and warrant product quality.62 The latter position automatically results from taking the guild officials’ arguments at face value. In the Antwerp guild of shoemakers and tanners a master piece was required because ‘some persons were admitted to the guild that afterwards appeared to be unable to make proper and honorable pieces’.63 The dichotomy might be misleading however. Before the introduction of standardized master pieces from the late fifteenth century on, trials were mostly

134  The Political Economy of Freeman Status

Figure 3.2 Miniature cabinet made as a master piece with the Brussels cabinet makers, eighteenth century. Museum van de Stad Brussel-Broodhuis (City Archive Broodhuis Brussels).

prescribed ad hoc. A prospective new master according to the ordinances was then compelled to prove ‘that he is able to do his craft reasonably’.64 Given that the subsequent introduction of standardized master trials in most guilds took place when Antwerp expanded from about 7,000 inhabitants

The Political Economy of Freeman Status  135 in 1374 to about 100,000 around 1560 it seems reasonable to assume that formal and bureaucratic rules substituted ad-hoc measures and face-to-face mechanisms.65 Perhaps this explains why in Bruges—the metropolis and gateway until far into the fifteen the century—uniform terms and perhaps also master pieces were sometimes introduced earlier.66 The issue is in any case not exhausted when approaching it from an economic perspective. While master trials were prescribed ad hoc before, the introduction of a standardized trial was not without its problems. Typically, what the guilds required was simply to make a few items which were sold regularly in the trade concerned. For instance, the Antwerp cabinet makers stipulated that new masters were to make two different cabinets and a table, with the proviso that the latter could be square or round.67 Additional specifications were mostly limited to stating that the products were to be made properly, although models and designs could be present as well.68 At first sight, this is very straightforward, but close reading of the ordinances reveals that the introduction may have been problematic in practice. Additional clauses often specify that guild deans could prescribe a different master piece if they considered it necessary. In Antwerp, this was for example the case in the guild of diamond cutters in 1582, the guild of gold- and silversmiths in 1524 and the guild of cabinet makers in 1543.69 Some of these trades were renowned for their high degree of specialization, which in all likelihood increased during the expansion phases of the sixteenth century. It would therefore seem that a standardized master trial was introduced notwithstanding imminent exclusionary effects for apprentices only learning specific or specialized skills. Something similar applies to the uniform apprenticeship term. Only rarely was the term adapted to transformations on the product market. The glove makers in Brussels prolonged the term from one to two years in 1455 arguing that their craft was too complex to learn in one year.70 But mergers and demergers of guilds aside, the length of the terms on the whole did not change at all after their introduction. In contrast to the lengthening of the terms during the early modern period in the German case, as revealed by Reinhold Reith, apprenticeship terms mostly remained rather short in the Low Countries.71 They were often shorter than those on average agreed upon in apprenticeship contracts between masters and apprentices—which is at odds with Epstein’s ideas. Alternatively, research based on a database of apprenticeship contracts in Antwerp has revealed that a wide array of apprenticeship contracts were shorter than those the guilds prescribed, because apprentices wanted to learn either specialized or additional skills after they had already learned the basics elsewhere.72 In this context, the introduction of a uniform apprenticeship term on the level of the trade must have had unintended exclusionary effects too, the more so since cities were ever in need of skills and human capital produced elsewhere. Short but formal and uniform apprenticeship terms thus resemble a compromise between the need for entry requirements related to skills and the wish to remain inclusive as a group. As to the trial pieces, empirical evidence

136  The Political Economy of Freeman Status suggests that they were not introduced out of concern for product quality and to sanction those who did not master the trade properly, but to exclude those who had not learned at all. This is not mere semantics. At the time of the introduction of standardized master trials, masters were faced with merchants and other ‘false masters’ who not only purchased finished products from masters, but also hired apprentices and journeymen and thus acted as manufacturers without being masters themselves. This is what the diamond cutters in the opening of this chapter complained about. And the examples are legion. Wine merchants, brewers or soap makers were for instance accused of having tubs made or repaired not by master coopers but by journeymen or false masters.73 Or else, old cloth sellers employed tailors to produce new garments, rather than buying them from master tailors.74 Such moonlighters even hired impoverished masters, which was perfectly legal as long as the latter could be seen as subcontractors who sold their finished products to a wholesaler and continued to be in charge of quality control and the process of marking the piece. But this boundary often became blurred. In Antwerp, a handful of pot merchants bought earthen pots and had tin lids applied to them by tinsmiths without adhering to the guild rules about the purity of the tin and the hall mark. In this case, the tinsmith in question was no longer an independent master, but rather an employee in the service of a merchant. Something similar was at stake with silversmiths who attached silver to leather belts, again without adhering to the guild’s rules about the alloy and hall marking.75 In principle, these merchants had to have finished an apprenticeship term, but they could take refuge through a range of strategies in order to become legalized. In order to be able to use the collective hall mark, they sometimes concluded agreements with a master’s widow.76 Or they formally founded a company with a master, although in practice the master worked as an employee for the merchant. Or else, these merchants were simply registered as an apprentice for the required term, after which, in the absence of a master trial, they could simply become a master by paying the required fees. The introduction of the master trials some fifty years after the introduction of the minimum terms was, in all likelihood, to prevent exactly this and to exclude merchants who acted as masters without having learned the standards of the trade. This is at least suggested by the accompanying measures. On many an occasion, the guilds simultaneously ruled that the trade was to be carried out exclusively in the masters’ own house, so that a master could not be hired by a merchant while at the same time legalizing him as a master. Working in company was often prohibited, again to prevent freeing fauxmaîtres and having them use the hallmark.77 All this leads me to believe that the introduction of a uniform apprenticeship term was intended to force masters to really master the trade, rather than to employ skilled artisans (either masters or journeymen). That this is not about product quality per se simply follows from the observation that, in general, only masters had to undergo a trial while their journeymen were usually not tested. Often they were not even required to have finished an

The Political Economy of Freeman Status  137

Figure 3.3 Model drawing of the master piece of the Mechelen cabinet makers, 1781. Stadsarchief Mechelen (City Archive Mechelen).

apprenticeship term, and whenever they were, it was not introduced because of masters complaining about product quality, but under pressure from the journeymen, who introduced a distinction between ‘free’ and ‘unfree’ journeymen (i.e., those who had finished an apprenticeship term and those who had not) in order to secure privileged access to the labor market and preserve their minimum wages. This preferential right of employment always came about in guilds with large numbers of well-organized journeymen and was mostly accompanied by a minimum wage—which the masters tried to escape by hiring unfree or immigrant journeyman who were willing to work below the minimum.78 To be more precise, then, the introduction of the master piece served to distinguish legitimate from illegitimate work. For the guild-based masters, it had to be clear in all circumstances who had manufactured the finished products and who guaranteed its good quality. Returning to the famous guild debate as framed by Epstein and Ogilvie, the dichotomy between a social and an economic logic would, thus, seem to be highly artificial indeed. On the one hand, my empirical material supports the idea that master pieces and apprenticeship requirements were introduced out of exclusionary concerns. The intention was not to exclude additional masters, but to ban illegitimate work—or at least the grey zone in which a great deal of masters and false masters worked. This could just as well take the shape

138  The Political Economy of Freeman Status of campaigns to urge false masters to become members and adhere to the rules, as appears to have occurred in the guild of the gold—and silversmiths in Antwerp in the 1570s.79 On the other hand, this may have had beneficial economic effects—either intended or not. While apprenticeship requirements may have stimulated apprentices to serve their contract and masters to conclude contracts in the first place, master piece requirements may have actually helped to standardize, enhance and or guarantee product quality. However, this cannot be isolated from political concerns and the intention to form and define communities, as we will see later in this chapter. But let us look at other entry requirements first.

Entrance Fees: Unintended Consequences and Institutional Path Dependency The traditional view of guilds was one of guild-based masters granting privileged access to their own offspring.80 Some guilds were outright hereditary. This was typically the case with the guilds of the butchers and the fishmongers, which in principle only accepted masters’ sons as members. More often than not this was connected to a numerus clausus based on the number of public benches available,81 but it may also have originated in the feudal origin of these groups’ privileges. In Ghent, the free skippers were also hereditary while, similar to most butchers’ and fishmongers’ guilds, being dependent on and loyal to the feudal lord.82 Both hereditary membership and a maximum numbers of masters were in any case exceptional in most other guilds. In 1688 the central authorities capped the number of gold- and silversmiths to forty in Brussels, thirty in Antwerp, twenty-five in Ghent, twenty in Bruges and ten in Mechelen.83 The Ghent tick weavers limited the number of new masters to a maximum of three yearly between 1478 and 1540.84 But on the whole, the number of masters could freely fluctuate and follow economic and demographic trends, with the proviso that guilds could impose entry requirements in addition to apprenticeship terms and master trials. This included being of legitimate birth and of good name and reputation, becoming a burgher of the city, acquiring military equipment or a costume, and finally entrance fees.85 Table 3.2 nicely illustrates that entrance fees could differ widely across both trades and cities. In Leuven, the fees were substantial at the end of the eighteenth century at least for some of the trades; while in Ghent they were sometimes remarkably lower—with the exception of the gold and silversmihts which were partly regulated by the central government. This may be due to the political power of the guilds involved. In Leuven guilds had a large degree of political clout up until the end of the ancien régime. In Ghent, the guilds had to a certain degree grown into a hereditary cast almost like the hereditary guilds and even the patrician families which they had fought so fiercely, before 1540. At that time Charles V severely reduced the entrance fees to six guilders across the guilds after their defeat.

The Political Economy of Freeman Status  139 Table 3.2 Admission fees (for not-sons of masters) for a selection of trades ca. 1784 (in guilders and stivers) Trades

Antwerp

Brewers Cabinet makers/ carpenters Cloth dressers Coopers Gold- and silversmiths Mercers Shoemakers

18–00 300–00

Ghent

Leuven

Mechelen

545–19 62–08

76–10 154–00 98–04

153–00

24–00 108–00

8–08 6–00

20–06 26–12 84–00 100–00

45–00

Source: Davids and De Munck, ‘Beyond Exclusivism’.

However, what is most striking are the increases over time—as is shown in Table 3.3. With the partial exception of Ghent, the fees rose substantially in virtually all guilds in the long term. In the sixteenth century, these increases were mostly off-set by inflation and devaluation.86 Yet, in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, the entrance fees really surged, in the absence of comparable levels of inflation and devaluation. By the eighteenth century, entry fees must have been prohibitive for a broad range of artisans in a broad range of trades. In such trades as brewing and gold- and silversmithing the entrance fees for masters was often more than 300 guilders, which was far higher than a year’s wage for a skilled artisan (who often earned one guilder a day) or more than a year’s rent for a workshop. Even in such a middling sort of guild as the cabinet makers, the entrance fees had increased to 300 guilders in Antwerp. This was accompanied by huge differences between guilds. Increases were higher among the brewers, with fees above 500 guilders in Leuven. The most notable exception was the mercers’ guilds, which remained relatively inclusive. Becoming a member of a mercers’ guild in Antwerp amounted to paying only twenty-four guilders at the end of the eighteenth century. Another proviso to the exclusiveness of guilds is the intuition that the level of the fees was correlated, to a certain degree at least, to the affluence of the masters in the trade. Trades in which more fixed capital was required tended to charge masters higher entry fees—the brewers again being the most obvious example.87 Moreover, masters’ sons were to a degree exempt. They typically paid half the fee others were charged, as was the case with the Antwerp shoemakers and tanners mid-seventeenth century and with the Brussels grocers as early as 1392.88 Yet whether for wealthy or smaller masters or for masters’ sons and nonmasters’ sons, becoming a member of a guild had grown into a substantial investment by the early eighteenth century, and the fees continued to rise afterwards. The municipal authorities were aware of this and sometimes tried

Coopers

Cloth dressers

Cabinet makers and carpenters

Registration

Brewers

Admission

Registration

Admission

Registration

Admission

Registration

Admission

Fees

Craft

Sons of masters Not sons of masters Outsiders Sons of masters Not sons of masters Outsiders

Sons of masters Not sons of masters Outsiders Sons of masters Not sons of masters Outsiders

Sons of masters Not sons of masters Outsiders Sons of masters Not sons of masters Outsiders

Sons of masters Not sons of masters Outsiders Sons of masters Not sons of masters Outsiders

Category

48–00

9–00 18–00

0–00 4-00-18-00 18–00

36–00 6-00-48-00

0–01

1–12 2–18

6–05 6-00-12-10

1–05

2-00-18-00

0–05 2–00

ca. 1560

0–16 2–18

10-00-48-00

1–04 2–08

ca. 1450

0–24

9-00-45-19 18-00-545-19

0–00 18-00-546-04 546–04

0–00 4-00-12-14 12–00 28-00-122-00 84-00-276-00 84-00-302-08

1-12-30-06 26-12-76-10 26-12-76-10

0-16-1-00

0-00-240-00 20-06-300-00 20-06-287-12

0-12-21-15 0-12-50-00

0-08-42-00

ca. 1780

63–00

ca. 1670

Table 3.3 Entrance fees in selected crafts in Antwerp, Ghent, Leuven and Mechelen, ca. 1450–1780 (lowest and highest amounts, in guilders and stivers)

Admission

Registration

Admission

Registration

Admission

Registration

Sons of masters Not sons of masters Outsiders Sons of masters Not sons of masters Outsiders

Sons of masters Not sons of masters Outsiders Sons of masters Not sons of masters Outsiders

Sons of masters Not sons of masters Outsiders Sons of masters Not sons of masters Outsiders

1-04-8-00 1-04-8-00

1–00

1–16 4–10

1-04-3-00 2-00-4-10 36-00-80-00 36-00-80-00

0-04-3-09 6-00-24-17 7-04-24-17

6-11-14-16 12-11-102-16

1–04 0–02

5–11 6-00-10-11

0–25

6–00

0–0 - 72–00 6-00-108-00 6-00-167-00

0-12-8-00 0-12-8-00

8–08–100.00 8–08–45.00

10–12 25-00-244-12

153–00 98-04-153-00

33–00 16-06-33-00

Source: Based on Davids and De Munck, ‘Beyond Exclusivism’. Additional figures in Guignet, Le pouvoir, 297–300 (with a comparison between Lille and Valenciennes with Paris).

Shoemakers

Mercers

Gold and silversmiths

142  The Political Economy of Freeman Status to file off the sharp edges, as was the case in 1644 when the Antwerp municipality granted the shoemakers’ guild an increase from twenty-four to forty stivers (two guilders) for the registration fee (to be paid by new apprentices) and from twenty to thirty-six guilders for the admission fee (to be paid by new masters) while the guild had requested an increase to forty-eight stivers and forty guilders respectively.89 One decade later, the guild board had calculated that the total payment for a new master—including dues for the chapel, the poor box, the elders, and the deans—amounted to 51.5 guilders, and they requested permission to round it all up to sixty guilders—with sons of masters paying half this sum; but the municipal authorities again consented only partially. They now raised the admission fee to forty guilders, the additional expenses excluded. This increase amounted to four guilders only, although sons of masters indeed had to pay half, amounting to an increase of twenty guilders for them.90 By 1435 the municipal authorities in Brussels had issued an outright ban on raising fees (in an attempt to boost the local economy).91 In most cases the guilds obtained what they requested, which may of course be due to the fact that they were often part of the councils which had the final say in these matters. In Antwerp, these decisions were made in the so-called Monday council, in which twelve or thirteen guild representatives had a voice. Significantly, in the northern provinces of the Low Countries, where the guilds were not usually represented in the municipal governments, entry barriers did not increase in any comparable way to those in Southern Netherlands.92 In contrast, the brewers in Leuven were very powerful politically and could really influence the decisions made in the inner and other councils. Rising financial entry barriers could be seen, then, as the direct result of very instrumental political decisions resulting from clear political intentions. In addition, the economic context would seem to have mattered too. In both Bruges and Leuven, the fees are said to have fluctuated along with the economic cycles, while for Antwerp it has been argued that increases occurred in phases of economic expansion, such as the sixteenth century.93 However, a closer look reveals that in the Southern Netherlands they were also—and perhaps more so—the result of path dependencies and a sheer lack of maneuverability. This is at least suggested by my long-term and indepth research on the entrance fees in Antwerp.94 In some instances, the entrance fees may have been raised in order to exclude newcomers both local and alien. The Antwerp tailors in 1644 justified a rise (from forty to sixty guilders) with reference to ‘the decline of all trades and the increase in the burdens’.95 This hints at not only the opportunity to earn a living for masters but the financial condition of the guild as well. Closer scrutiny reveals that the reasons for raising the fees could be very diverse, but were often connected to the financial predicament of the collective organization. The Brussels’ tailors raised certain fees when their poor box was in deep financial trouble and after they had incurred a loan for rebuilding their house after the bombardment in 1695.96 The Antwerp coopers, when requesting higher fees, also referred to their poor box from the end of the seventeenth

The Political Economy of Freeman Status  143 century on, in addition to the need to maintain their chapel and altar, and costs related to juridical litigations.97 Process costs were certainly an issue in most mercers’ guilds, which in the seventeenth and eighteenth century clashed with a range of manufacturing guilds over the precise boundaries of their privileges.98 The guilds’ complaints were not mere rhetoric intended to conceal the underlying intention of excluding newcomers. As I have shown in previous research, the guilds actually tried to lower the entry barriers themselves while raising the fees. Specifically, they tried to compensate for higher fees by prescribing less expensive master pieces, waiver expensive treats and so on. Thus, the Antwerp cabinet makers prescribed a new, cheaper trial to require less time and wood when their entrance fees were raised in 1745.99 Something similar happened with the Antwerp coopers, who, out of financial necessity, drastically raised the contribution to the poor box from two to sixty guilders and from six guilders and sixteen stivers to forty guilders for the chapel in 1708. Simultaneously, they substituted the old master trial— the cost of which had risen to 192 guilders while it was outmoded and thus difficult to sell afterwards—with a new and up-to-date trial. Henceforth, new master coopers had to make four types of tubs, but they could use cheaper wood so that the cost would not exceed fourteen guilders.100 Likewise, expensive meals to be procured by a new master were either waived or replaced by financial contributions. While these meals were seen by earlier generations of historians as having contributed to the financial thresholds, things would seem to have been more complicated, to say the least. In 1752 the Antwerp coopers waived the meal—which had cost forty-two guilders mid-seventeenth century—again when the entrance fees were increased.101 Something similar happened with the Antwerp tinsmiths and plumbers in 1770.102 Earlier, a range of guilds had tried to lower the expenses for the meal—e.g., from forty-two to twenty-four guilders with the coopers in 1664.103 A related strategy was to substitute a sum of money for the actual meal. In 1745 the Antwerp Guild of the Four Crowned filed a request for substituting higher entrance fees—to be raised from thirty-six to 150 guilders—for the so-called ‘trial meals’.104 While in the seventeenth century it was sometimes decided ad hoc that a meal could be redeemed by a financial contribution with a view to alleviating a guild’s debt, this became a structural measure in the eighteenth century.105 If not, new masters were given the choice between a meal and a sum of money, again because the latter could help to redress the guild’s financial predicament.106 Nor was this phenomenon exclusive to Antwerp. In Ghent, a financial contribution replaced the traditional meal in the second half of the eighteenth century at the latest.107 In Brussels, a substitution of a financial contribution to the guild for a meal has been recorded as early as 1435 with the carpenters.108 The entry fees were raised, then, because of the guilds’ huge debt burdens, which often originated in the sixteenth century. As we will see in chapter 5, the guilds acquired halls and houses and had altars and chapels erected

144  The Political Economy of Freeman Status and decorated in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in particular. These were intended to mark the political ambitions and religious commitment of the guilds, but what concerns us here is that they often incurred debt, to be amortized with income derived from entrance fees and—to a lesser degree—yearly taxes. During the sixteenth century already, this may have caused serious problems, but given the high number of entrants (and thus more income) and the fact that their debt was subject to inflation, this did not on the whole derail.109 However, a great deal of the guilds’ material culture was destroyed or damaged during the Revolt and the accompanying outburst of iconoclasm by the Protestants. After the so-called Spanish Fury of 4 November 1576, the guild of the gold- and silversmiths, among others, faced serious financial difficulties, largely due to the damage to their guild house.110 After the re-conquest by the Habsburg Prince in 1585 guilds entered a phase of restoration during which their altars and chapels were repaired, renovated and re-decorated—they were in fact pressured to do so by the municipality.111 This resulted in new and additional debts, while the number of new entrants had in the meantime collapsed.112 While Antwerp had a population of over 100,000 around 1567, this would have dwindled to barely 46,000 by 1591.113 By 1612 the population of Antwerp had recovered only partially (to about 61,000), and even in 1693 the number of inhabitants remained far below the peaks of the sixteenth century (77,000), and subsequently declined again (to fewer than 50,000 in 1755).114 As a consequence, the number of new entrants must have roughly halved—depending on the trade. The coopers’ guild, which due to its orientation on the local market may be considered more or less representative, registered between twenty and thirty-five new masters every five years throughout the seventeenth century, while in the sixteenth this had exceeded fifty.115 The guild’s income must have dwindled accordingly. In response, the guild boards reverted to taxing current members rather than new members, but this met with a high degree of resistance and failed to solve their financial problems. The Antwerp linen weavers in 1599 complained that the yearly tax of six stivers for every loom a master had in operation, which they had collected for three years, had not yielded enough to finance their new altar.116 In 1754 the Antwerp shoemakers taxed masters with the so-called ‘bench money’ (stoelgeld), i.e., half a stiver a week for each journeyman or apprentice they employed, but this was clearly too low a tax to make a difference.117 The guild of the gold- and silversmiths considered increasing the yearly ‘candle duties’, but in the end this was not an option as masters in this guild would not pay it anyway. When the guild was authorized in the early seventeenth century to levy an exceptional tax of five stivers a week, the guilds’ officials had grave difficulties collecting it.118 The only option left, in this context, was to raise the entrance fees. Not coincidentally one of the few guilds which did not revert to that measure, the mercers’ guilds, was also the largest in numerical terms.119

The Political Economy of Freeman Status  145 Basically, then, entrance fees were raised because of the guilds’ huge debts—notwithstanding the vicious circle of ever more declining numbers of new masters (and hence, even fewer entrance fees) resulting from it.120 In despair the Antwerp guilds eventually reverted to taxing current members in a somewhat cunning way, i.e., by raising entry fees for masters’ sons. Among the Antwerp carpenters, the sons of masters still joined the guild free of charge in 1436. In 1543, they paid four guilders as a contribution to the new fortification walls, but not the sixteen guilders others paid for the craft guild, nor the five guilders for the meal, and the like. Yet from 1647, they clearly had to carry a larger share of the financial burden. The guild raised the admission fee from forty to forty-eight guilders for those who were not sons of masters and from thirteen to twenty-six guilders for masters’ sons. The increase for masters’ sons was, thus, larger, and this was also the case when the cabinet makers and the carpenters merged in 1756 (a move which in itself was intended to reduce the debts). The ‘master fee’ was then set at 240 guilders for masters’ sons and 300 guilders for others.121 In the long run, the entrance fees for the Antwerp masters’ sons often rose from zero or only a minor amount for some wine and wax in the fifteenth century to over half the fee in the seventeenth and up to two thirds and more in the eighteenth century.122 As well as raising the fees and compensating this with cheaper master pieces and fewer treats, strategies of incorporation were devised as well. One such strategy was to allow payment in installments, as was enacted by the Ghent oil pressers in 1500 and probably practiced informally more often.123 Moreover, poor apprentices could sometimes be registered for free or for half the tax normally due.124 This was the case for instance with the shoemakers, cabinet makers and carpenters in Antwerp, where they only paid (about) half the registration fee.125 The most cunning strategy here was to raise the registration fees for apprentices more (in relative terms) than the admission fees for masters or to have part of the entrance fee paid upon registering as an apprentice. The fifteenth-century Brussels carpenters and coopers as well as the helmet makers and gunsmiths deducted the registration fee for apprentices from the income fee payable by new masters—while with the barbers this was half the registration fee.126 The Ghent dobbelwerkers (tapestry weavers specialized in double-face work) only paid upon starting as an apprentice; new carpenters and masons needed to pay only half the fee if they already paid at the start of their apprenticeship term.127 In this way, the guilds combined more income with the introduction of a disincentive for skilled artisans to become master elsewhere after they had learned the trade. Thus, the Antwerp cabinet makers in 1735 requested that the registration fee be increased from nine gilders and ten stivers to twenty-one guilders. No less than eighteen guilders thereof would subsequently be deductible from the admission fee, which at the time was also twenty-one guilders. At the occasion, the cabinet makers quite explicitly argued that this financial trick was to prevent apprentices from abandoning the trade.128

146  The Political Economy of Freeman Status Here, we clearly see a guild adopting strategies not unlike those envisaged by Epstein, but it happened within a heavily path-dependent context which made increasing fees necessary in the first place. The evolution of these fees can be explained neither by economic strategies nor by ‘distributional conflicts’ exclusively. Both played a role, but only in the second instance, in order to off-set unintended consequences of the rising fees. The fees rose because of earlier events and decisions made by earlier generations of artisans. Nor, in my view, would it have made a lot of sense for guilds to be exclusive. Urban trades only held monopolies for production within the city itself. As a result, they were constantly in competition—at least when they were active on export markets—with urban manufacturers from both their own region and other regions. In such a context, excluding prospective masters was tantamount to creating competition either from the countryside or from other cities—especially in a region such as the Low Countries, which harbored a broad range of small and middle-sized cities in each other’s vicinity.

Hallmarks, Intrinsic Value and the City as a Body Politic The same situation explains why guild-based manufacturers in export sectors used to be ‘monopolistic competitors’. They tried to carve out a niche by differentiating their products from similar products made in other industrial centers. In so doing, they competed on product specificity and quality rather than price, leaving the low-quality products to non-guild producers and manufacturers in the countryside.129 If, that is, manufacturers in the countryside were considered legitimate at all. Throughout the late medieval and the early modern period urban actors rehearsed variations on the idea that ‘burghers and urban dwellers exercise all sorts of crafts for the need and necessity of Man, while peasants and those on the countryside take care of cultivating and working the land for the need of food both in the cities and on the countryside’.130 With such argumentation industrial activity could be legitimately banned, which the guilds often did fiercely. Cities with strong political guilds often issued and guarded bans on manufacturing products in their immediate hinterland. In 1314, it was prohibited to produce cloth within a perimeter of five miles around the city of Ghent. To enforce the ban, the Ghent weavers, accompanied by the count’s representative (the bailiff), are recorded to have raided the countryside in a military way.131 From the sixteenth century on, countryside industries were banned with juridical means. Two ordinances in the 1680s (10 November 1685 and 6 June 1687) confirmed that nonagrarian industries were to be executed in Antwerp and not in its immediate hinterland. In the villages around Antwerp the only trades allowed were those necessary to service the local market. Thus, one carpenter with two journeymen each was allowed per village.132

The Political Economy of Freeman Status  147

Figure 3.4 Flemish wool dyers at work. Miniature in Bartholomeus Anglicus, Des proprietez des choses, 1482. © The British Library Board.

This did not of course prevent manufacturing in the countryside from becoming ever more important in the late medieval and early modern period. In the textile sector countryside competition was a given for urban manufacturers, although it increased from the sixteenth century on in particular. Thousands of peasants in Flanders, Hainaut and Brabant manufactured cheaper woolens and, in particular, linen on one or two looms on their farmstead—either cultivating their own flax or buying linen yarn on a nearby market.133 In the Meuse basin in the Southwest of current-day Belgium, the production of such goods related to local mining possibilities, such as charcoal, stone, coal, and iron, largely escaped the towns situated

148  The Political Economy of Freeman Status there as well (Huy, Liège, Namur, etc.).134 In addition, such preparatory work as spinning was often carried out in the countryside too; as elsewhere in Europe this was often women’s and children’s work, which was significantly cheaper. In response, urban manufacturers often specialized in higher quality products. In the textile sector, towns specialized in fine linen, mixed fabrics and silk weaving. Such luxury trades as painting, embroidery, goldand silversmithing, diamond cutting, ribbon making, ebony work and the like were typically situated in the city exclusively.135 Moreover, cities and urban manufacturers often boasted their capacity to produce high-quality products, distinguishing their products with collective hallmarks while trying to ban cheaper imports arguing that they were of lower quality. If necessary, imports were literally marked with a different hallmark to make clear that the product in question was not made according to the standard in vigor in the city itself—as happened with imported leather in Antwerp.136 This is not to be seen as an economically backward strategy by necessity. Guilds typically imposed product standards with a view to creating a niche product that was recognizable for far-away customers through either conspicuous features or a quality sign.137 Nor is it surprising to see apprenticeship and master piece requirements being developed in this context. The renowned economic historian Herman Van Der Wee rightfully argued that the phased transition to luxury products and products with a high value added in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was a reflection of the growing importance of skills and technical knowledge. In the words of Van Der Wee: ‘what was involved was more the deepening than the widening of human capital’ (italics in original).138 However, in order to fully understand the role of the guilds in this, it is important to stress that product quality is not an inherent or natural characteristic of a given product. Guarding product quality involves a prior choice about what defines product quality, which is not only related to the economic context, but to the cultural and political context as well.139 As regards the guilds in the Southern Netherlands, it is noteworthy that manufacturing guilds did not guarantee a high level of skills to their customers. What the guilds ensured to their customers had more to do with the moral qualities of the masters. With respect to the weavers there was strict monitoring of which type of fabric was woven with which type of wool or yarn.140 This was perhaps related to the durability of the fabrics and the colors, but the most important concern of urban authorities and guilds was the ‘intrinsic value’ related to the raw materials used. One of the most intensely monitored guilds was the guild of gold- and silversmiths, in which there was a particular focus on the alloy. In the important ordinance of the gold- and silversmiths in Antwerp from 1454 some twenty articles concerned the intrinsic quality of the work while none referred to how the piece was fabricated or finished—the artistic character of this profession notwithstanding.141 In addition to regulating the alloy, it was prohibited for jewelers to use false stones, to weld with tin, and to

The Political Economy of Freeman Status  149 gild copper and brass so as to mislead customers.142 Of course, gold- and silversmiths cannot be considered representative here. Yet in other guilds as well, product quality was mostly reduced to what could be called intrinsic quality.143 The Brussels purse makers strictly monitored the type of leather used, with for instance leather from sheep being limited to the lining. The guild of the linen weavers prohibited the use of hemp (in 1475) without explicit permission of the guild.144 In Antwerp the guild of tinsmiths strictly regulated and guarded the percentage of lead used in tin ware, including again the welding. Antwerp shoemakers had strict rules about which part of the skin could be used for either repairing or making new shoes, next to regulations about how the leather was to be tanned and which types of skin were to be used for tanning in the first place.145 On top of this, it had to be clear to customers at all times exactly what type of raw materials were used. Thus, the Antwerp cabinet makers stipulated that Spanish wood had to be marked with the letter ‘S’ to distinguish it from ebony in order to prevent masters from selling Spanish wood as ebony.146 Perhaps not coincidentally, then, the very foundation of guild organization was based on the raw materials used. Tanners were grouped with shoemakers and cobblers, coopers with cabinet makers and carpenters, masons with sculptors, etcetera.147 Within the textile sector, guilds were delineated according to the raw materials used, as wool weavers were mostly separated from linen weavers and silk weavers. Even subdivisions within the tailoring trade may have been according to the raw materials used, given that tailors and hosiery makers used different types of raw materials as well.148 Admittedly, the correspondence between guild formation and one type of raw material was not perfect. Within the traditional wool sector in the Middle Ages, the distinction between weavers, fullers and shearers and the like, were effected according to the different stages in the production process. Mercers’ guilds—which were basically guilds of retailers—often included a range of subaltern manufacturing guilds the produce of which was likely to be sold by the mercers as well.149 Conversely, when the cabinet makers and carpenters in the Antwerp wood processing sector departed ways in the sixteenth century, the deciding factor was the use of instruments and the type of product involved.150 But what is clear is that guilds were important in the context of a specific range of products, namely those products which Jan De Vries has notoriously labeled ‘old luxuries’—ranging from tapestries and cabinets to heavy silver pieces like those used in ceremonial contexts.151 The value and price of these products was largely dependent on the origin and quality of the raw materials used, whether it be yarn, metal, leather or wood. While it concerned a type of quality which was often invisible to the naked eye and therefore susceptible to fraud, this is a period in which the value of the raw materials was simply dominant in both the cost structure of firms and the price of products. Probate inventories have revealed the dominance of stock in the assets of firms of tailors and hosiery makers. In the same sector, it

150  The Political Economy of Freeman Status was not uncommon for the cutting up of fabric to be prohibited for anyone but the master (plus one journeyman in large companies).152 Even in the art sector, it has been argued that up until the sixteenth century the prices of raw material, next to labor, determined product prices to a large extent— before becoming dependent upon inventio, disegno and the name and fame of the artist.153 The latter sector however is clear proof that intrinsic value is not the most important element in product quality by necessity. The point is, rather, that intrinsic value was deeply entrenched in the contemporary mental framework. This is nicely illustrated with an anecdote drawn from the work of Harald Deceulaer. In a witness statement found in a legal file of 1553 tailor Jan Van Kempen meticulously described the fabric of a cabinet maker’s garments, up to and including the linings, while between brackets admitting not remembering the color.154 This should guard us from reducing the importance of intrinsic value to a question of market transparency. In economic thinking, the very foundation of wealth and prosperity was sought in the intrinsic value of gold and silver. While this has been connected almost exclusively to national economic policies, urban economic and political actors must have reasoned in a similar way. Guild and municipal officials actively and deliberately established a link between product quality and the common good of the city. The first quality marks were actually seals of the city. Among other references, a seal of the city was mentioned as a means to mark cloth in 1271 in Leuven.155 After guilds were established, marks often continued to refer to the weapon or an emblem of the host city. In Antwerp, the guilds’ collective hallmarks often included two hands or the typical rhomb-shapes fortress.156 In 1443 the Brussels cloth weaving industry had four different quality marks (seals): one with the archangel Michael, one with Saint Gudule, one with Saint Nicholas, and one with a reference to an instrument (used for carding). The first three seals, which were moreover to be attached to the most valuable fabrics, thus made explicit reference to the city of Brussels.157 In Leuven, the finest tin bore the mark of Saint Peter, the patron saint of the city, while tin of a secondary quality (with a maximum of 20% lead) was to be stamped with ‘half a peter’ and ‘the city mark’.158 In addition, marks could refer to the feudal lord, as was for instance the case with the Brussels silversmiths in the fourteenth century, the hallmark of which contained a lion, a reference to the weapon of the Duke of Brabant—the duke being the one who had granted them the mark.159 The collective hallmark literally sealed the connection between intrinsic quality and the urban context. To be sure, most products bore different marks, often including the masters’ initials, a symbol referring to an individual workshop, or a letter or date referring to the guild officials who had checked and/or marked the piece. Yet these marks were to be applied only to enable those who had committed fraud to be tracked down.160 The real quality mark was essentially a mark of origin, although it differed from nineteenth-century ‘made in’ marks by its collective nature and the fact

The Political Economy of Freeman Status  151

Figure 3.5 Coat of arms of the Antwerp black smiths, featuring a crowned hammer. P. Génard, Armorial des institutions communales d’Anvers, Antwerp: Imprimerie Veuve De Backer, 1883 (Plate XVII 2), University Library Antwerp.

that is was embedded in a specific political culture in which the presence of manufacturing artisans in the public sphere was key. Guild-based masters bore images of their products and instruments in processions and parades. While torches and vanes were carried which often displayed the patron saint, they often also referred to the craft, as was the case with the mercers, belt makers, head makers and painters in Gent. In addition, coats of arms were displayed during processions, which also invoked the craft via a reference to either the tools or the products made—in addition to such typical features as crowns and garlands with which noble and honorable values were invoked.161 Last but not least, the connection between the guild-based products and the city materialized rather literally because working in public and being visible to customers was often a requirement for guild-based masters.162 Working in cellars or attics was considered suspect.163 This is

152  The Political Economy of Freeman Status why idealized images of artisans and the working process typically depict artisans in open spaces. While the working process was as a rule situated at the front of the house, the city was mostly visible through open doors and windows.164 In short, what guilds guaranteed with their hallmarks and accompanying regulations of product quality was not that the products were made by highly skilled artisans (at least not in the sense that we would normally understand) but that they were made by honest and God-fearing people. Honesty is thereby to be understood as not only connected to the type of trust necessary in an economic relationship but as profoundly related to the political status of the artisans concerned. Product quality was essentially guaranteed by the political personhood of masters who, as we have seen, had finished a period of socialization in the guild and were burghers of the city. In addition, this was perhaps connected to specific attitudes towards matter as well. This is at least suggested when connecting the importance of intrinsic value to the religious context too. For medieval men, God was not out there, in heaven, as a type of clock-maker, but present in power-laden natural objects such as effigies, relics and the host—which impacted upon natural phenomena such as diseases, the weather and the emotions of the believers and worshippers. Medieval and late medieval Christians believed in the immanence of God and the presence of the sacred in things—which is why the wafer or a relic were not mere symbols to represent God, but made God really present.165 In my view, the meaning of intrinsic value can be connected to this. Following Pamela Smith, who insists on the specific relationship early modern artists and artisans maintained with materiality before the eighteenth century, matter was not something dead and passive for these groups. Just like science for a sixteenth-century scholar like Paracelsus was partly inherent in matter itself, rather than simply in the rational mind of the observing scientist, the value of an artifact produced by skilled hands emanated not only from skills and dexterity but from a fusion of sorts of, on the one hand, the divine qualities of matter and, on the other, the inspired mind and soul of the artisan.166 This would at least explain the myriad references to the working processes in images of patron saints. One example here is the Altarpiece of the Antwerp guild of the smiths, painted by Ambrosius Francken in 1588, which portrays smiths at work in addition to a preaching Saint Eligius. The Leuven Guild of Saint Nicholas had images of a hat, scales and a pot with a pestle attached to the closure around their altar, referring to the crafts of hat makers, mercers and pharmacists.167 Thus, while a different attitude towards matter and materiality explains a great deal of the guild-based artisans’ regulations this should be connected to the specific religious context, in which nature has a value and creative power, as well as to the political context, in which guild-based artisans could claim to be morally superior. This is complementary to earlier views, which have rather stressed the concept of Nahrung, calibrated by Werner Sombart

The Political Economy of Freeman Status  153

Figure 3.6 Members book and cartulary of the Ghent carpenters, showing their patron saint, St. Amandus, as well as different tools, 1423. De Zwarte Doos, Archief Gent (City Archive Ghent), OA_190_1_1bis.

and defined in contrast to free market principles. Before free market thinking and the industrial revolution, local economic activity would have been imbued with moral principles geared towards the needs and benefits of the local community rather than competition.168 These views will be elaborated upon further in chapters 4 and 5, in which the guild-based master as a moral, political and religious actor will be analyzed. In the remainder of this chapter, I will first turn to immigration so as to further qualify ideas about inclusiveness and exclusiveness.

Immigration, Incorporation and the Emergence of a Territorial Logic In contrast to earlier views, pre-industrial societies are now seen as all but immobile, with migration not only due to geopolitical reasons and religious warfare but to social necessity and economic opportunity too. Moreover, a great deal of migration was towards or between cities. As historians of migration rightfully argue, urban growth and even stagnation is entirely conditional upon the influx of artisans, workers and entrepreneurs.169 Consequently, municipal authorities often took an inclusive stance. Rather than

154  The Political Economy of Freeman Status excluding newcomers, they granted wealthy and highly skilled newcomers all sorts of advantages, such as free burghership, gratis infrastructure, exemptions from taxes and communal duties and so forth. For instance, after the decline of the traditional cloth industry, most towns in the county of Flanders attempted to attract new industries by granting subsidies for housing and equipment among other things.170 Examples include the famous serge weavers from Hondschoote, who upon arrival in Antwerp—after the soldiers of the Duke of Anjou had reduced their town to ashes—received free housing and were exempt from burghership.171 In the tapestry-weaving industry, the Antwerp municipality managed to attract weavers from such famous centers as Oudenaerde and Brussels by, among other things, opening a new hall, the so-called Tappisseriepand, in 1554.172 Renowned are also the glassmakers from Venice (Murano) and Altare, who often migrated to north-western Europe, including the Southern Netherlands, during the sixteenth century.173 Nor were the fees for obtaining burghership prohibitive in the late medieval period. In Brabant and Flanders, prospective burghers usually had to pay a one-off charge, which usually amounted to only a few days’ or a few weeks’ work for a skilled artisan.174 The fees could moreover be lowered whenever the city was in need of skilled immigrants, as was the case in Bruges after the Revolt against Philip the Good in 1436–1438.175 In late-medieval Ghent the acquisition of burghership status was completely free, given that one became a burgher automatically after one year and one day of residence.176 Lowly skilled artisans and handworkers were often welcomed as well, although here a field of tension with poor relief resources was imminent. A cheap workforce was surely welcomed in times of full employment or when certain industries needed cheap hands, as was for instance the case when in Antwerp there was a peak in public building, including a new city district and new fortification walls, around the mid-sixteenth century.177 Around the same time, the cloth dressers or ‘dry shearers’ in need of journeymen organized (partly seasonal) migration on a large scale, creating longdistance networks so as to bring apprentices and immigrant journeymen from such distant areas as present-day Nordrhein-Westfalen in Germany.178 Even outside such periods, employers were often in search of immigrants. They often preferred them to a locally trained workforce, owing to their expertise acquired in different workshops and a broader range of product knowledge. This was for example argued by master carpenters in Antwerp around the mid-eighteenth century.179 From a guild-perspective, it entirely makes sense to incorporate the maximum producers possible too—especially, but not exclusively—where large merchants are powerful. First, incorporating manufacturers enables those who control and supervise the production chains to beat down the price of labour and enforce production standards. Second, the inclusion of possible competitors made sense even for the manufacturing masters themselves, considering that capital and technical knowhow are likely to be applied

The Political Economy of Freeman Status  155 elsewhere whenever a city or a guild fails to incorporate them. Nevertheless, a city was also a political partnership tied to a locality. Being a member of it involved being born in it, or else, going through a process of integration. More than in present-day nation states—due to the cultural importance of ancestry—a field of tension existed between rights deriving from birth and rights obtained during life. Freemen status—whether in the form of urban citizenship or membership of a guild, was naturally obtained by birth. While one was normally born a burgher if one’s parents were burghers, membership of a guild was often not contingent upon serving a minimum term and a master trial for masters’ sons—as we will see in more detail in the next chapter. From this perspective, apprenticeship could be seen as a socialization and integration mechanism—and a powerful one at that, given the obligation for apprentices to board. Yet, urban communities and guilds were surely less obsessed with ancestry than aristocratic families. While birth was decisive in a feudal logic (and hence, perhaps, with the guilds deriving their charters from the feudal lord), newcomers to a city were mostly welcomed— especially if they were able-bodied and skilled workers and were not perceived as a threat to social peace and the communal resources for poor relief.180 In fact, unfree journeymen—which at the time were mostly wandering journeymen (even called ‘pilgrims’ in fifteenth-century Brussels)— were allowed to work with regular masters without much ado. As a rule, they were allowed to work in the city for one or two weeks, apparently just enough to put aside some savings and move on.181 Usually, a small tax was also due—payable by either the master or the worker himself.182 In the Ghent ropers’ guild anno 1509 a master could hire a so-called ‘wanderer’ (wandelaar) for fourteen days. If the latter wanted to stay longer, he had to present a certificate of an apprenticeship term in a free city. If he could not, it was up to the master to legalize him with a sum of money to the guild.183 In the majority of guilds, it was not prohibited at all for unfree journeyman to work with a master. The Antwerp diamond cutters for instance enacted in 1582 that ‘every alien journeyman wanting to work here will have to do it with a free master and when asked have his name written down at the guild chamber within three days’.184 An apprenticeship period for journeymen was only mandatory in trades with large numbers of journeymen, such as, in Antwerp, the weavers, fullers, cloth dressers, yarn twisters, hosiery makers, hat makers, carpenters and masons. In these trades, the journeymen were able to enforce a ‘right of preference’, which was actually a ban on hiring unfree journeymen for masters as long as there were free journeymen available and prepared to perform the job.185 Unsurprisingly, such rulings were often opposed by large entrepreneurs. In mid-sixteenth century Antwerp, the renowned magnate Gilbert Van Schoonbeke increased pressure on the exclusion mechanisms of small masters and journeymen masons and eventually provoked the intervention of the central government (who had an interest in the rapid completion of the fortification walls), which in the late

156  The Political Economy of Freeman Status 1540s temporarily suspended all guild regulations so as to enable the influx of thousands of unskilled laborers.186 Becoming an urban citizen and guild member was only a standard requirement for independent entrepreneurs and employers. These are the immigrants for whom we have figures, owing to their registration in the socalled burgher books upon paying the fee and swearing the oath. The figures range from one or a few dozens a year in small and medium-sized cities up to about 150 and more a year in Bruges’ golden age (in the fifteenth century) and about 300 a year at the pinnacle of Antwerp’s golden age (in the sixteenth century).187 Relative to population, the impression is one of a large stability nonetheless. Cities typically registered about three new burghers a year for every 1000 inhabitants.188 Becoming a citizen was not a formality or an entry ticket one purchased after a short-term cost-benefit analysis. It was about becoming part of a corporative community, at least until the sixteenth century. Upon their arrival in Antwerp in 1582, the twenty-four serge weavers from Hondschoote were almost immediately incorporated in a guild.189 Something similar applies to the ebony workers in Antwerp, who arrived around 1600 and were incorporated in the cabinet makers’ guild in 1621 after first having joined the Saint Luke’s Guild.190 And when in 1655 Johannes Schuylenburch obtained the right to weave a new type of fabric which contained silk (Turcxsche greynen) he was incorporated in the silk weavers’ guild. Apparently, an individual approach to patent rights was hard to imagine even in the seventeenth century.191 This is not to deny the fields of tension inherent in cities and urban migration policies. To begin with, as Anne Winter’s work has clearly shown, a field of tension existed between the interests of large manufacturers and the municipality. While the former typically pleaded in favor of the largest possible inclusivity—which was conducive to low wages and a disciplined workforce—local authorities also had an eye on their local poor relief resources and public order. Their debates were played out in the field of the so-called settlement laws. While urban authorities wanted the parishes of origin to be responsible for newcomers who fell unemployed or sick, industrial magnates and employers were mostly in favor of a more flexible attitude and greater responsibility for the poor relief schemes of the city of arrival. In seventeenth-century Brabant, this resulted in a compromise, namely a ‘settlement’ (the right to receive poor relief in the place of residence) was obtained after three years’ permanent residence and work in the city of arrival. This principle was laid down in a ducal decree of 1618, which formed the basis of the negotiations for the centuries to come.192 Another field of tension potentially set the guilds against the municipality. In contrast to the latter, it may have made sense for guild-based masters to exclude prospective masters—especially in trades operating at the local market, in which the prospect of expansion was limited by nature. Such discussions did not make it to the municipal or guild archives however, save for the obligation for masters to become burghers. In theory, all masters involved

The Political Economy of Freeman Status  157 were supposed to become urban citizens. The Antwerp diamond cutters, when they asked for a guild in 1582 referred to the absence of burghership requirements as one of the problems.193 Yet, a great many immigrant textile workers in Antwerp in the period 1566–1585 did not become burghers (or even masters), probably because they hoped to return to their place of origin after the religious troubles had eased.194 Unfortunately, current research does not permit a distinction to be made about which groups (the municipality or rather some of the guild boards) actually tried to enforce urban citizenship on masters or immigrant entrepreneurs. German historians have argued that acquiring burghership status was made more expensive in the early modern period. This would have been due to a concern about the living standards of local artisans, the alleviation of poverty becoming more urgent, and a perceived need to slow down immigration.195 This materialized in higher fees, differences in the level of the fees according to geographic origin and longer waiting periods for access to both burghership and poor relief.196 The latter preoccupation sounds familiar to historians working on the Low Countries. For the Northern Netherlands, Erika Kuijpers and Maarten Prak have already argued that the municipal policy regarding access to burghership was related to the availability of communal resources earmarked for poor relief and care, owing to burghership also giving access to such municipal institutions as orphanages.197 In the Southern Netherlands, things are less clear. The most important threshold there was not burghership fees but rather entrance fees to the guild—which stresses the corporative nature of the urban body politic again.198 Moreover, a distinction between locals and aliens was rather rare, at least up to and including the sixteenth century. As shown in Table 3.3 above mastership fees were differentiated more often in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which on the surface can be explained by economic hardship and the tendency of settled groups to seek exclusivity.199 Did the attitude towards immigrants harden in the face of economic crisis at the end of the seventeenth century? The explanation of this trend may be more complicated. Up to about the mid-seventeenth century, the logic of incorporation had even exceeded the borders of the city. While urban authorities were eager to attract skilled artisans and artists (as well as capital), guilds often installed—especially in German speaking regions—so-called ‘wander systems’ in which journeymen (after their apprenticeship term) were forced to travel from town to town (for one or two years) in order to work and perfect their skills.200 Elsewhere, as in the Southern Netherlands, informal mechanisms to monitor and stimulate ‘wandering’ journeymen were in force.201 For instance, guilds or municipalities often agreed to acknowledge one another’s apprenticeship, which implied that a prospective master who had finished his apprenticeship term in one city could become a master in the other—and vice versa—without having to start his term anew. Both in Flanders and Brabant there are clear signs of this practice having existed on a large scale. In the Bruges coopers’

158  The Political Economy of Freeman Status guild between 1375 and 1500, only 24% of the new masters had learned his craft locally.202 In Brabant, craft guilds typically concluded accords with guilds from other cities in order to legalize one another’s apprenticeship terms, so that a free journeyman moving from another Brabantine city could become master upon arrival (or after finishing his trial piece).203 In the Brussels fullers’ guild, no less than forty-two cities qualified, including cities in Flanders, Hainaut and France (even Paris).204 What is remarkable here is that this mechanism worked towards a maximum mobility of skills and technical knowledge while leaving intact the corporative logic by the need to have fulfilled an apprenticeship term with a guild-based master (in another city). What counted was not that a newcomer had learned, in which case a certificate of his master or at least a master test in the city of arrival would have sufficed, but that he had learned in a guild context,205 sometimes adding ‘where one makes master pieces’.206 Thus a corporative body politic materialized relatively unhindered by boundaries and a territorial logic. Financial and other thresholds concerned access to a corporation rather than access to a territory. A territorial logic materialized only in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, at least judging from some recent insights inspired by geographers. State formation can no longer be reduced to state apparatuses simply gaining military, financial and bureaucratic power as Charles Tilly and others would have it. Attention is now paid to qualitative transformations, including the changing relationship between state and territory. Medieval Europe was not divided into clearly demarcated and homogeneous territories as we know them from maps. As Michael Biggs rightfully argues, this was ‘essentially a mapless world’, imagined as a ‘concatenation of places’ rather than a territory.207 A territorial logic emerged only in the early modern period, along with cartography and transformations in geometrical thinking.208 As I will develop further in the Epilogue of this book, this was related to profound transformations in the nature of politics and governance, with rule becoming impersonal and indirect, through the ordering of a territory and the management of a population.209 Historians focusing on early modern guilds and urban citizenship have not yet addressed this. While they have concentrated on the power balance between city and state, they have not really considered the changing nature of the territories involved. My case study suggests that the city-state tension was connected to a profound shift in the nature of the body politic, with a territorial logic emerging at the expense of a corporative logic. The system of reciprocal freeing was undermined from at least the late seventeenth century on. This was in turn connected to the guilds’ privileges being undermined, owing in part to the attitude of the central governments in Brussels. On the one hand, the Privy Council in Brussels started to grant dispensations of apprenticeship to entrepreneurs who had not learned in a free city, thus abolishing the link between skills and the corporative environment which the guilds had forged. In response, guilds started to define

The Political Economy of Freeman Status  159 immigrants differently from about the mid-seventeenth century on. In the Antwerp guild of the diamond cutters, among others, ‘foreign’ no longer referred to ‘originating from outside the duchy of Brabant’ but to ‘originating from outside Antwerp’.210 While this could simply be understood as a growing exclusiveness, the issue was more complex. The Antwerp coopers started to distinguish between native and foreign apprentices from 1646 on. Concerning the masters, however, a distinction emerged between those who had learned in Antwerp and those who had learned elsewhere.211 The gold- and silversmiths, who in 1524 had (regarding the fees to be paid) distinguished between those who had learned in Antwerp and those who had learned outside Brabant, likewise distinguished between those who had learned in Antwerp (and were born in Brabant) and those who had not in 1607 and 1646.212 And the Antwerp diamond cutters prolonged the term a journeyman had to have worked locally before he could become a master from one to five years in 1672.213 It would seem, then, that the corporative logic of cities, which worked to the exclusion of people in the countryside in particular, dissolved in the seventeenth century and beyond. Under pressure from central authorities attempting to undermine their regulations, these guilds in any case started to stress the local territory more.214 Being a stranger was not a problem, as long as one had learned in the city. With such rulings, guilds cast away a system which had enabled cities to substitute reciprocal mechanisms for competition for centuries. And more importantly for my purpose, new approaches to the city as a political community created the idea of the city as a bulwark, while previously the focus had been on the broader (supra-urban) corporative network. Ultimately, this is perhaps related to the redefinition of burghership and political belonging. After all, in Florence a redefinition materialized which was not at odds with this. In the early modern period the ius sanguinis of the late medieval cities, which had enabled urban citizens to control also the region (contado) was gradually replaced with a stricter territorial conception of burghership similar to the idea of burghership in the early communes. In this approach burghership was limited to those originating and residing in the cities (often owners of real estate and tax payers) while territorial principalities became the frame of reference in the region.215

Conclusion Guilds were not dei ex machina invented from scratch so as to solve either a social or an economic problem. They had always been there one way or another, and they were adapted to new circumstances over and over again. While they were embedded in a tradition of religious brotherhoods when they fought for political recognition and voice in the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries, their institutional outlook matured only between roughly the mid-fifteenth and mid-seventeenth century. This is when uniform apprenticeship terms and standardized master trials were introduced. The reason

160  The Political Economy of Freeman Status for this was a desire to preserve their economic privileges which were challenged by ‘false masters’ who wanted to engage in production without being members of a guild. This is not to be confused with outright exclusion and rent-seeking. What was behind it was rather an ideology of incorporation. While immigrants were often actively attracted, new professional groups were either organized in a guild or integrated into an existing one—as was the case in the textile industry and luxury trades in Antwerp. Nor can this be reduced to either a social or an economic logic. While the incorporation of an artisanal group brought about economic regulations in the trade involved, communal resource pooling was clearly an issue too. Whenever immigrating artisans were granted privileges, they were often forced to commit themselves to training local youth, so that innovative technology was not only incorporated but shared as well.216 The point is that in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century cities in the Southern Netherlands the social and the economic were a priori embedded in a mental framework which gave precedence to incorporation. This also concerned the workforce, as they were obligated to work for a master— which at the time amounted to being under his patriarchal dominion. At this point, the framework was already centuries old and subject to transformations. As will be suggested in subsequent chapters, the formalization and bureaucratization of the corporative framework are perhaps to be seen as symptoms of the fact that the underlying ideology was already waning. It is after all proof that the enforcement trough informal mechanisms failed. Alternatively, the enactment of formal rules was heavily path dependent, as is obvious in the case of the entrance fees. The guilds in the Southern Netherlands did not raise their entry barriers with a view to excluding outsiders, but because past investments forced them to do so. The resulting exclusiveness was largely unintended. Next to the concept of (institutional) path dependency, this opens the way to the concept of unintended consequences in the debate about the rationale of guilds. In my view, this would have partly defused the fierce debate between Epstein and Ogilvie, which for years now has served as a focus for the debate on guilds. Admittedly, guilds were able to escape to a certain degree—and they adapted their logic when for instance raising entry barriers more for masters’ sons than non-masters’ sons. Yet they were not prepared to drop their investments in religious and worldly buildings. The Antwerp guild of shoemakers and tanners in the mid-seventeenth century set out to invest in a new façade for their guild house in the central market square while they were already in debt for 2,000 guilders, on which they were paying 100 guilders a year in interest.217 Likewise, after the bombardment of the city center in 1695, most Brussels guilds immediately searched for funding to rebuild their ruined houses, fully aware that this would again raise their entrance fees substantially. The Brussels guild of tailors tripled the entrance fee from fifty to 150 guilders after their loan for the rebuilding of their house had been incurred.218 In my view, this is testimony of the guild officials’ inability to

The Political Economy of Freeman Status  161 look beyond the guild framework and to imagine a city—or a place for them in the city—without guilds. This must have been even more difficult in the late medieval period. In fifteenth-century Bruges, guilds are recorded to have raised entrance fees to cover the costs related to their participation in the Holy Blood Procession, which at the time helped to imagine and reproduce the city as an organic body politic, in which each group was assigned a place by God.219 The smallest building block of this body was master status, in which economic and political dimensions merged. While the masters’ enterprises obviously contributed to the welfare of the city and its inhabitants, in their argumentation it was essentially the guild-based masters’ moral capacities which guaranteed a trustworthy product to consumers. While this can be understood in economic terms—with the masters’ moral discipline creating trust on the market—, this argumentation was itself contingent upon a specific ideological—and in fact religious—context too. Specifically, it was contingent upon the importance of ‘intrinsic value’ in a product. Products could have been valued differently of course; they increasingly were in the seventeenth and eighteenth century. Yet in the medieval and late medieval period, intrinsic value nicely corresponded to the basic religious attitude in which God was present in matter and material objects. Material objects, whether they be natural or artificial, gave access to God’s divine and eternal wisdom and truth. In this vein, artists and artisans could thus claim to be even closer to God than merchants or aristocratic elites. As argued above, this did not automatically lead to the political incorporation of artisans, owing to the political idea that rational judgment geared towards the common good was considered at odds with having to perform manual work. However, a remarkable chronological correspondence between the guilds’ success and natural philosophy can be revealed. In classical political thinking, a field of tension materialized between the ‘natural’ or ‘conventional’ nature of the political. As it appears, artisans could not be political subjects because they belonged to the realm of Nature rather than the realm of Politics, or Artifice.220 Such ideas persisted in medieval political thinking, but in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries—and perhaps even before—the distinction between nature and artifice gradually transformed. From the fifteenth century on the ontological dichotomy between Nature and manmade objects (Art or Artifice) gradually dissolved. While on the one hand art approximated the perfection of nature ever more, on the other nature was subject to a disenchantment of sorts. As has been argued by such historians of science and art as Pamela Long and Pamela Smith, the importance of trial and error, personal observation and experimentation in the production of knowledge increased.221 This was the realm of artists and artisans, who at the very same time were gaining their maximum of political power in history. In the eighteenth century this was no longer the case. While the share of masters in the total active population declined and new industries emerged

162  The Political Economy of Freeman Status both in cities and outside the city walls which were not organized in guilds, the latter were gradually abolished or at least merged with other guilds. The guilds continued to connect their economic privileges to the city as a body politic, but their strategies, tactics and instruments changed. During the sixteenth century, when the whole range of the guilds’ formal entry requirements materialized, they were still fighting literally in defense of their political ideas. Gradually however, a juridical and bureaucratic logic prevailed, which profoundly transformed the body politic—as we will see in more detail in chapters 4 and 5. In addition, a territorial rather than a corporative logic materialized, not only on the level of the emerging state but on the urban level as well. This idea will be picked up again in the Epilogue.

Notes   1 De Munck, ‘Gilding’, 244. Original quote in Schlugleit, Geschiedenis, 13.   2  De Munck, ‘Gilding’, 244.  3 Ibidem.   4 Epstein, ‘Craft Guilds, Apprenticeship’; Ogilvie, ‘ “Whatever” ’; Epstein, ‘Craft Guilds in the Pre-Modern Economy’; Ogilvie, ‘Rehabilitating’.   5 Epstein, ‘Craft Guilds, Apprenticeship’. Reprinted in Epstein and Prak, Guilds, 52–80.   6  De Munck, ‘Gilding’. Also Gustafsson, ‘The Rise’; Richardson, ‘Brand Names’.  7 Des Marez, L’organisation, 56–57, 67; De Munck, ‘Gilding’, 240.   8  De Kerf, ‘The Early Modern Antwerp Coopers’ Guild’, 248.   9  See Ftn 1. 10 See Ftn 1. 11 Recent perspectives and further references in De Munck and Lyna, ‘Locating’. 12 An overview in Lane, Apprenticeship, ch. 1. 13 Humphries, ‘English Apprenticeship’. 14 See Ftn 1. 15 Cuvelier, Les institutions, 242–243. 16 For the Southern Netherlands, see Des Marez, ‘La première étape’ and Wyffels, De oorsprong. 17 See e.g., Pirenne, Economic, 209–224. 18 A synthesis and references in Farr, Artisans. For the Southern Netherlands, consult the state of the art in Prak et al. (eds.), Craft guilds. A detailed case study on the issue of social mobility in Dambruyne, ‘Guilds’. 19 Stabel, ‘Guilds’. 20 See also Sosson, ‘Les métiers’; Boone, ‘Les métiers’. 21 Lis and Soly, ‘Different Paths’, ‘Export Industries’, and ‘Subcontracting’. Also: Deceulaer, ‘Entrepreneurs’. For patterns of subcontracting in other regions, see, among others, Sonenscher, Work, chs. 4–7; Riello, ‘Strategies’. 22 Thijs, Van ‘werkwinkel’, 193–194; De Munck, ‘Gilding’, 223, 236, 244. 23 Mocarelli, ‘Guilds’, 166. 24 De Munck et al., ‘The Establishment’, 35. 25 Des Marez, L’organisation, 13–14, noot 1; Favresse, L’avènement, 66; De Munck et al., ‘The Establishment’, 35. 26 Mocarelli, ‘Guilds’, 164–166. 27 Van Der Wee, ‘Structural Changes’; Thijs, ‘Antwerp’s Luxury Industries’. 28 A similar trend existed in the Italian regions. See Mocarelli, ‘Guilds’, 167.

The Political Economy of Freeman Status  163 29 Thijs, Van ‘werkwinkel’, 197; De Munck, Technologies, 62, 89, 91. 30 Des Marez, L’organisation, 36. 31 Lis and Soly, ‘Die Zünfte’, 160. 32 Lourens and Lucassen, ‘Ambachtsgilden’, 145. 33 Farr, Artisans, 96–97. 34 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 40–41. 35 Based on Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 38–39, using an activity rate of 55% and a population estimate of 44,000. 36 Van Honacker, ‘De politieke cultuur’, 184–185. Also: Des Marez, L’organisation, 105, Ftn 2 and 106, Ftn 3. 37 De Munck et al., ‘The Establishment’, 36. 38 Schlugleit, Geschiedenis, 10. 39 De Munck, ‘Construction’, 87–89. 40 Des Marez, L’organisation, 7. 41 Des Marez, L’organisation, 24ff. Before, they were often recognized as a brotherhood (‘geselscap’) of sorts (without jurés, but with governing ‘masters’). Des Marez, L’organisation, 20–21. 42 Des Marez, L’organisation, 11–12. 43 Espinas, La vie urbaine, 365–368 and Les origines, Tome I, 478–480. 44 Des Marez, L’organisation, 21–22. 45 See e.g., Smekens, ‘Ambachten’. Also Van Houtte, Histoire, ch. 3. 46 De Munck, Technologies, 64, 76. 47 De Munck, Technologies, esp. 99–103. 48 E.g., Gaillard, De ambachten, Part II, 31; Favresse, L’avènement, 78; Espinas, Les origines, Tome I, 1063; Verhavert, Het ambachtswezen, 79–80; Des Marez, L’organisation, 74. 49 Espinas, Les origines, Tome I, 1061–1063, 1074–1075. 50 Laenen, Geschiedenis, 281. 51 References in De Munck, ‘Gilding’, 223–224. 52 De Munck, ‘Gilding’, 236, Ftn 49. 53 Des Marez, L’organisation, 43. 54 City Archives Antwerp (CAA), Gildes and Trades (GT) 4007, 15 May 1513, fo. 6–7v. 55 E.g., Des Marez, L’organisation, 44; Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 348; Stabel, ‘Social Mobility’, 161. Some mercers did require a short apprenticeship term, as was the case with Ghent (in the second half of the seventeenth century). Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 75. 56 References in De Munck, Technologies, 60–61. 57 Some figures for Antwerp, Bruges, Ghent and Leuven anno 1784 in De Munck, Technologies, 61 (Table 3.1). 58 Des Marez, L’organisation, 51. 59 Verhavert, Het ambachtswezen, 80. 60 Des Marez, L’organisation, 95; Laenen, Geschiedenis, 281; Verhavert, Het ambachtswezen, 82; Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 190, 194–198. 61 References in De Munck, ‘Gilding’, 223–224, Ftn 8; and ‘One counter’, 33, Ftn 32. A similar pattern is found in Valenciennes, see Junot, Les bourgeois, 190–191. 62 E.g., Schulz, Handwerkgesellen, 311 and Gustafsson, ‘The Rise’. 63 CAA, GT 4112, 18 April 1583, fo. 62r‑62v. Also: De Munck, Technologies, 75. 64 De Munck, ‘Gilding’, 236. A Bruges example in Gaillard, De ambachten, Part II, 31. 65 Figures from Blondé and Limberger, ‘De gebroken welvaart’, 307. 66 E.g., Gaillard, De ambachten, Part II, 33, 35, 50.

164  The Political Economy of Freeman Status  67 De Munck, Technologies, 70 and ‘Construction’, 90–92.  68 De Munck, Technologies, ch. 2.2.   69 De Munck, ‘Skills’, 213 and ‘Gilding’, 233.  70 Des Marez, L’organisation, 52.   71 Reith, ‘Zur Beruflichen’, 3–4.  72 De Munck, Technologies, 63 and ‘Gilding’, 230–232.  73 Willems, Het Antwerpse kuipersambacht, 39–43, 167ff; De Kerf, De circulatie, 174–175.  74 Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 301, 348.   75  De Munck, ‘La qualité’, 124–128 and ‘One counter’, 34–36.  76 E.g., Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 176.   77 De Munck, ‘La qualité’, 124–128, ‘Gilding’, 235 and ‘One Counter’, 33–34, 36–38.   78 Scholliers, ‘Vrije en onvrije’, 288, 291–292; Thijs, Van ‘werkwinkel’, 372–373, 398–399; Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 294; Lis and Soly, ‘De Macht’; De Munck, ‘Meritocraten’ and ‘One Counter’, 30–31. More on the collective actions of journeymen in Debus Kehr, Travailler.  79 Schlugleit, De Antwerpse goud- en zilversmeden, 114.   80 E.g., Scholliers, ‘Vrije en onvrije’, 298–299; Van Buyten, Leuven anno 1789, 75–76.  81 E.g., Espinas, Les origines, Tome I, 1097; Van Werveke, ‘Ambachten’, 7–8; Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 50.  82 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 50.  83 Schlugleit, De Antwerpse goud- en zilversmeden, 190.  84 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 225, 229.  85 Verhavert, Het ambachtswezen, 79–80.  86 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 205–206; De Munck, Technologies, 88–92.   87 Others have argued in favor of a reverse correlation—with high fees compensating for the lack of a natural threshold. Thijs, Van ‘werkwinkel’, 261; Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 186.  88 Des Marez, L’organisation, 73, 80; De Munck, ‘From Brotherhood’, 7. Additional references to the partial exemption of masters’ sons in Espinas, Les origines, Tome I, 1108; Coornaert, Les corporations, 197; and De Munck, Technologies, ch. 2.3.  89 De Munck, Technologies, 90.  90 De Munck, Technologies, 93.  91 Des Marez, L’organisation, 77.   92  Davids and De Munck, ‘Beyond Exclusivism’.  93 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 205–209 and the table on p. 207 based on Thijs, Van ‘werkwinkel’, 258–259, 281, 288–291. Compare with Schulz, Handwerksgesellen, ch. IV and Klüge, Die Zünfte, ch. 3.2.3.   94  See De Munck, Technologies, ch. 2.3.   95 ‘verminderinge van alle neringen ende vermeerderinge van lasten’. Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 162.  96 Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 163, 229.  97 Willems, Het Antwerpse kuipersambacht, 74, 145–150; De Kerf, De circulatie, 179, 184.  98  Van Den Broeck, ‘ “Marchands de tout” ’, 70–71; Van Damme, Verleiden, 92–101.  99 De Munck, Technologies, 113–114. 100 Willems, ‘Loon naar werken?’, 41–42; De Kerf, De circulatie, 185–186. 101 De Munck, Technologies, 112–113; De Kerf, De circulatie, 186.

The Political Economy of Freeman Status  165 102 De Munck, Technologies, 95–96. 103 De Munck, Technologies, 112–113. 104 The deans on the occasion calculated that a new master was obligated to spend a total of 255 guilders on treats. Verleysen, Het hemelse festijn, 34–35. 105 Verleysen, Het hemelse festijn, 37. 106 De Munck, Technologies, 112–113 (additional references there). 107 Dambruyne, ‘De Gentse bouwvakambachten’, 74. 108 Des Marez, L’organisation, 84–85. A Bruges example (shoemakers) in Van Quathem, ‘Sociale mobiliteit’, 120. 109 De Munck, Technologies, 88–96. 110 Schlugleit, De Antwerpse goud- en zilversmeden, 136. 111 Thijs, Van geuzenstad, 116–122; Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 157. 112 This is also argued in Verleysen, Het hemelse festijn, 220–221. 113 Van Roey, ‘De bevolking’ (with additional references). 114 Klep, Bevolking, 347–349; Blondé, Het Brabantse, 260. 115 Willems, ‘Loon naar werken?’, 46; De Munck, Technologies, 146; De Kerf, De circulatie, 183. 116 Verleysen, Het hemelse festijn, 221. 117 De Munck, Technologies, 100. 118 Schlugleit, De Antwerpse goud- en zilversmeden, 138, 142 and 155. Additional examples in De Munck, Technologies, 100–101. 119 On the relationship between the number of entrants and the financial situation (including the entrance fees) of guilds, see: Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 356; Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 127–128, 186. 120 Some examples of and ideas about the (limited) effects of higher entrance fees on the number of entrants in Van Quathem, ‘Sociale mobiliteit’, 118–120; Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 96–99; De Munck, Technologies, 167–168. 121 De Munck, Technologies, 101–102. 122 See De Munck, Technologies, ch. 2.3.3. De Munck, ‘From Brotherhood’, 6–8; Davids and De Munck, ‘Beyond Exclusivism’. 123 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 191–192. 124 Examples in Des Marez, L’organisation, 49–50; Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 269; De Munck, Technologies, 160, 164. 125 De Munck, Technologies, 160. 126 Des Marez, L’organisation, 49. 127 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 187. 128 De Munck, ‘Construction’, 92–95. More details and additional examples in De Munck, Technologies, 101–114, esp. 108–109. 129 See e.g. Munro, ‘Urban Regulation’, esp. 43–45. 130 ‘la bonne police requerant qu’un chacun demeure dans son devoir, office et exercise, à quoy Dieu l’a créé, à scavoir que les bourgeois et manans des villes y praticquassent toutes sortes de mestiers pour la subsistance, nécessité et besoing des hommes et que les paysants et les habitans du plat pays prinssent le soing de cultiver et labourer la terre, tant pour leur nourriture que pour celle des villes’. Quoted in Des Marez, L’Organisation, 483–484. 131 Van Werveke, Gent, 46–48; Prevenier and Boone, ‘De “stadstaat”-droom’, 84. 132 Heirwegh, Les corporations, 157; Dickschen, De Antwerpse ambachten; De Kerf and De Munck, ‘Cities’, 41–42. 133 Van Der Wee, ‘Industrial Dynamics’, 335–336, 341–342. 134 Next to the cotton industry in Ghent, these regions were among those to herald the first industrial revolution on the European continent. See Van Der Wee, ‘The Industrial Revolution’.

166  The Political Economy of Freeman Status 135 Van Der Wee, ‘Industrial Dynamics’, esp. 330–332 and Stabel, De kleine stad, 200–204 and 254–259. 136 De Munck, Technologies, 237. 137 See e.g., Richardson, ‘Brand Names’; De Munck, ‘Agency’. For the important medieval cloth industry, see Derville, ‘Les draperies’; Munro, ‘Urban Regulation’, and ‘Medieval Woollens. 138 Van Der Wee, ‘Structural Changes’, 213. See also Van Der Wee, ‘Industrial Dynamics’. 139 See Beckert and Musselin, Constructing quality. An historical perspective in De Munck and Lyna, ‘Locating’. 140 Des Marez, L’organisation, 201, 268–269. 141 CAA, GT 4488, fo. 13, 24 February 1454 (1455 ns). 142 Examples for Brussels in Des Marez, L’organisation, 261–262. 143 Examples in De Munck, Technologies, 236–243; ‘La qualité’, 128–134; ‘Skills’, 215–217; ‘Agency’. 144 Des Marez, L’organisation, 262–264, 269. 145 De Munck, Technologies, 237. 146 De Munck, Technologies, 237. 147 De Munck, ‘Artisans’, 52. For an overview consult the database ‘Craft Guilds Flanders’, http://hdl.handle.net/10411/10053 Website Institutions for Collective Action, 2011. 148 Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 147. Also: Thijs, Van ‘werkwinkel’, passim. 149 E.g. Van Den Broeck, ‘ “Marchands de tout” ’, 55–56; Blondé and Greefs, ‘Werk aan de winkel’; Van Aert and Van Damme, ‘Retail Dynamics’; Van Damme, Verleiden, 93–94. 150 De Munck, ‘Construction’, 87–89. Similar discussions arose in Brussels, where the same principles were moreover used. Des Marez, L’Organisation, 479–481. 151 De Vries, ‘Luxury’ and The Industrious Revolution, chs. 2 and 4. 152 Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 79, 105. 153 Honig, ‘The Beholder’; De Marchi and Van Miegroet, ‘Pricing’; Bok, ‘Pricing’. 154 Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 180. 155 Cuvelier, Les institutions, 215, 223–224. 156 De Munck, Technologies, 236–243 and ‘Agency’, 4. 157 Des Marez, L’organisation, 288. 158 ‘eenen halven peeter, met de stadt teeckene’. Verhavert, Het ambachtswezen, 88. 159 Des Marez, L’organisation, 286. 160 Des Marez, L’organisation, 283–284, 284ff; Verhavert, Het ambachtswezen, 88; De Munck, Technologies, 241 and ‘Agency’, 4. Examples of other ways to indentify products in Des Marez, L’organisation, 282, 292–295. 161 Verleysen, Het hemelse festijn, 276–277. 162 Boucheron and Menjot, ‘La ville’, 447. 163 De Munck, Technologies, 65 and ‘La qualité’, 123–124. One example in Schlugleit, De Antwerpse goud- en zilversmeden, 59, 64. 164 De Munck, ‘Artisans’, 70. 165  See the landmark article Trexler, ‘Florentine Religious Experience’. Also Mervyn, ‘Ritual’; Davis, ‘the Sacred’. 166 Smith, ‘Artists as Scientists’ and ‘Vital Spirits’. Also: The body. 167 Verhavert, Het ambachtswezen, 48. Additional examples in Verleysen, Het hemelse festijn, 229–230, 233–235. 168 A critical introduction and recent perspectives in Brandt and Buchner (eds.), Nahrung. 169 De Vries, European Urbanization, 175–198; Moch, Moving Europeans, 44–46. A recent state of the art and further references in De Munck and Winter (eds.), Gated Communities?

The Political Economy of Freeman Status  167 170 Boone and Stabel, ‘New Burghers’, 321. 171 Thijs, ‘Hondschootse saaiwevers’, 225–226; and De Meester, ‘To Kill’, 99–100. 172 Thijs, Van ‘werkwinkel’, 115–122; De Meester, ‘To Kill’, 100. 173 Maitte, ‘The Cities’. More examples and further references in Davids and De Munck (eds.), Innovation. 174 Boone and Stabel, ‘New Burghers’, 321. 175 Boone and Stabel, ‘New Burghers’, 321. 176 Decavele, ‘De Gentse poorterij’, 64, 69; Boone, ‘Droit’, 711; Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 184. 177 De Meester, ‘To Kill’. 178 De Meester, Gastvrij, 206–212, 238–248. Also: Thijs, Van ‘werkwinkel’, 394–396. 179 De Munck, ‘Meritocraten’, 100–103. 180 De Munck and Winter, ‘Regulating’, 10–12. Also: Junot, ‘Heresy’. 181 E.g. Des Marez, L’organisation, 121–122; Junot, ‘Heresy’, 71. 182 E.g., Des Marez, L’organisation, 69–70, 120, 122. 183 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 79. 184 Quote and additional examples in De Munck, ‘One Counter’, 30–31. 185 Thijs, Van ‘werkwinkel’, 398–399; Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 294; Lis and Soly, ‘De macht’; and De Munck, ‘Meritocraten’ and ‘One Counter’, 29–31. 186 Soly, Urbanisme, 277; De Meester, ‘Migrant Workers’, 37–41. 187 Boone and Stabel, ‘New Burghers’, 324–327. See also Thoen, ‘Immigration’, 338 and Stabel, De kleine stad, ch. 1, esp. 34–40. 188 Boone and Stabel, ‘New Burghers’, 326–327. 189 Thijs, ‘Hondschootse Saaiwevers’, and De Meester, ‘To Kill’, 100. 190 De Munck, Technologies, 64, 76. 191 Thijs, De zijdenijverheid, 57. 192 Winter, ‘Caught’, and ‘Regulating’. Recent surveys on settlement laws and similar arrangements in other regions in Snell, Parish, 85–86 and Hahn, ‘Migrants’. 193  CAA, GT 4002, 25 October 1582. Published in Schlugleit, Geschiedenis, 13–18, 13. 194 Thijs, ‘werkwinkel’, 125; Thijs, ‘Minderheden’, 25; De Kerf, De circulatie, 120. 195 Isenmann, ‘Bürgerrecht’, 244–247. 196  Isenmann, ‘Bürgerrecht’, 245ff. Recent views for Venice in Lanaro, ‘Corporations’. 197 Kuijpers and Prak, ‘Burger’, 121. 198 Lourens and Lucassen, ‘ “Zunftlandschaften” ’, 15–17; Davids and De Munck, ‘Beyond Exclusivism’. 199 Some guilds did make the distinction before. See e.g., Des Marez, L’organisation, 47. 200 Reith, ‘Circulation’ (with additional references). 201 De Meester, Gastvrij, ch. 4; De Kerf, De circulatie, ch. 2. 202 Stabel, ‘Social Mobility’, 169–170. 203 Jacobs, ‘De ambachten’, 591; De Kerf, ‘The Early Modern Antwerp Coopers’ Guild’, 255; De Kerf and De Munck, ‘Cities’, 40–41. 204 A few Brabantine cities oddly excepted. Des Marez, L’organisation, 117–118. 205 De Kerf, ‘The Early Modern Antwerp Coopers’ Guild’, 261 and De Kerf and De Munck, ‘Cities’. 206 See e.g. CAA, GT 4334, 14 June 1497; GT 4335, fo. 1v (cabinet makers); GT 4017, s.d., art. 5 (fullers); GT 4259, 26 November 1663 (glove and purse makers), GT 4028, fo. 4, 1536 (cloth dressers). 207 Biggs, ‘Putting’, quotes on 376 and 386. 208 Biggs, ‘Putting’; Elden, ‘Missing’. 209  Biggs, ‘Putting’. See also the empirical and conceptual work of Chandra Mukerji. Recent syntheses and further references in Mukerji, Impossible and ‘The Territorial State’.

168  The Political Economy of Freeman Status 210 De Bie, ‘The Paradox’, 286. 211 De Kerf, De circulatie, 100, 179, 181, 195; De Kerf, ‘The Early Modern Antwerp Coopers’ Guild’, 269–271. 212 De Munck, Technologies, 89 and 92; De Kerf, De circulatie, 121, 232–233. 213 De Bie, ‘De paradox’, 286. 214 A similar dialectic between a deregulating central authority (the Senate) and increasingly exclusive local actors (the guilds) is observed for Venice. See Lanaro, ‘Corporations’. 215 Racine, ‘La citoyenneté’. 216 E.g., Maitte, ‘The Cities’. 217 De Munck, Technologies, 98–99. 218 Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 299. 219 Brown, Civic Ceremony, 52, 55. 220 Lis and Soly, Worthy, 13–16. 221 Long, Artisan, ch. 2; Smith, The Body. See also Daston and Park, Wonders.

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The Political Economy of Freeman Status  175 Smith, Pamela H. The Body of the Artisan: Art and Experiment in the Scientific Revolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Smith, Pamela H. ‘Vital Spirits: Redemption, Artisanship, and the New Philosophy in Early Modern Europe.’ In Osler, Margaret J. ed. Rethinking the Scientific Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 119–136. Snell, K.D.M. Parish and Belonging: Community, Identity and Welfare in England and Wales, 1700–1950. Cambridge: 2006. Soly, Hugo. Urbanisme en kapitalisme te Antwerpen in de 16de eeuw: De stedelijke en bouwkundige ondernemingen van Gilbert Van Schoonbeke. Brussels: 1977. Sonenscher, Michael. Work and Wages: Natural Law, Politics and the EighteenthCentury French Trades. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Sosson, Jean-Pierre. ‘Les métiers, normes et réalité: L’exemple des anciens Pays-Bas méridionaux aux XIVe et XVe siècles.’ In Hamesse, Jacqueline and MurailleSamaran, Colette eds. Le travail au moyen âge: Une approche interdisciplaire. Louvain-La-Neuve: Publications de l’Institut d’études médiévales, 2nd series, 10, 1990, pp. 339–348. Stabel, Peter. De kleine stad in Vlaanderen: Bevolkingsdynamiek en economische functies van de kleine en secundaire stedelijke centra in het Gentse kwartier (14de—16de eeuw). Brussels: Paleis der Academiën, 1995 (Verhandelingen van de Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Klasse der Letteren, 156). Stabel, Peter. ‘Guilds in Late Medieval Flanders: Myths and Realities of Guild Life in an Export Oriented Environment.’ Journal of Medieval History 30 (2004): 187–212. Stabel, Peter. ‘Social Mobility and Apprenticeship in Late Medieval Flanders.’ In De Munck, Bert, Kaplan, Steven L. and Soly, Hugo. eds. Learning on the Shop Floor: Historical Perspectives on Apprenticeship. London and New York: 2007, pp. 158–178. Thijs, Alfons K.L. ‘Antwerp’s Luxury Industries: The Pursuit of Profit and Artistic Sensitivity.’ In Van Der Stock, Jan ed. Antwerp: Story of a Metropolis, 16th‑17th Century. Antwerp: Snoeck-Ducaju & Zoon, 1993, pp. 105–113. Thijs, Alfons K.L. De zijdenijverheid te Antwerpen in de zeventiende eeuw. Brussels: Pro Civitate, 1969 (Historische Uitgaven, Reeks in-8°, Nr. 23). Thijs, Alfons K.L. ‘Hondschootse Saaiwevers te Antwerpen.’ Bijdragen tot de Geschiedenis 54 (1971): 225–239. Thijs, Alfons K.L. ‘Minderheden te Antwerpen (16de-20ste eeuw).’ In Soly, Hugo and Thijs, Alfons K.L. eds. Minderheden in Westeuropese steden (16de-20ste eeuw). Brussels: Gemeentekrediet, 1995, p. 42. Thijs, Alfons K.L. Van geuzenstad tot katholiek bolwerk: Antwerpen en de contrareformatie. Turnhout: Brepols, 1990. Thijs, Alfons K.L. Van ‘werkwinkel’ tot ‘fabriek’: De textielnijverheid te Antwerpen (einde 15de-begin 19de eeuw). Brussels: Gemeentekrediet, 1987 (Historische Uitgaven, reeks in-8°, Nr. 69). Thoen, Erik. ‘Immigration to Bruges During the Late Middle Ages.’ In Cavaciocchi, Simonetta ed. Le migrazioni in Europa (secc. XIII-XVIII) 25: Settimana di Studio: Istituto Internazionale di Storia Economica F. Datini. contra-reformatie: Le Monnier, 1994, pp. 453–491. Trexler, Richard C. ‘Florentine Religious Experience: The Sacred Image.’ Studies in the Renaissance 19 (1972): 7–41.

176  The Political Economy of Freeman Status Van Aert, Laura and Van Damme, Ilja. ‘Retail Dynamics and a City in Crisis: The Mercer Guild in Pre-Industrial Antwerp, ca. 1648–1748.’ In Blondé, Bruno ed. Retailers and Consumer Changes in Medieval and Early-Modern Europe. Tours: Presses universitaires François-Rabelais, 2005, pp. 139–167. Van Buyten, Leo. Leuven anno 1789. Leuven: Peeters, 1989. Van Damme, Ilja. Verleiden en verkopen: Antwerpse kleinhandelaars en hun klanten in tijden van crisis, ca. 1648—ca. 1748. Amsterdam: Aksant, 2007 (Studies Stadsgeschiedenis 2). Van Den Broeck, André. ‘ “Marchands de tout, faiseurs de rien”: Het Lierse meerseniersambacht tijdens de tweede helft van de 18de eeuw.’ Lira Elegans 3 (1993): 51–83. Van Der Wee, Herman. ‘Industrial Dynamics and the Process of Urbanization and De-Urbanization in the Low Countries from the Late Middle Ages to the Eighteenth Century.’ In Van Der Wee, Herman ed. The Rise and Decline of Urban Industries in Italy and the Low Countries (Late Middle Ages‑Early Modern Times). Leuven: University Press, 1988, pp. 307–381. Van Der Wee, Herman. ‘Structural Changes and Specialization in the Industry of the Southern Netherlands.’ Economic History Review 28 (1975): 203–221. Van Der Wee, Herman. ‘The Industrial Revolution in Belgium.’ In Teich, Mikuláš and Porter, Roy eds. The Industrial Revolution in National Context: Europe and the USA. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. 64–77. Van Honacker, Karin. ‘De politieke cultuur van de Brusselse ambachten in de achttiende eeuw: conservatisme, corporatisme of opportunisme?’ In Lis, Catharina and Soly, Hugo eds. Werken volgens de regels: Ambachten in Brabant en Vlaanderen, 1500–1800. Brussels: VUB-Press, 1994, pp. 179–228. Van Houtte, Hubert. Histoire économique de la Belgique à la fin de l’Ancien Régime. Ghent: van Rysselberghe-Rombaut, 1920. Van Quathem, Kristof. ‘Sociale mobiliteit en machtsverdeling in het Brugse schoenmakersambacht (1570–1790).’ In Lis, Catharina and Soly, Hugo eds. Werken volgens de regels: Ambachten in Brabant en Vlaanderen, 1500–1800. Brussels: VUB-Press, 1994, pp. 107–134. Van Roey, Jan. ‘De bevolking.’ In Antwerpen in de XVIe eeuw. Antwerp: Mercurius, 1975, pp. 95–108. Van Werveke, Hans. ‘Ambachten en erfelijkheid.’ Mededeelingen van de Koninklijke Vlaamsche Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schoone Kunsten van België 4 (1942) 1: 5–26. Van Werveke, Hans. Gent: Schets van een Sociale Geschiedenis. Gent: Boekhandel Rombaut-Fecheyr, 1947. Verhavert, Jan. Het ambachtswezen te Leuven. Leuven: Universiteitsbibliotheek, 1940. Verleysen, Frederik. Het hemelse festijn: Religieuze cultuur, sociabiliteit en sociale relaties in de corporatieve wereld van Antwerpen, Brussel en Gent (ca. 1585—ca. 1795). Brussels, 2005 (Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Free University of Brussels, VUB). Willems, Bart. Het Antwerpse kuipersambacht, 1580–1796. Brussels: Unpublished licentiate’s thesis VUB, 1996–1997. Willems, Bart. ‘Loon naar werken? Sociale mobiliteit in het Antwerpse kuipersambacht (1585–1793).’ Bijdragen tot de geschiedenis 82 (1999) 1/2: 31–62.

The Political Economy of Freeman Status  177 Winter, Anne. ‘Caught Between Law and Practice: Migrants and Settlement Legislation in the Southern Low Countries in a Comparative Perspective, c. 1700–1900.’ Rural History, 19/2 (2008): 137–162. Winter, Anne. ‘Regulating Urban Migration and Relief Entitlements in EighteenthCentury Brabant.’ In De Munck, Bert and Winter, Anne eds. Gated Communities? Regulating Migration in Early Modern Cities. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2012, pp. 175–196. Wyffels, Carlos. De oorsprong der ambachten in Vlaanderen en Brabant. Brussels: Verhandelingen van de Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie voor Wetenschappen, 1951 (Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België).

4 Corporatism, Proletarianization and the Patriarchal Order

In the course of the 1670s, the Antwerp guild of gold- and silversmiths entered a prolonged period of juridical litigation against one of its masters, William De Ryck, who was accused of having more apprentices than the guild allowed. Mid-fifteenth century the guild had meticulously prescribed that a master could employ two apprentices, provided that the second was not to be hired before the first had completed two years of his four years apprenticeship period.1 De Ryck however had more of them, at least according to the guild. The master simply argued that they were not apprentices, but journeymen who just also happened to acquire some additional skills in his atelier.2 De Ryck moreover added that the number of journeymen was not limited—and he was right: in the gold- and silversmiths’ founding ordinance in 1454, article 2 explicitly stated ‘that all good alien journeymen, wherever they come from, who want to earn their living in Antwerp, with a master for a daily wage, by contract or by piece, should be allowed to do so without further restriction’.3 Most historians to date would approach such litigation from the perspective of concentration trends and proletarianization. Social historians have amply and rightfully pointed out that apprentices were always at risk of being equated with unfree laborers and being exploited as cheap workforce—especially where capitalist labor relations increasingly prevailed in the early modern period.4 The conflict between De Ryck and his guild, however, is not to be fully understood with such an explanation. While concentration was not against this guild’s rules, the apprentices concerned here were not poor chaps used to running errands or sweeping the shop floor. Analysis of their apprentice contracts has revealed that they had often paid large sums of money and, moreover, were already qualified due to apprenticeship terms previously completed elsewhere.5 So the point here is not so much concentration trends or proletarianization, but the blurring of the boundaries between journeymen and apprentices per se. For the guild, it was essential to guard the distinction between apprentices and journeymen with a view to the clear delimitation of master status. But the reality on both the individual shop floors and the learning market as a whole incrementally posed a challenged to that.

180  Corporatism, Proletarianization and the Patriarchal Order Perhaps the most interesting puzzle with regard to late medieval and early modern guilds is the field of tension between, on the one hand, the static and orderly image presented to the outside world and, on the other, the complex and multilayered social and economic networks behind the scenes. Social historians have already pointed out that guilds were only coherent on the surface. While their privileges, statutes and ordinances presented an idealized image, the rules involved could be interpreted differently depending on specific circumstances and power relations.6 However, this is not to say that both the idealized image and the rules and regulations were meaningless. In my view, they can still point to a specific underlying political imagination, to be disclosed by historians. That is why in this book I try to uncover the political imaginary behind the idealized image while simultaneously revealing which rules continued to matter, or were newly devised, and why. Possibly a growing tension between rule (or image) and reality eventually became untenable in the eighteenth century, but we should be wary about looking at it through the lens of nineteenth- and twentieth-century concepts such as ‘class’ or ‘order’.7 In the 1980s the historiographical focus shifted towards the more neutral concept of ‘middling groups’, but this might also be at odds with the reality in the early modern period itself.8 Early modern historians have often depicted guild-based masters as employers defending their privileged position in the existing social stratification while disciplining their workforce.9 However, it has been added that among the masters as well, there were huge social differences as well as subcontracting among masters.10 Masters were themselves subject to proletarianization. In addition, it has been shown that the networks in which masters were involved exceeded their own guild and extended into the faubourgs and industrial districts beyond the city walls, adding to the complexity behind the veil of the social stratification as represented by the guilds.11 One legitimate question, then, would be why in this context masters clung to master status and guild rules at all? Why would small masters do so if it failed to assure them economic welfare and even independence? Was it simply a question of keeping up appearances? And regarding the large masters: weren’t they, more than anyone, hampered by the guilds’ rules? In my view, a guild-based master cannot be defined exhaustively with reference to his position as privileged employer. What has been overlooked somewhat is that whatever their position in a socio-economic hierarchical network, guild-based masters mostly continued to work in their own house with, where applicable, their own apprentices and journeymen. Even masters who were proletarianized de facto often continued to work as if they were not—i.e., as if they were independent artisans autonomously running a household. This is essential and explains a great many rules which would otherwise seem rather odd—such as the ban on working in company or under the roof of a merchant. Therefore, the concern of masters cannot be reduced to either economic well-being or keeping up appearances. Nor can it be understood adequately through the lens of proletarianization and the

Corporatism, Proletarianization and the Patriarchal Order  181 loss of control over the means of production. Instead, I will in this chapter try to capture the transformations the guild-based masters encountered beyond the economic sphere and include a focus on their cultural and political position in the body politic. This position will be connected to their economic strategies, although not through the concept of class and social stratification, but rather via their strategies on the product market. In the first and second chapters, we have seen that artisans had gained access to the political body by force, thus running against the tide of medieval political thinkers and elites which had denied access to the political to those they considered ‘slaves to necessity’. Yet, this is not to say that manual work was considered intrinsically degrading. Catharina Lis and Hugo Soly have moreover observed that the real issue was not labor as such, but rather freedom and independence. Manual work was unworthy if it was performed out of material necessity, under coercion or in the service of others.12 In this vein, manufacturing masters who worked at the head of a household and as employers to apprentices and journeymen could be entitled to political participation and office. In this chapter, I will take my cue from these observations and examine the shifting relationship between the economic position of masters and their role as heads of a household. First, I will tackle concentration trends and subcontracting, arguing that for masters and their representative bodies, these were not the prime matters of concern. I will show, rather, that what concerned masters most was the link between their political standing and product quality, which they connected through specific product standards and sealed and expressed with collective hall marks. In addition, masters were concerned about their status as master of a household, which will be focused upon subsequently. Specifically, I will examine the relationship between corporative and patriarchal values and practices, showing that they were intricately connected, with guild membership and the masters’ status as house fathers largely overlapping. In the long run, however, this overlap gradually dissolved, which will be illustrated with the changing position of masters’ sons, apprentices and women respectively. Thus, I will touch upon the issue of identity, although without reducing it to such anachronistic notions as ‘bourgeois middle class’ or ‘bourgeois collectivism’.13

Master Status in the Face of Concentration and Subcontracting At present, the guild debate is largely reduced to a debate between, on the one hand, economic historians who stress that guilds help solve economic problems and, on the other social historians who argue that guilds were ultimately exclusive and rent-seeking organizations. Among social historians as well, however, important debates have occurred. One debate focused on the Low Countries in particular, and it revolved around the notion of ‘small commodity production’. In a seminal article on the cases of Lille and

182  Corporatism, Proletarianization and the Patriarchal Order Leiden, Robert Duplessis and Martha Howell argued that the dominance of small workshops did not necessarily prevent these small commodity producers from adapting flexibly to changing economic environments and forming the basis of a high-performing economy. Moreover, Duplessis and Howell contended that urban policy in Lille and Leiden actually favored small commodity producers, with a view to the common good of the city.14 Without denying that small firms were indeed dominant, Catharina Lis and Hugo Soly were far more skeptical. Partly because of their focus on export industries and perhaps also on the Southern Netherlands, they pointed to the ubiquity of subcontracting, and hence to forms of concentration which are not immediately visible. Moreover, Lis and Soly argued that urban political elites did not favor small masters at all, but rather tergiversated between the interests of large masters who preferred deregulating workshop size and powerful merchants, who acted in favor of small masters in order to curtail competition from large manufacturing masters and because they needed small masters to execute their orders. In the long run, the large manufacturing masters gave the Southern Netherlands its economic edge in export sectors according to Lis and Soly.15 My concern here is not with the economic effects of guilds, but with the gap between small commodity producers on the scene and the economic realities behind it. In most sectors, small firms would seem to have dominated until the end of the eighteenth century. In Ghent, the average number of workers per master fluctuated between zero and three in 1738; in commercial trades such as the mercers and the old cloth sellers the figures even capped at averages around 1.5. In some sectors, due to impoverishment, the average number of apprentices per master may even have declined in the eighteenth century. Among the Brussels tailors in the 1730s, 124 of the 225 masters worked without journeymen, while their colleagues in Antwerp complained that more than half of their members could no longer pay the yearly taxes to the guild. Even the number of large ateliers would seem to have declined in this sector, especially in Antwerp.16 Around the same period 60% of the journeymen (who were members of the confraternity of journeymen) worked in an atelier with five or more journeymen, but 50 years later, this had declined to 13%.17 One major exception in Ghent (also when compared to other cities) was the construction sector. Ghent masons in 1738 on average had 34.6 workers each (both free and unfree), master carpenters 6.6. In addition, tanners also had large ateliers, with an average of 14.7 employees per master in Ghent, again in 1738.18 Of course, within the same sector workshop size could vary greatly—even long before the eighteenth century. In sixteenth century Ghent, significant concentration trends are recorded for the textile sector and hat making, next to construction.19 In Antwerp, inequalities were still greater, especially in the textile industry. In the important cloth dressing industry around 1540, thirty companies worked with ten journeymen or more, four companies even with more than twenty journeymen. At the other end of the spectrum,

Corporatism, Proletarianization and the Patriarchal Order  183 more than sixty companies comprised only one person, and more than 110 a maximum of two.20 But, given the importance of subcontracting, workshop size does not tell the whole story.21 Subcontracting was for instance extremely important in the Antwerp construction sector mid-sixteenth century, where the famous magnate Gilbert van Schoonbeke controlled a large part of the public construction sector. When the construction of new fortification walls was assigned to him, he subcontracted 96% of the work to six or seven subcontractors. Other masons acted as subcontractees or simply as a workforce to the latter.22 Similar trends existed in the textile and garment industry, where ready-to-wear garments were often made in subcontracting networks of tailors and old cloth sellers.23 In Ghent too, the economic dynamism was to be found in subcontracting and home work from at least the sixteenth century on, as is exemplified by the fustian firm of Jacob Bulteel.24 Some of these trends were apparent before the sixteenth century. In the Bruges textile and construction sector, they have been recorded as early as the fourteenth.25 As a consequence, concentration and subcontracting cannot explain the growing pressure on the guild structures in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, the more so since this pressure appears to have increased in the seventeenth century—i.e., when polarization was not on the rise. Moreover, the guilds rather easily accommodated growing concentration within the trade. On the one hand, masters subcontracting to other masters was not only a regular practice in a broad range of trades, it was mostly entirely licit too.26 Even masters from another guild could subcontract to guild-based masters, as happened with the old cloth sellers who are recorded to have subcontracted to tailors working ‘for a wage’ (om loon) also in Leuven.27 In the Antwerp shoemaking sector, tanners could subcontract to shoemakers and vice versa—with some large entrepreneurs in this sector being shoemaker and tanner simultaneously.28 On the other hand, the maximum number of journeymen and machinery per atelier was relaxed in periods of economic growth. As we will see in more detail in the next chapter, virtually all trades deregulated work shop size in the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. From the perspective of the guild-based masters, far more sensitive was the distinction between trade and manufacturing. One constant feature in the guilds of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was the strife between manufacturing guilds on the one hand and mercers and old cloth sellers on the other.29 The latter incrementally increased their radius of action and privileges to the prejudice of manufacturing artisans. In 1581, the Council of Brabant, for example, confirmed the right of the Antwerp mercers to sell stockings and other small garments.30 Even more important a bone of contention for the manufacturing guilds was the fact that merchants and mercers not only sold products for which manufacturing guilds had a monopoly, but also manufactured them. As early as the fifteenth century Brussels old cloth sellers were accused of not only buying and selling old garments, but also modifying them—which was forbidden to them in 1472.31 In Antwerp

184  Corporatism, Proletarianization and the Patriarchal Order an ordinance was issued in 1559 which prohibited old cloth sellers from manufacturing ready-to-wear garments from new fabrics, which was to remain the exclusive privilege of tailors. In Ghent, old cloth sellers could sell new garments, provided that it was made by a master tailor.32 In Leuven and other smaller cities, the phenomenon of double membership—which often materialized in masters being members of the mercers’ guild and a manufacturing guild simultaneously—may likewise have favored vertical integration.33 What the guilds defended most tenaciously was their monopoly on production. They were most fiercely opposed to situations in which products were made by non-masters—for instance when wine merchants, brewers or soap makers had their tubs made or repaired by journeyman or false masters instead of master coopers, or when masters were treated like journeymen instead of masters.34 The latter for instance occurred when in sixteenthcentury Antwerp so-called pot merchants delivered earthen pots to tinsmiths, who were then to attach a tin lid. As these lids were neither sold per piece to the merchant nor marked with the guild’s quality mark, the masters performing the work were considered in the service of the merchants rather than being an independent master. The guild officials literally complained that they worked ‘behind closed doors’ and ‘as a servant’ rather than ‘as a master . . . who sells his tin and earns a living in doing that’.35 For the guild-based masters concerned the issue was not proletarianization as we would understand it today. On the whole, they did not mind selling all their produce to one and the same merchant, even while being paid partly in raw material.36 What the guild-based masters secured was the connection between their status as masters and the product. They ensured that the product was made and sold by a master who had finished an apprenticeship term and master piece, and hence could deliver and warrant a fine piece of work. This is for example revealed by discussions between shoemakers and tanners in Antwerp. As these groups shared one guild in Antwerp, it was often unclear who exactly was allowed to do what. In the early seventeenth century, the tanners complained about shoemakers who bought fresh hides themselves and had them tanned in their own workshops. They argued that these shoemakers could only do so if they had become a tanner first, i.e. had paid the additional fees and made the separate trial for tanners. The conflict lingered on, until in the last quarter of the seventeenth century a compromise was reached which stated that shoemakers could have hides tanned provided it was subcontracted to a master tanner and that tanners could have shoes made when it was done by master shoemakers.37 What happened here was that the flexibility of labour relations was kept intact as well as the connection between master status and product quality. From the perspective of labor relations and ownership of the means of production it must often have been difficult to see the difference between a journeyman and a master—the more so as they often both received piece rates—but the guilds continued to make the distinction. It follows that we

Corporatism, Proletarianization and the Patriarchal Order  185 need to carefully distinguish between, on the one hand, subcontracting and purchasing networks in which regular masters were implicated, and, on the other, merchants or other non-masters employing apprentices, journeymen, women, children and small masters on either their own premises or at home. As is explained in the previous chapter, the latter was opposed by the guilds by preventing illegitimate masters from using the name and hallmark of a master’s widow, by issuing bans on working in company, and by prescribing a master piece and standard minimum terms to serve in the first place. Running more than one workshop was also considered suspicious as it could help false masters to be regularized and run their own workshop while officially working for another master.38 Perhaps the most remarkable rule in this context was the obligation for apprentices to live under their master’s roof. While traditional historiography considers this measure as proof of a patriarchal mentality, in my case study this was introduced (as a rule, not as a practice) solely to prevent merchants from being registered as an apprentice without really learning. Apparently false masters still managed to become legalized even after the introduction of a standardized master piece, among other things by concluding fictitious apprenticeship contracts, in which, for example, a merchant agreed to ‘learn’ with a master cloth dresser in return for exclusiveness in the finishing of his cloth (on top of a ‘learning fee’ of several hundred guilders).39 Harald Deceulaer gives the example of the French immigrant Jean Gautier, who in the 1670s was denied access to the guild notwithstanding his excellent qualifications and his previous registration as an apprentice. The deans simply argued that it had been a simple registration rather than a genuine apprenticeship.40 In 1515 the Antwerp cabinetmakers introduced a more difficult master piece after a complaint that apprenticeship was being neglected.41 A more common answer was to oblige the false masters to spend time on the shop floor of their master. In this context, the obligation for apprentices to board with the master was issued, mostly in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Thus, the hat makers in 1595 stipulated that apprentices henceforth had to board with the master, adding that it was forbidden to register as ‘free’ apprentices who were in the meantime conducting their business elsewhere.42 And even then, false masters found loopholes. In notaries’ archives, we have found fictitious apprenticeship contracts in which it is agreed that the master would live under the roof of his ‘apprentice’, while in reality the ‘apprentice’ was actually a merchant-entrepreneur who employed the master.43 One additional measure which was sometimes used to prevent this was a maximum age for apprentices. This was considered an option by the Antwerp gold- and silversmiths in the eighteenth century.44 The guild officials’ argument was always product quality.45 Guild-based masters typically defended their monopoly with the claim that they could make superior or at least trustworthy products, in contrast to outsiders or merchants who had not become masters in a regular way. Yet, this claim became more difficult to sustain during the early modern period. From the

186  Corporatism, Proletarianization and the Patriarchal Order sixteenth century on, breaches in the craft guild’s privileges grew wider. The abovementioned 1559 ban preventing Antwerp old cloth sellers from making ready-to-wear garments was hardly adhered to. After decades of conflict, tension and strife, up to and including street fights, the urban magistracy in 1608 regularized the sale of garments by both the tailors and old cloth sellers. Old cloth sellers obtained the right to make ready-to-wear garments with the proviso that they could employ only one journeyman. They were still prohibited from manufacturing bespoke garments, as a result of which they continued to depend on subcontracting tailors.46 This was similar to the situation in Ghent, where old cloth sellers had ready-to-wear garments manufactured by small masters; these clothes were then put up for sale in the old cloth seller’s shops or stalls. The latter may also have delivered the raw materials, thus nurturing a putting-out network of sorts.47 In the long run, the manufacturing guilds lost the battle altogether. From at least the sixteenth century on, the ideal of the master working in his own atelier was ever more difficult to sustain. It is, however, vital to understand that this was not only a matter of labor relations and ownership of the means of production. While wholesalers and mercers’ guilds gradually encroached upon the manufacturing guilds’ privileges, the difficulties of the latter were caused or at least aggravated by changes on the product market.48

Master Status, Quality Marks and the Gift-Dimension of Products At least from the sixteenth century on, having a guild was tantamount to safeguarding apprenticeship and master piece requirements. Consequently, discussion about a professional group demerging from a larger group essentially came down to discussions about separate apprentice terms and master trials, as was the case with the Antwerp shoemakers and tanners mentioned above, and, in the same city, with the tinsmiths and plumbers in 1705.49 Nor should this be surprising. Given that most urban manufacturers were not competitive on price—rural producers being able to produce cheaper because of lower fixed costs, lower taxes, and a secured subsistence from farming—they often tried to make the difference with product quality and product innovation. When targeting export markets, guild-based manufacturers typically tried to be competitive through the manufacture of cuttingedge niche products. Apart from the application of the most advanced forms of technical knowledge—and hence, the regular input of the technical baggage of immigrants—this required standardization and branding. Virtually all guilds prescribed product standards one way or another. While ordinances of the guilds of gold- and silversmiths meticulously prescribed the quality of the silver and the alloy, guilds went to great lengths to assure product quality even in sectors where products were more difficult to standardize, like diamond cutting and tailoring. Yet, in order to understand this adequately, it is essential to be specific about the nature of

Corporatism, Proletarianization and the Patriarchal Order  187 these standardizations. As we have seen in the previous chapter, what the guilds in the Southern Netherlands guaranteed most was ‘intrinsic value’, i.e. ‘the scrap value of the material’.50 Admittedly, product quality cannot be reduced to the use of the right raw material entirely. While the thirteenthand fourteenth-century cloth producers needed high-quality English wool to meet their standards, product quality depended on myriad other elements. For example, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the use of cards and spinning wheels was often prohibited in the preparation of warp yarns, as this was considered harmful for the quality and durability of woolen cloth (at least before the introduction of the Saxony Flyer Wheel).51 But the question that concerns us here is which elements were guaranteed by the manufacturing guilds. Both in export industries and local servicing industries, these were mostly the features not visible to the naked eye. This is why pig lard could not be mixed with rind lard, why Spanish wood could not substitute for ebony wood and why guilds in the leather sectors meticulously prescribed which type of leather was to be used in which type of product.52 This qualifies the emphasis on skills and technical knowledge which marks a great deal of current economic history. Following Epstein and others Maarten Prak has recently argued in favor of the added value of guilds in a study of the guilds of Saint Luke, in which skills were obviously very important.53 Yet this guild may not be representative. Zeroing in on the bulk of the guild regulations means acknowledging the importance of the relationship between intrinsic value and collective quality marks, with which product quality standards were communicated to both merchants

Figure 4.1  Hall mark of the Antwerp tin smith Peter Hellaert (1714), featuring the master’s initials and references to his home town Antwerp (the rhomb-shaped fortress and the hands). Geel, Sint Dimpnagasthuis, inv. nr. T.BS.A.10 (Keur van tin uit de havensteden Amsterdam, Antwerpen en Rotterdam [exposition catalogue Amsterdam 1979, p. 160]). © Paul Stuyve.

188  Corporatism, Proletarianization and the Patriarchal Order and customers. While textiles often bore wax or lead seals, metal ware, leather and wooden products were typically stamped with a mark which corresponded to a specific type of product and quality level. In the textile industry, each type of fabric had its own specific mark, whether it was a type of wool or linen or a specific type of fabric within these sectors. In Bruges at the end of the thirteenth century, the mark attached to cloth differed according to the origin of the wool used.54 The Brussels linen weavers in 1475 stipulated that a seal with the image of the angel Saint Michael was to be attached to the finest quality linen; the fabric of lesser quality was marked with the letter B (from Brussels).55 In other sectors too, different types of qualities bore different types of marks. For example, in Antwerp tin ware was stamped with the ‘city mark’ (the fortress) if it was ‘fine work’, while regular pots bore the ‘master mark’ (a crowned hammer).56 This was typically tantamount to communicating that a product was made according to the standards in force in a certain guild or city. Whenever a new type of product emerged, it was accommodated with a new mark. When the Antwerp pewterers in the early sixteenth century responded to the import of high-quality tin from England, which bore the Tudor rose, by marking their products with a rose as well, they were eventually allowed to use an Antwerp rose provided their products met the required standards. As soon as some tinsmiths started to work below the alloy, as happened in the late 1580s, a new mark was created (a rose with a straight cross in the middle) so as to distinguish this work from that of higher quality.57 Products made according to lower standards or simply imported products, were often marked as well, so as to distinguish them clearly from the guildbased products. In Leuven imported leather was marked with the letters L and O. In Antwerp, leather to be used for repairing shoes was marked with the Antwerp ‘hand’, leather for new shoes with the Antwerp fortress.58 The reason given was always market transparency, or in the words of a Leuven ordinance: the marks aimed at guaranteeing that ‘those who see it or want to purchase it, will know what they are buying’.59 Depending on the political and institutional context, the mark could be applied by urban officials or officials appointed by the cloth guilds in the case of the textile sector. Or else, a compromise could have been reached. The general trend was that guilds acquired more agency during their struggle for political power. In Brussels, the mark was eventually applied by ‘control masters’ (keurmeesters) nominated by the guild who did their job in the presence of the guilds’ sworn officials.60 Related to this, emphasis was on the collective mark—even though these collective marks were often flanked with other types of marks. On the one hand, there were marks of individual masters, which could be abstract symbols, emblems such as a beehive, or simply the master’s initials. On the other hand, additional marks sometimes referred to the dean or another guild official who had inspected the piece. Such marks for instance referred to the year in which the product was made (either with figures or a letter referring to the year) and, hence, to the official

Corporatism, Proletarianization and the Patriarchal Order  189 who was in charge then. These signs enabled the responsible master or guild official to be traced whenever fraud was discovered.61 In the long run, personal marks, firm or family marks and ‘made in’ marks eventually outcompeted the guilds’ collective marks, but this was essentially a nineteenth-century evolution, at least in the cities examined in this book. In the famous faience industry in Delft, monograms referring to a master or a family firm were important already in the seventeenth century, but in this craft no collective marks had been devised at all.62 In most guild-based industries, in contrast, the collective marks of the guilds remained important up to the end of the eighteenth century—although the name of the master and references to the city of origin may have become more important in the course of the century.63 Nor is there evidence in our case study of retailers and wholesalers starting to use their own marks, as has been recorded for the silversmithing sector in London and Paris.64 In the largest cities in the Southern Netherlands, it was probably more common for mercers and wholesalers to sell small stuff—even silverware—unmarked. While discussions between such producers as pewterers and mercers concerned unmarked wares already in the sixteenth century, the emphasis shifted towards relatively cheap items such as earrings, snuff boxes, small crosses, and other gadgets cast from silver in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In 1740, it was argued that such silver ware was too small to be marked at all.65 Therefore, more important than shifts in the structure of firms may have been the changing material culture. First, guilds clearly had difficulties coping with the increasingly diverse range of products. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, they were forced to devise ever more new marks, so as to keep pace with the invention of new types and styles. Thus, the Brussels tinsmiths had no less than six marks in the eighteenth century (a large crowned rose, a small crowned rose, a crowned hammer, the angel, the head of Saint Eloy and the head of Saint Nicholas) while in the sixteenth, there had been only two (the angel and a Tudor rose).66 Moreover, legal complaints filed by the guilds from the sixteenth century onwards often concerned products made of different types of raw materials. Such was the case with the complaint of the pewterers about the earthen pots with tin lids, but there are numerous other examples, such as leather belts with silver attached.67 Related to this, and perhaps the underlying transformation, the importance of intrinsic value as such waned in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. As is familiar to historians studying the history of consumption and material culture, Jan de Vries has pointed to a shift from old luxuries to new luxuries for the Low Countries.68 This can be exemplified by the shift from large, heavy and sophisticated silverware as used in religious and other ceremonies to the smaller and lighter gadgets referred to above.69 Yet in other sectors as well, design and decoration gradually outcompeted the value of raw materials in the eyes of customers and retailers. In the garment

190  Corporatism, Proletarianization and the Patriarchal Order industry, the use of high quality yarn waned in importance relative to color, design, cut, and accessories—in a word: fashion.70 In this context, marks grew unnecessary, as brand names could also be created through the conspicuous characteristics of a product.71 Nor was this unrelated to the political context. It could even be argued that ‘pre-modern capitalism’ showed traces of a ‘gift economy’. As is well known, a ‘gift economy’ implies a different relationship between subject and object than a (capitalist) ‘exchange economy’. In the latter—which the older anthropological literature tends to place in diametric opposition to the ‘gift economy’—the relationship between giver and receiver disappears as soon as the transaction has been completed, thus allowing a type of ‘alienation’ to emerge. In contrast, according to the writings of Marcel Mauss (the anthropologist at the centre of all discussions concerning le don), a relatively stable relationship between giver and receiver is generated owing to ‘the spirit of the giver’ remaining present in the artifact. As a result, the receiver is compelled to give something back. This ‘spirit’ is subsequently connected to the position of the actor in the broader social system, i.e., his place in a political hierarchy, a kinship network, or a tradition.72 I personally can’t help associating this with the connection between the intrinsic values of late medieval and early modern products and the political standing of masters. While the relationships between masters and their customers (whether consumers or merchants) were forged in a context in which patronage relationship remained important, the guild-based hallmarks can be seen as an imprint of the political spirit of the master on the product.73

Hereditary Succession, the Household and the Family Firm This brings us full circle to the status of mastership. According to the traditional account, mastership became increasingly exclusive in the early modern period. In the Rhine area in the German region, for instance, access to the guilds was gradually limited to sons of masters or burghers.74 However, this has mostly been substantiated by calculating the ratio of masters’ sons to the total number of new masters, with the ratios mostly situated around 20% to 30%, as is exemplified by the tailors’ guilds which show figures of 22% in Antwerp (1714–1779) and 21.6% in Brussels (1694–1786).75 However, ratios could also be substantially lower, as they were in eighteenth-century’s-Hertogenbosch, where percentages below 15 are recorded, or higher, as in sixteenth-century Ghent before 1540, where the ratio of masters’ sons among new masters ranged from 56% to 98%.76 The latter figures have often been used by historians to illustrate the alleged exclusiveness of guilds, but they are currently seen as exceptional.77 Peter Stabel refers to the late medieval urban cities as relatively open to migration and social mobility.78 All these figures are difficult to interpret moreover. They are determined to a certain degree by the total number of new masters and the extent to which there was room for growth. In a rapidly growing sector the ratio of

Corporatism, Proletarianization and the Patriarchal Order  191 masters’ sons will tend to be low, even if every master is succeeded by at least one son. And if the total number of masters declines, the relative number of masters’ sons will tend to increase, even if masters’ sons grew more reluctant to follow in their fathers’ footsteps.79 It may therefore be preferable to calculate to what extent masters were succeeded by one or more sons, as some historians have suggested earlier.80 Nor is there agreement on the causes involved. Traditionally, rising entrance fees and other thresholds were held responsible for the over-representation of masters’ son among new masters. For sixteenth-century Ghent, this certainly applied—given that the composition of the trades changed significantly after Charles V drastically reduced the entrance fees in 1540 (to 6 guilders uniformly in each guild).81 But recent research often qualifies the presupposed straightforward connection. Among the tailors, hereditary succession after 1540 (and again 1585) was more limited in Brussels than in Ghent, while in Ghent the entrance fees were much lower.82 Another factor which has already been identified, among others by Josef Ehmer for the Austrian guilds, is wealth.83 It is difficult to escape the idea that inheriting a firm or being able to buy a workshop and machinery must have made a difference.84 Harald Deceulaer has argued that the relatively high occupational continuity among the old cloth sellers (28% of masters’ sons among new masters in Brussels between 1695 and 1739, 33.5% to 41.2% in Leuven between 1660 and 1717) was due to their wealth, which stimulated masters’ sons to continue in the trade.85 In Ghent after 1540, a context in which the figures must hardly have been affected by the very low entrance fees due at the time, access to master status for non-masters’ sons was higher in trades which did not require a lot of fixed capital, like the shoemakers, the old-shoemakers, the tailors, and the tick weavers.86 This is even more obvious in high capital-intensive trades such as brewing, where the often exceptionally high entrance fees at the end of the eighteenth century still paled in comparison to the capital needed to set up a brewery. No less important was the economic trend in a certain trade or city. As to the cities and guilds studied in this book, an earlier generation of historians has assumed that guilds became more exclusive in the fifteenth century as a result of deteriorating economic and demographic circumstances.87 In the Bruges bowyers’ guild, opportunities for social mobility for apprentices were substantial in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth century but they declined after the mid-fifteenth century. In the coopers’ guild, opportunities likewise declined from the 1430s on.88 In the early modern period as well, the number of new entrants to a trade or guild is likely to have been related to economic and demographic expansion.89 But a trade in decline could just as well be open, because masters’ sons refrained from succeeding their fathers. Conversely, a successful trade could be relatively open because enriched masters’ sons seized the opportunity to enter more prestigious professions.90 Among the tailors in the Southern Netherlands, the general trend would seem to have been increasing intergenerational occupational

192  Corporatism, Proletarianization and the Patriarchal Order continuity in unfavorable economic circumstances, while economic prosperity stimulated masters’ sons to try other professions.91 The latter also applies to some shoemakers’ guilds, where occupational continuity declined after the mid-eighteenth century in Bruges, Brussels and Mechelen (either relative to non-masters’ sons or with the number of masters’ sons entering the trade declining along with the non-masters’ sons).92 The reverse was true among the old cloth sellers, where hereditary succession was on the rise in the second half of the eighteenth century in both Brussels and Ghent.93 Distinguishing between richer and poorer masters within a trade would seem to corroborate this: among the old cloth sellers in Ghent, masters who were succeeded by a son were, on average, richer.94 The crux of the matter here is that access to a guild is determined to a large extent by the attractiveness of master status, which may have changed drastically in the long run—even across economic trends and cycles. An adequate understanding thereof requires looking at the normative framework too. Low numbers of apprentices obtaining mastership does not necessarily mean that the apprentices concerned did not achieve their goal, which may have been obtaining the status of free journeymen. The preceding question is whether youngsters were registered as apprentices in order to become masters or in order to become journeymen? Since an apprenticeship term was often not necessary at all for prospective journeymen, high relative numbers of apprentices obtaining master status may simply reflect the fact that workers only registered as an apprentice once they envisaged becoming a master. So how did the need to be registered as a master apprentice change in the long run? First, the need to have fulfilled an apprenticeship term for journeymen changed over time. A preserved survey of 1738 clearly shows that the presence of ‘unfree journeymen’ (who had not completed an apprenticeship) on the shop floor was no longer an exception. A great many trades note the presence of ouvriers or garçon ouvriers in addition to journeymen and apprentices. In Namur for instance, the tailors mentioned twenty workers in addition to twenty-three journeymen and twenty-three apprentices.95 This phenomenon did not originate in the eighteenth century. In a survey in Oudenaerde in 1541, the tailors mentioned forty-two workers knechten next to thirty-nine journeymen (and thirteen apprentices).96 Yet apparently, just as was the case for masters, there was an increasingly marked distinction between free and unfree journeymen from a juridical perspective. In the fifteenth century, the guild deans often decided about the conditions (numbers and period) of hiring unfree journeymen ad hoc on the occasion of work peaks, as was stipulated with the Brussels sculpturers in 1473.97 In sixteenthcentury Ghent masters were often allowed to engage unfree journeymen under certain conditions, the most important being that there were not enough free journeymen available.98 Unfree journeymen were considered a type of reserve labor force—even though the distinction between free and unfree was often unclear juridically.

Corporatism, Proletarianization and the Patriarchal Order  193 Gradually, the distinction between free and unfree journeymen became more formalized. The acquisition of the status of free journeyman became subject, for example, to additional fees, which was the case with the cabinet makers and part of the tapestry weaving guild (those specialized in doublefaced work such as pillows) in Ghent.99 This was often accompanied by a ‘journeyman trial’, i.e., a type of master piece to be made at the end of the apprenticeship term (in addition to the master trial, to be made at the start of the mastership). In Antwerp, such a trial piece for journeymen has been documented for the cloth dressers, the masons, and the carpenters.100 Although corroborating the argument that trial pieces were actually devised to distinguish clearly between free and unfree labor, this is not to say that free journeymen were successful in excluding outsiders in the long run. While in the fifteenth century unfree journeymen were mostly allowed for a short period and upon paying a tax, from about 1700 on, unfree journeymen increasingly became a structural element of the work force in some trades.101 This can be understood by the simple logic of masters trying to avoid what they considered high wages, as Harald Deceulaer has argued about the hosiery makers.102 Yet, it would be one-sided to approach this exclusively from the perspective of labor relations. A range of disputes between guilds and free journeymen around 1750 is very revealing about the real sensibilities of both parties. Free journeymen when defending their privilege referred to both their superior skills and their marital and civic status. On the one hand, they felt obligated to stress their skills because masters were not convinced that these were superior to the skills of immigrating artisans. In the Antwerp construction sector, it was even argued that immigrant artisans were better qualified because they were acquainted with the new architectural styles.103 While this is a strong argument against the idea that the guild made a difference in terms of skills, the second argument of the free journeymen is more important for our purpose here. In order to legitimize their privileges, they invoked not only their residential status but also their responsibility as the head of a household.104 Apparently, being head of a household was still connected to corporative privilege in the minds of artisans in the mid-eighteenth century, with the proviso that journeymen could now invoke this too. This bring us to the second transformation to have an impact on the motives behind registering apprentices, which is revealed by making a distinction between sons succeeding their fathers and sons learning the same trade as their father.105 Research on the coopers’ guild in Antwerp has revealed that in the eighteenth century only one son—usually the oldest—was typically registered as an apprentice while in the sixteenth century masters often registered all their sons, often on the same day.106 This is similar to the cabinet makers and coopers in Brussels, the masters of which also registered all their sons in the fifteenth century.107 The fact that this practice waned hints at a transition in the importance of the guild framework. It would seem that the guild as a moral and political framework faded, while the importance

194  Corporatism, Proletarianization and the Patriarchal Order of the family firm increased. Was there a shift, then, from the guild to the family firm in the early modern period? It is in any case important not to confuse inheritable master status and inheritance of the family firm. As a consequence of the recent ‘rehabilitation’ of the guilds, the straightforward causal connection between guild regulations and the continuity of the family firms has been qualified. The current idea is that the guilds’ impact on occupational continuity must have been rather limited.108 Moreover, the continuity of the family firm has been described as a typical eighteenth and nineteenth-century (bourgeois) phenomenon, with occupational continuity within households being the result of increasing concentration of capital in certain sectors, among other things due to industrialization.109 In contrast, inheritance in the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries had a different character, and was related rather to titles and privileges. This, in my view, underlines the importance of examining the transformation in master status and its relationship with the patriarchal context in the long term.

The Decline of Birth and Inheritance In the early communes, burghership was acquired through birth and tied to the possession of real estate. During and after the urban revolts, the guilds qualified this and enforced the granting of burghership on the basis of their membership of a professional group, but soon they were themselves caught, in part, in a logic of membership through birth and inheritance. The longterm history of the guilds can partly be narrated as a constant hovering between, on the one hand, the inheritance of master status and, on the other, enabling access of new groups and new members. The rehabilitation of the guilds notwithstanding, the inclination to make membership inheritable is visible on different levels. First, membership of some guilds was outright inheritable with such groups as the butchers and the fishmongers, whose numbers were often limited to the available benches and who often held older privileges, typically granted by a feudal lord rather than the city. The latter fact is not insignificant in explaining the inheritable status in these trades, which was not necessarily endorsed by the urban authorities. In fifteenth-century Brussels the privilege of exclusive inheritance was heavily contested by the urban magistracy, who invoked the interests of the local consumer.110 In other guilds, the field of tension between inheritance and birth on the one hand and openness and social and geographic mobility on the other, was even more precarious. In most guilds, a core group of inheritable masters can be identified. These groups allowed for access by outsiders, although they were often over-represented in political office—as has been shown for Ghent among other cities.111 This already suggests that inheritance here was not solely the result of the concentration of capital, but had a political dimension as well. The point is really, that guilds did not simply become more or less inheritable, but that the very conception of master status as an inheritable privilege transformed.

Corporatism, Proletarianization and the Patriarchal Order  195 This can be illustrated by discussions about inheritable master status in the Ghent case. Before 1540, mastership in Ghent—although mostly not confined to masters’ sons exclusively—was nevertheless inheritable. Any master who bought mastership, actually bought this for the next generations as well. This was no longer the case after 1540 (and again after 1585). According to the Carolinian concession, every master’s son henceforth had to buy mastership for himself.112 Masters who already possessed such a status at that time continued to transfer this right to their children. As a result, this status remained important well into the seventeenth century, albeit not uncontested. In the first decades of the seventeenth century, the Ghent carpenters were still dominated by inheritable masters, but in 1608 four non-inheritable masters filed a complaint before the magistracy. They protested not only the fact that only inheritable masters held seats in the guild’s board, but also that the deans refused to subject inheritable masters’ sons to the obligation to make a master piece. The protesters reported that the inheritable masters voiced in public that the non-inheritable were ‘not worthy to serve in the trade’.113 Indignant, the non-inheritable masters rhetorically wondered whether they were, then, ‘of lesser quality and freedom’ than the inheritable.114

Figure 4.2 Oil painting on canvas of Pieter van Lint, depicting the most prominent members of the Antwerp carpenters’ guild at the occasion of the marriage of Mary and Joseph (the latter being the carpenters’ patron saint), 1642. Our Lady’s Cathedral of Antwerp, inv. nr. JVDN E.62. © www. lukasweb.be—Art in Flanders vzw/photo Hugo Maertens.

196  Corporatism, Proletarianization and the Patriarchal Order This dispute is clearly hard for present-day observers to understand, but in the early modern period, in which nobility and inheritable titles were still an essential part of the social and political reality, we should not see them as outdated. References to quality and freedom should instead be taken seriously, as is the connection between birth and skill. Recall that the diamond cutters in Antwerp in 1582 also justified the privileges they applied for on the grounds of being ‘in the trade from childhood’.115 Birth was clearly an issue, and one in which the guilds had come to resemble the patrician class more than they perhaps realized themselves. The next question, then, is whether we are witnessing here a long-term transformation from birth and privilege to education and meritocracy. On the surface, such a transformation is again supported by the transformations in sixteenth-century Ghent. Dambruyne has argued that the Carolinian concession started from the idea that skills rather than capital should determine access to a trade, as the concession also intended to enforce master trials upon the guilds.116 However, more important may have been the underlying idea that the trade was no longer something one was born into. Tellingly, and resembling the discourse of the Antwerp diamond cutters, the officials of the coopers’ guild lamented the fact that mastership was no longer inheritable with the following words: ‘so that when they [the masters] die, then the trade dies too’.117 The key issue would seem to have been the connection between birth and trade, which in a corporative view were intimately tied. This is at least what was at stake in the Ghent case. According to Dambruyne the Carolinian concession did not have social goals but rather political ones, with Charles V trying to curtail the power of the heritable masters.118 Dambruyne however sees power as a zero-sum game or as simply connected to the ownership of capital, while a different view on the body politic of the city may have lurked beneath the surface. Specifically, the difference between inheritable and uninheritable mastership may have run deeper in later medieval and early modern urban society than one might think at first glance. An anonymous pamphlet of a master carpenter from 1579–1580 denounced the Carolinian Concession because, according to the author, the trade was now ‘for sale’—thus paradoxically criticizing not the high pre-1540 fees, but the lower ones.119 Here, we come to the core of the corporative political order, including the ambiguities and tensions involved. In the patriarchal context of late medieval Europe, women, children, journeymen and apprentices were usually only included through their husband, father and master. This was also implied by the Aristotelian notion of the city as a partnership comparable to the household—although the Aristotelian ideas should not be taken for granted either. In his well-known Defensor Pacis Marsiglio of Padua did not entirely assume Aristotle’s dictum about the zoon politikon. Contrary to Aristotle, Marsiglio distinguished between a political community as a partnership and a household as a partnership. While for Aristotle they were both a type of commune (kononia), Marsiglio denied a household (or domus) the status of a commune. While the family was subject to the private dominium

Corporatism, Proletarianization and the Patriarchal Order  197 of the pater familias, a community was to be ruled by law and civil justice.120 This distinction opens up a space between not only reason and will, but also between the body politic and private interest—or even, between the pater familias as a member of the corporation and the pater familias as the master of an independent economic unit. This tension can partly be examined via the status of the masters’ sons in other cities. Masters’ sons were often exempt at least partially from a great many of the entry requirements faced by outsiders, as a result of which mastership often resembled the Ghent pre-1540 case. In Leuven, sons were mostly exempt from years of apprenticeship and the master trial.121 In Brussels in the second half of the fifteenth century, masters’ sons did not as a rule pay registration rights, while in a number of cases they were to give (or pay for) the wine only.122 One could argue here that masters’ sons thus only offered a gift, and not the market or bureaucratic price. Similar trends are observed for the entrance fees, to be paid by new masters. Here too, masters’ sons were often exempt either entirely or partly (e.g., being obligated to give the wine only).123 In Bruges non-masters’ sons paid twelve to sixty times the fee which masters’ sons paid in the final decades of the fifteenth century. In Antwerp, masters’ sons often paid half the fee in the sixteenth century. In Brussels, something similar also applies in the seventeenth and first half of the eighteenth century.124 It would seem, then, that the guild boards themselves oscillated between, on the one hand, assuming that masters’ sons were born into the trade and thus exempt from entry requirements and, on the other, imposing the obligations due by outsiders. In the long run, however, there may have been a shift towards the latter position. In Antwerp, only some of the masters’ sons were exempt from making a master trial by the sixteenth and seventeenth century: they were obligated to do so with cabinet makers from at least 1497, the cloth dressers from at least 1556, the diamond cutters in 1582, the shoemakers from at least 1677, and the pewterers in 1705.125 In-depth research on the entry fees in Antwerp moreover suggests that they gradually paid more registration and income fees—including in relative terms. While they often paid about half the fee in the sixteenth and a large part of the seventeenth century, this often rose to about three quarters and even more in the eighteenth century.126 For Brussels as well, there are indications that masters’ sons gradually paid more—to the horror of some masters—with the shift perhaps commencing already in the fifteenth century. Regarding the whitesmiths and the locksmiths, it was enacted in 1466 that masters’ sons were no longer freed by offering wine only, but had to pay half the fee.127 At least in part, making masters’ sons pay higher fees resulted from sheer necessity. As we have seen above, the guilds were heavily in debt and desperately seeking income from at least the sixteenth century on.128 While financial need forced them to raise the fees, they tried to compensate for the higher fees in order to prevent the guild from being too exclusive. In this context, the fees were raised for masters’ sons as well. The fact that they rose

198  Corporatism, Proletarianization and the Patriarchal Order more for masters’ sons relative to outsiders, may have been a compensation for the nigh-on impossible task of taxing masters on a yearly basis. But this does not make it meaningless from a cultural and political perspective. Nor was exempting masters’ sons simply a financial and economic privilege, as is suggested by the fact that the privilege of free entry was often only granted to those sons who were born after the father had become a member of the guild himself.129 This actually suggests that the heritable status was connected to the guild rather than the family firm. Simultaneously, blood may have been more important than the marriage contract, given that bastard children were eligible for the privilege too.130 In summary, the disappearance of the inheritable nature of master status in Ghent may have been part of a long-term trend in which the importance of birth and privilege waned along with the corporative idea that mastership and fatherhood overlapped—perhaps to be replaced by wealth and meritocratic values. Recall that masters gradually chose only one son to be registered as a future master in the guild rather than registering them all, as appears to have been the custom until the fifteenth century. The next question, then, is whether the family firm gradually became more important. Although this is not the place to analyze this question in depth, there are indications that the guilds’ regulatory framework gradually accommodated that mentality. For example, exemptions from entrance fees were often limited to one son only, as was the case in the fifteenth-century Brussels guilds of the barbers, cobblers, embroiderers, tanners and weavers, where one son could enter upon presenting the wine only, while among the cobblers the second was to pay only half the fee. The mercers and shoemakers and a range of other groups enacted that one son was due only half the entrance fee.131 Nor is the waning of the corporative connection between birth and membership a foregone conclusion. In Leuven, the privileges of masters’ sons may have expanded in the eighteenth century, with the rights of the first-born being granted to other masters’ sons in 1707.132 So here, the situation may have evolved in the opposite direction, perhaps due to the guilds’ powerful political position there. Further research into the patriarchal nature of corporative ideology and practice seems in any case justified.

From Status to Contract? The best way to examine the shift from inheritance and birth to what could be called a more businesslike approach may be to focus on the relationship between masters and apprentices. In a sense inheritance and corporatism formed a trinity of sorts with patriarchalism in late medieval cities. While the city was seen as something organic, i.e., a body composed of different members and organs, the smallest building block of this organic whole was the household, of which the father was obviously the head. Yet the father represented not only his wife and his own children but also servants and other ‘dependents’ as well. In a guild context, this included journeymen

Corporatism, Proletarianization and the Patriarchal Order  199 and—above all—apprentices. Not only was apprenticeship the only alternative to birth rights for the acquisition of master status, but apprentices were also typically obligated to live under the roof of their master. Although the formal obligation to do so was often only introduced in the sixteenth or seventeenth century, boarding would seem to have been standard until at least the sixteenth century.133 Journeymen too often lived under the roof of the master and sat down to eat at his table. In 1405, this was even mandatory with the Brussels carpenters.134 Inside their house, masters were to be the master. Historians have rightfully observed that masters acted in loco parentis to their apprentices. They had parental authority over them and treated them as if they were their own children.135 On their own premises in particular, masters had to behave according to their lordship.136 Not coincidentally, one important principle in guilds was that only one master was to work under one roof. In the guild of the Brussels embroiderers it was moreover mandatory for masters to work in their own workshop (1475).137 Conversely, working somewhere other than under their own roof was often forbidden as well. In the guild of the Brussels linen weavers in 1475 it was for instance prohibited to work in taverns, cabarets and lieux de jeu.138 Above, we have seen that such rules were issued in order to prevent false masters from circumventing the guilds’ monopoly and labor market monopsony, but this is not to deny their deep roots in a patriarchal ideology. For apprentices, it was at the same forbidden to earn money, as was stipulated with the Brussels shearers in 1479, let alone to work on their own account.139 And journeymen working in their own houses were considered irreconcilable with guild norms altogether.140 To be sure, the patriarchal ideal implicit in these rules has never been entirely realized. Boarding would seem to have been optional in the Brussels guilds of the fishmongers and the tanners already in the fifteenth century; some apprentices may even have already earned some money there.141 With regard to the journeymen, it is hard to imagine that they all lived under the roofs of their masters and rested under a master’s authority. While the journeymen in the fullers’ guild had access to the guild board themselves, journeymen already established their own confraternities from the fifteenth century on—as was the case with the shoemakers’ and dyers’ journeymen in Brussels and elsewhere. In Ghent, blue-dyers are recorded to have had a separate brotherhood as early as 1337.142 Nevertheless, it has been observed previously that marrying, starting a company and becoming a master ideally concurred.143 Until the end of the sixteenth century, masters were often required to be married, while this status was sometimes difficult to reconcile with being a journeyman or apprentice.144 Immigrant gold- and silversmiths in Antwerp often became citizen, master and husband in the very same month, even after the mid-seventeenth century.145 Nevertheless, these practices may have transformed over time, especially in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.146 This is at least suggested by the changing social profile of journeymen. While sometimes invoking their

200  Corporatism, Proletarianization and the Patriarchal Order responsibilities brought about by their standing as husbands and fathers, these workers increasingly worked in large ateliers and ran their own organizations. This became numerically significant, in particular at the end of the seventeenth century, with most journeymen associations recorded to date being founded in the first half of the eighteenth century.147 In the sources left by the guilds, journeymen in the meantime ceased to be called gezel (companion) but were referred to as knecht (servant/worker) in the eighteenth century.148 Although less visible, apprentices experienced a similar evolution. Judging from a small and rare sample of apprentice contracts in Antwerp, the number of non-boarding apprentices increased incrementally in the seventeenth and eighteenth century. In the guild of the Antwerp gold- and silversmiths, which is mostly perceived as a ‘traditional’ trade dominated by small ateliers headed by patriarchal masters, this nonetheless dropped from around 90% mid-seventeenth century to less than 60% in the second half of the eighteenth century.149 Consequently, the introduction of the formal obligation to board with the master for apprentices between the fifteenth and the seventeenth centuries may actually signal its loss of naturalness as a practice. In addition, the connection between regular work and the house of the master was gradually undermined as well—due to subcontracting among other things. As long as the subcontractees were themselves regular masters, no guild rule or even ideal was transgressed. But as already suggested above, in the early modern period the norm was under pressure nonetheless. In Antwerp, large industrial hosiery makers put out work to journeymen who worked on their own premises. In contrast to subcontracting per se, this was a sensitive issue among guild-based masters, as is illustrated by the fact that the guild filed a complaint in 1599 against entrepreneur Fabritius Pamphi. A colleague of Pamphi had complained about the fact that the latter had contracted work to his journeymen. Pamphi declared that he failed to see the problem, as in his eyes workers were not bound to one master if they worked on individual assignments.150 On the surface, this dispute was one between large and small masters and about cornering the market. Yet the terminology used reveals tension about the patriarchal values involved. One of the subcontractees, 64 year-old Willem De Keyser, witnessed that ‘he has not done his trial in the guild and is working and sewing stockings daily in his own house for however free master who hires him without otherwise being bound to anyone’.151 In my view, the reference to being free and unbound suggests that this dispute was also about the standing of ‘masterless men’. Apparently, it was still not self-evident at the time for a non-freeman to work on his own premises. This warrants a deeper analysis of the relationship between masters and their apprentices. Both before and during the heydays of the guilds, apprenticeship was often recorded and agreed upon in apprenticeship contracts, without the guilds having much impact. The reference work about private law in the Southern Netherlands states that ‘a master hiring an apprentice gives rise to a contract of which the stipulations are imposed largely by the trade’.152 However, the apprenticeship contracts found in the Southern

Corporatism, Proletarianization and the Patriarchal Order  201 Netherlands mostly fail to mention guild deans or elders—the contracts thus resembling simple private contracts (whether or not registered by a notary).153 Moreover, the terms of the contract often diverged significantly from the rules of the guilds, which is particularly striking regarding the length of the term, which could be both longer and shorter than what the guild enacted.154 Given that the latter view is based on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century contracts, a transformation away from the corporative framework may have been behind it. Labor historians have long assumed a transition from ‘status to contract’ at the end of the Ancien Régime.155 Until the late eighteenth century, status was presumed to be decisive in modeling labor relations, and autonomy or private contracting was believed to have become possible thanks only to the modern legal system, based on ‘freedom of contract’. The master-servant relationship of the Ancien Régime—characterized by agreements not terminable at will— was thought to have made way for a contractual relationship between capital owners and proletarianized workers during and after the Industrial Revolution.156 In recent decades, however, scholars have highlighted the continuity between the Ancien Régime and the modern period. In addition to noting the unequal balance of power between employer and employee and relatively new instruments, such as livrets, scholars have observed that replacing summary punishments and criminal sanctions with market forces or pecuniary mechanisms did not necessarily make contracts easier to terminate. The master-servant relationship retained its legal status (together with the poor laws) until well into the nineteenth century and was even expanded to prevent breach of contract by imposing criminal sanctions.157 However, the power to enforce contracts of the corporative and patriarchal framework may have waned nonetheless. Raoul De Kerf has shown that in the sample of contracts concluded with a master cooper in Antwerp, default clauses were introduced in the last quarter of the seventeenth century. According to De Kerf, this may have been related to the waning of the guild’s power to enforce contracts. In the sixteenth century, some guilds really had that ambition. The coopers’ ordinances of 1533 and 1580 enacted that the entire fee was to be paid nonetheless in case of breach of contract— thus forcefully discouraging apprentices from absconding, given that parents or guardians mostly paid in instalments. But in the eighteenth century, this no longer applied. Instead, the guild mediated if an apprentice wanted to change masters, which mostly resulted in paying the fee in proportion to the time served.158 A similar decline of the guilds’ impact is suggested by the changing nature of the apprenticeship contracts. An interesting evolution in this respect occurred with the gold- and silversmiths, where the presence of default clauses in notarial contracts rose from 22% in the first half of the seventeenth century to about 50% in the eighteenth. Simultaneously, the tendency was to pay the master sooner, for example by defining the yearly instalments digressively—with the highest sum being due the first year.159 This suggests that breach of contract was anticipated without counting on the contract enforcing capacity of the guild and its rules. A related evolution

202  Corporatism, Proletarianization and the Patriarchal Order was the rise of certificates to be procured by the apprentices in order to prove they had finished their term. This type of juridical tool also implied a shift in power from guild to master and from custom to contract.160 Simultaneously, the number of conflicts between masters and apprentices appears to have been on the rise in the seventeenth century. In Antwerp, twenty cases have been traced for the period between 1597 and 1680.161 On the surface, these conflicts were similar to those observed for other regions, notably England. While masters complained about neglect of duties, disobedience and absconding, the complaints of the apprentices concerned the quality of the meals provided, physical abuse, and neglect of instructional duties by masters.162 Closer reading however revealed that the central issue was learning in return for either money or labor. The accusations of both insubordination (from the part of the masters) and physical abuse and neglect (from the part of the apprentices or his parents or guardians) were for the most part secondary to the discussion about what exactly was to be learned and what exactly the master could expect in return. Significantly, running errands was no longer considered part of the apprentices’ duties.163 In some instances apprentices accused of absconding had not run away but were kept at home, so as to pressure the master to train the apprentice better. Or else, parents had instructed their son to misbehave so that the master would maltreat him, which would, as a consequence, justify breach of contract. In at least half the trials, parents or guardians appear to have intended to break the contract, hoping that the apprentice would make (more) money or learn (more) elsewhere.164 Thus, these legal files point at a business-like approach to the apprenticeship terms and contracts.165 The same conclusion surfaces from an in-depth analysis of apprenticeship contracts, which Raoul De Kerf and I have conducted for a sample of contracts in the trade of gold- and silversmiths in Antwerp. While these contracts often stipulate that apprentices ‘are to be obedient and subservient in all respects’ such formulas were mostly copied from a template. Studying a series of such contracts from the same notary reveals that what differed between contracts—and what was therefore actually negotiated—was essentially the term and price of learning. The price was influenced by a myriad of factors, including the specific specialization to be learned and whether the apprentice would board or not. In addition, the price was also adapted to the term, because masters recouped their investment partly with free labor provided by the apprentices after or during the term.166 So, rather than being connected to a patriarchal context, notarial apprenticeship contracts emanate from a very business-like approach to learning—at least from the seventeenth century on. As to the causes of this trend, such social historians as Reinhold Reith and Andreas Grieβinger have explained the dissolution of the so-called ganze Haus model by the intrusion of market forces in the household.167 The sheer size of ateliers is considered to have undermined patriarchal relationships, which endured more in trades with a lower number of journeymen and

Corporatism, Proletarianization and the Patriarchal Order  203 apprentices per master.168 This may be true in part. As was the case in France and Germany, masters were usually only allowed to employ one apprentice at a time.169 Although this often remained the case until the end of the eighteenth century, these rules were not uncontested. In 1556 a complaint was filed in Antwerp by the guild against goldsmith Jan Rebel, who had failed to register an apprentice, and argued that it was a servant who only did household chores.170 Around 1600, the maximum was also exceeded by large masters in the garment industry—where poor apprentices were even imported from the Liège region and Germany.171 As this must have deprived small masters of apprentices, the rules can be explained by the motivation to both protect apprentices against exploitation and maintain a certain equality among masters.172 Some guild rules also urged masters to train their apprentices properly, as was the case with the Brussels tanners’ guild, whose rules stipulated that the apprentices had to learn how to put hides in tubs as a preparation for the master trial.173 Thus, these regulations suggest that market forces indeed started to prevail and that concentration trends were on the rise. However, polarization among masters and the exploitation of apprentices as cheap labor were not the only reasons why the patriarchal ideal became obsolete. While being a ‘traditional’ sector, the contracts among the goldand silversmiths reveal that the apprentices concerned could be rather old, partly explaining the decline of boarding. In our Antwerp sample of apprenticeship contracts, the average age at the start of the contract is 15.6 years, but what is most striking are the huge differences. While an apprenticeship term was mostly started between the ages of twelve and eighteen, apprentices above twenty were not unusual.174 And whereas 90% of all apprentices younger than twelve boarded with their masters, this figure drops to 65% for apprentices of twenty years and older.175 Nor is this all there is to it. While contracts could be very specialized and thus offer only specific skills to apprentices, apprentices could already have learned elsewhere and, hence, be interested only in specific or advanced skills. Rather than being socialized in a guild or a corporative culture, these apprentices wandered about the learning market and shopped for skills.176 When looking at the masters, this was related to different assortments of skills being on offer in different ateliers. Social historians had already noticed that at least some apprentices (or their parents) favored large ateliers.177 Among the Brussels tailors, four out of ten masters never registered an apprentice, but nearly all ateliers with three or more journeymen did. Parents apparently preferred to apprentice their sons in a large atelier, which is confirmed by the fact that small masters were more likely to register a poor apprentice.178 The fact that this was a challenge to the corporative ideals is revealed by the juridical complaint filed against William De Ryck in 1673, mentioned at the beginning of this chapter. The skills offered at the atelier of de Ryck ranged from basic transferable skills to drawing to very specific and specialized skills for wandering journeymen who wanted to

204  Corporatism, Proletarianization and the Patriarchal Order

Figure 4.3 The print de tinnegieter (the tin smith) of Jan and Caspar Luyken, Het Menselyk Bedryf. Vertoond in 100 Verbeeldingen van Ambachten, Konsten, Hanteeringen en Bedryven, met Versen (The human enterprise, featured in 100 pictures of crafts, arts, stiles and enterprises, with verses), Amsterdam, 1694, pictures an apprentice (or else the master’s son).

‘perfect’ themselves. As a consequence, De Ryck employed apprentices who had already learned elsewhere and, hence, were somewhat older and were less likely to board.179 The guild deans’ objections are to be understood from their endeavors to safeguard the status of mastership and monitor access to the trade, thus illustrating that the connection between corporatism and patriarchalism had waned. The distinction between apprentices and journeymen or workers was key for the guild, because apprenticeship, next to birth, was the entry ticket to the guild. Guilds therefore went to great lengths to make the distinction, up to and including enforcing boarding for young adults or even adults. But at the end of the seventeenth century and in the eighteenth century, what was actually monitored was mostly whether the apprentices had actually been

Corporatism, Proletarianization and the Patriarchal Order  205 registered as such or not.180 Due to the complex social realities on the shop floor, the only way for guilds to distinguish journeymen from apprentices was by the use of a bureaucratic instrument. What the guild monitored, by then, was not so much the serving of the initial contract but if the apprentice had served a full term—whether this was with the first master, or several, had become unimportant. In other words, the patriarchal mental framework, which in the fifteenth century embedded the corporative framework, is likely to have stopped working.

The Corporative Ideal and the Status of Women Another way to examine the relationship between patriarchal ideologies and the corporative framework, obviously, is the status of women in the guilds.181 As has been argued earlier, it would be misleading to state that during the late Middle Ages the ‘passing down of knowledge from one generation to the next [was] a monopoly of men’.182 Women were often involved in highly skilled trades, even as employers.183 In sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Lyons, women wove silk and ran print shops. In Geneva, they made metalwork in their own shops.184 In some guilds, women could even become a mistress officially. In thirteenth-century Paris, it is said, women had access to no less than eighty guilds; in fifteen they even outnumbered the men. On top of this, they could have their own guilds, as was the case (much later) with the Paris seamstresses.185 Even in Cologne, a city with a stronger corporative tradition, exclusive female guilds existed in such trades as yarn-making, gold thread spinning and silk weaving, in which women ran their own ateliers, employed apprentices, bought raw materials, sold finished products, and so on.186 In the Southern Netherlands, women had access to the guilds of the old cloth sellers, candle makers and mercers in Ghent. In the mercers’ guilds and other commercial trades in particular, female members were ubiquitous, and increasingly so as the early modern period progressed.187 However, this not to say that women were accepted as full members of the corporative world. The status of women was often more informal and less prestigious, with their work—concentrated in needlework and the food trade—often tied to their domestic status.188 Moreover, some of these guilds arrived rather late on the corporative scene—the Paris guild of seamstresses was for example established only in 1675. The question thus arises whether these guilds were erected as a response to the exclusion of women in other guilds and trades. In most guilds, women were in any case not accepted as being equal to men. While in principle they could not be a member of the board, the majority of married women worked under the dominance of their husband. They worked as wives in shops or in a stall at the markets, taking on a role as retailer, while mastership was a male prerogative.189 This nicely fits the corporative idea in which marrying and becoming a master not only concurred, but in which fathers, men and masters also formed the link between the city as an aggregation of economic households and the city as a body politic—or the larger household.

206  Corporatism, Proletarianization and the Patriarchal Order Most empirical data moreover suggest that female autonomy and access to guilds declined in the early modern period. In Germany, restrictions on women’s work in a guild context—mostly focused on widows—would have appeared from the fifteenth century on.190 This leads to the question whether women were excluded in a context of strong guilds in particular. The case of the Southern Netherlands in any case gives little reason to refute the rather pessimistic view of the impact of guilds on gender equality. In Ghent women were excluded from the dyers’ guild as far back as the fourteenth century.191 The tailors, among other groups, excluded women from the guilds in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.192 Even in some mercers’ guilds access for women was curtailed. The Leuven mercers’ guild denied access to women altogether in 1744.193 Whenever women ran workshops themselves, they did so mostly under the custody of a male family member who acted as the official master. Women themselves were often mistress only in the mercers’ guilds, that is in a trade were nothing was actually manufactured, and even then, the figures were modest. In Lier in the second half of the sixteenth century, they represented 11% of the members, in Mechelen in the first half of the eighteenth century this was 14% to 15%, and 20% in Turnhout in the first half of the eighteenth century.194 In Antwerp, the percentage of women in the mercers’ guild rose from 7% in the sixteenth century to nearly 25% at the end of the eighteenth.195 Moreover, contrary to some French cities and Amsterdam, seamstresses were not organized in a guild in the Southern Netherlands— except for Bergen. The general idea was, apparently, ‘that it would be new and extra-ordinary, and that it is not practiced in any city in the Southern Netherlands, for a married woman to be member of a guild [of tailors] while her husband is perhaps mason, carpenter, shoemakers or artisan and, as such, member of another guild’.196 Note that reference is made here not to a gender issue from a labor perspective, but to a societal order based on masters as heads of households. In the wake of the 1919 book The Working Life of Women in the Seventeenth Century of Alice Clark, a range of gender historians have connected the gender issue to the role of women in the economy. Clark argued that women’s position deteriorated because the traditional family economy was broken up by capitalism, which removed production from the home. With a special focus on the Low Countries and the Rhine area, Martha Howell has elaborated this thesis. At first, following Howell, women held high labor-status positions in market-oriented production because of the importance of the family economy. Women could perform virtually every task, provided that they did so within the domestic context of the household. This, however, dissolved whenever specialization, quality control and a uniform training system for masters and journeymen became more important. While individuals rather than households were required to meet the increasing competitive pressures—especially in export trades—these regulations were provided by guilds or guild-like institutions, which leads Howell to conclude that ‘it was

Corporatism, Proletarianization and the Patriarchal Order  207 the combined force of the political and business organization of work that took high-status positions away from the family’.197 What worked against women in the last instance was not the production system per se but the connection between work, honor and politics, with men assuming public authority exclusively. This is why in Douai, where guilds failed to gain power, legislation about trade and industry mostly referred to men and women.198 The connection between work, independence and political subjecthood entailed a distinction between married and unmarried women. In fifteenthcentury Brussels several guilds still had female members, the glove makers and embroiderers serving as examples, but women often lost their rights once they married, as was stipulated with the embroiderers in 1463.199 On the occasion of opposition to women retailers among the vegetable and fruit sellers and the bleachers it was prohibited for women to continue their activities in 1469, except for unmarried women and widows (and on the condition that the latter paid a tax).200 This implies a somewhat liminal position for both unmarried women and masters’ widows. As to the former, guild regulations in the Southern Netherlands were mostly not concerned with restricting the number of female workers with masters or even the vocational training of girls.201 Female work in a guild context was not a problem as long as men held the reins. This explains why the position of widows, in contrast, was mostly a matter of concern. Widows had become a kind of mistress by accident as it were. They had become master-less while having to deal with apprentices and journeymen, with some of the latter perhaps already being married themselves.202 In this context, guilds typically allowed them to continue running the late husband’s firm only for a restricted period—for example until they were succeeded by a son or son-inlaw, or until they remarried.203 Widows were also a threat to guilds in that they created loopholes. By working in company with a journeyman or merchant, or perhaps marrying them, they enabled unfree or false masters to work in the margins of the guild frame. In this vein, the struggle against women’s rights was part of the broader struggle against unfree work, with the stronger guilds in the Southern Netherlands perhaps being more tenacious and successful.204 Yet this was connected to a fundamental unease about women being ‘master-less’.205 Somewhat different than Howell, historians of gender have already referred to the emergence, in the fourteenth century, of a bourgeois ethic focusing on the household as the center of production and trade. Until the fifteenth and sixteenth century bans were issued in northwest Europe against women living on their own and doing work from home.206 This coincides nicely with the expansion and development of guilds, as is confirmed in recent research on the county of Flanders by Peter Stabel. Discursive analysis of guild and city ordinances for French-speaking Flanders had already pointed to a significant transformation in the fourteenth century. While dyadic references had been the norm when referring to economic positions such as master status—meaning that phrases like

208  Corporatism, Proletarianization and the Patriarchal Order ‘either men or women’ or ‘both men or women’ were standard—exclusively male references gradually started to dominate. Ellen Kittell and Kurt Queller explained this by the influence of French (royal) norms and linguistic practices, but Peter Stabel has shown that in Dutch-speaking parts of the county of Flanders as well (his case study being Ypres) dyadic references were replaced during the fourteenth century with references to males only, except for a small range of low-status professions such as spinning, combing and carding.207 In contrast to Kittell and Queller, Stabel connects this to the emergence of guilds, and rightfully so in my view. The chronological correspondence with the advent of guilds could hardly be more accurate, the more so when taking into account the pre-corporative phase in which guilds entered the historical scene as powerful actors without necessarily being recognized politically. Subsequent developments resemble those sketched by Howell, with the proviso that trade and retail were often not a problem here either. In Brussels women continued to have access for instance to the merchant (cloth) guild, which permitted them to retail textile fabrics.208 This was facilitated by a special legal statute for women in trade (the so-called koopvrouw). While women were legally immature in theory, this status allowed them to conclude contracts and run a business. If a woman was married, she could do so independently of her husband—although this was conditional upon his consent.209 Evolutions from the sixteenth to the seventeenth centuries are more difficult to pinpoint. On the one hand, it is important to recall that the advent of guilds in the Southern Netherlands coincided with an economic shift towards high-quality products (first textiles) in which both the required level of skills and the value of the raw materials used increased significantly. At least in part women were the victim of an ideal in which access to the political domain had merged with changing attitudes towards manufacturing and skills. In the fifteenth and sixteenth century, the relegation of women to the private sphere of the household may subsequently have been enhanced by religious transformations. According to Lyndal Roper, the patriarchal household and the concomitant guild mentality centered on the subordination of women was reinvigorated during the Protestant and Catholic Reformations, in which it was stressed that well-ordered households, as loci of devotion and worship, formed the basis of a well-ordered civic community.210 In his research on German imperial cities, Thomas Safley has argued that Protestant municipal authorities increasingly monitored marriage and male dominance, but this concurred with an increasing degree of individual autonomy as exemplified by the possibility to divorce.211 Economic transformations may have mattered as well. The harsher and more inhospitable attitude towards women in this period may have been a reaction to the increasing presence of women in certain sectors at least in part. In the early modern period, women carved out a growing niche in a range of export industries and domestic work, including in the tailoring sector, where seamstresses first took over the production of women’s clothing.

Corporatism, Proletarianization and the Patriarchal Order  209 In the long run, this helped undermine the guild system as whole.212 In 1775, Brussels ‘marchands de mode’ were accused of employing seamstresses directly to have them make women’s dresses, thus cornering the tailors’ labor market monopsony.213 On the surface, this underlines the traditional narrative that female activity on the labor market was opposed by journeymen in particular. The gradual penetration of production by merchant capitalism would have caused competition between journeymen and women especially in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.214 Yet in my view this should not lead us to neglect the threat women posed to the guild system. Whatever the causal factors may be, the guilds lost their grip on both the patriarchal household and an ever-growing part of female productive activity in the long run.215 In Antwerp around 1700, lace work alone is said to have employed 10,000 workers, almost all women.216 Add to this the number of women working as spinners and retailers and the like, and it becomes clear that women were increasingly escaping at least the guild framework.

Conclusion A rare ego-document of an early modern artisan, the Ghent cooper and rhetorician Jacobus Huije (1667–1748), nicely synthesizes the central field of tension of this chapter. Huije travelled a great deal and served a total of no less than twelve masters. His view on the corporative system was nonetheless somewhat traditional. About his three sons he wrote that they were all proclaimed master (‘tot meesters zijn gemaakt’) on the same day, adding that they had thus ‘become men’ (tot mannen sijn gheraeckt).217 In Huije’s imagination, becoming a master was still connected to becoming an independent adult man, although the trajectory towards it cannot be reduced to being an apprentice and boarding with one master, working for some years as a journeyman and eventually becoming master and marrying. As historians studying France and especially Germany have shown, wandering from city to city was part of the corporative experience and education. In the Southern Netherlands, this was not a regulated system like the one in Germany, but it existed as a practice and was even facilitated by the guilds through the mutual recognition of each other’s apprenticeship period. The existence of a tramping system bears testimony to the large liminal space between young apprentices and the status of master. Moreover, while guilds are believed to have helped maintain and reproduce a social order, the patriarchal ideals must have been difficult to enforce even from its very inception in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. From early on, a large group of workers is known to have operated outside the guild framework.218 Masters’ widows moreover occupied a liminal space too, while bridging also the field of tension between the corporative framework and the family firm. However, looking at long-term evolutions through the lens of the entanglement of corporatism with patriarchalism is revealing nonetheless.

210  Corporatism, Proletarianization and the Patriarchal Order John Locke notoriously redefined a household as not a polis or a miniature commonwealth in which the father ruled as a monarch, but as a community of goods regulated by right, custom, and contract.219 This is what eventually emerged in my case study in practice, the tenacious corporative structure notwithstanding. The changing position of both apprentices and women suggests that masters lost part of their patriarchal authority. Women increasingly worked outside the guild framework, un-monitored by a married male; in the lace industry, they were far more likely to work for a mistress.220 Simultaneously, the relationship between master and apprentice grew increasingly business-like. While a great many of the apprentices did not match the profile of an adolescent in the custody of a stand-in father, the relationship between the two was largely based on a contract—even when this was mostly verbal—in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Not only did boarding decline, but the apprentice was also a client buying skills and technical knowledge rather than a youngster to be prepared for master status by inculcating him with both technical knowledge and guild-based values. I certainly don’t want to imply here that either the patriarchal ideology or the authority of the master, father or husband waned as such. My argument is, rather, that the overlap between the corporative framework and the patriarchal values and practices disappeared. Not the father’s or the husband’s, but the master’s authority waned. This may even have been related to a process in which the gap between the (female) private and the (male) public sphere widened in the meantime. The idea that the private sphere of the household and the public sphere of the guilds demerged is at least suggested by the transformations in the attitude towards masters’ sons. Although this is to be confirmed in subsequent research, it would seem that the master’s son evolved from being born a guild master to being an outsider himself. The fact that masters’ sons also gradually had to fulfil such entry requirements as an apprenticeship term, a master piece and entrance fees, suggests that the guild framework was being thought of little by little as a structure outside the family—however exclusive it may have been in the meantime. The hypothesis to be tested in further research is whether wealth and meritocratic values substituted birth in the process. Nor can this be explained in a mono-causal way. On the one hand, the increasing intrusion of market forces may explain the changing position of journeymen, women and apprentices to a certain extent. As for journeymen, the further development of capitalist labor relations even led to organized protest and collective bargaining, which eventually pitched journeymen and masters against each other.221 The position of women as cheap labor can likewise be explained from a socio-economic perspective, as can the position of either an exploited youth registered as an apprentice or a wandering journeyman in search of specialized skills. However, religious transformations can also be invoked. A whole body of research has examined the relationship between the Reformation and patriarchalism. In it, gender historians

Corporatism, Proletarianization and the Patriarchal Order  211 have often adopted a pessimistic view, with Lyndal Roper in her book The Holy Household arguing that women became subject to ‘a politics of reinscribing women within the “family” ’.222 This was in turn related to governments becoming more involved with the private sphere, thus turning the intermediate level of the guild into an issue. Was the increasing patriarchal communalism on the urban level, signaled by religious and gender historians alike, perhaps accompanied by the diminishing impact of guilds? Roper, in any case, argued that the guilds in Augsburg did not welcome the increasing interventions of urban authorities in the domestic unit.223 Something similar may have taken place in the Southern Netherlands, where the waning power of the guilds was accompanied by an expanding bureaucracy on the urban level.224 Here the CounterReformation eventually prevailed, but the current trend in the history of early modern religions is to argue that the Reformation and the CounterReformation (or Catholic Reformation) were part of the same undercurrent, with incipient forms of individualism and rationalism as shared elements— next to changing forms of social discipline and the further encroachment of territorial political authority.225 In its turn, this may have been connected to different attitudes towards guild-based products. To date social historians have mostly focused on changing labor relations and the loss of control over the means of production on the part of manufacturers. But the relationship of artisans with their products may have transformed apart from this. Both historians of religion and science have argued that subject-object relations changed fundamentally in the late medieval period. From the viewpoint of historians of science, fundamental changes took place in the attitude towards the natural and the material during the early modern period.226 In a nutshell, the material world is increasingly seen as dead material subject to natural laws. In a landmark article on religious transformations, Richard Trexler too argued that medieval sensitivities regarding objects were subject to transformations during the Renaissance. While the importance of sacred artifacts would seem to have increased in a first phase—in line with a more worldly material culture—Humanists gradually favored a more intellectual and contemplative approach in line with the republic of mind they considered themselves part of. This is related to a different conceptualization of power. While power (or rather virtue) was traditionally seen as a certain potency in a range of objects—and hence in the relationship between objects and Man— power gradually became conceptualized as a ‘power over things’ granted by God, with the latter moreover transforming from a pater familias of sorts to an absolute power out-there.227 This is why I have suggested approaching this from a perspective beyond the Marxist approach. Traditionally the demise of the guilds was addressed from either an economic or a political perspective, with either changing labor relations or the encroachment of the bureaucratic territorial state as decisive transformations. As I explained in the introduction to this book,

212  Corporatism, Proletarianization and the Patriarchal Order mine is an attempt to search for additional connections and reveal a more encompassing assemblage of related factors. One such factor is to be found on the product market. Guilds eventually lost out against ‘new luxuries’ which were not bought because of their intrinsic value but because they were novel and fashionable. Simultaneously, corporative relationships and power structures were replaced with more businesslike relationships ruled by both contract and bureaucratic rules. Both were in turn connected to a cultural and religious transformation in which Man’s relationship with Nature had transformed fundamentally. This is exemplified by the loss of importance of the guilds’ collective hall marks, which could be understood as a means of imprinting and visualizing the ‘spirit of the master’ on the product, thus adding a gift dimension to the guilds’ economic strategies. Such an approach would shed an additional light on the transformations from the sixteenth century on. Obviously, this also implies a different conception of human nature as such, perhaps one which was heralded—paradoxically—by one of the guilds’ supporters, Marsiglio of Padua. Under the influence of the Christian theological tradition in general and Augustine’s ideas in The City of God in particular, Marsiglio took into account both convention and human will. Community in the Defensor Pacis was not the indispensable result of rational nature, but, rather, of human artifice and volition.228 Arguing in favor of a guild-based republic thus implied a totally different conception of the very nature of human beings. Yet, while in the Middle Ages such a view supported participation of guilds in the body politic, the corporative sense of community was gradually being replaced by formalized and standardized procedures. In the next chapter, it will be examined what this meant for both the sense of equality and mutual assistance in guilds.

Notes   1  De Munck, ‘Gilding’, 239.  2 De Kerf, De circulatie, 67–68 en 81–90, 222.   3  De Munck, ‘One Counter’, 30–31.  4 Thijs, Van ‘werkwinkel’, 202–203; Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 286–287. Also: Grießinger and Reith, ‘Lehrlinge’; Reith, ‘Zur beruflichen Sozialisation’; Kaplan, ‘L´apprentissage’.   5 De Munck and De Kerf, ‘Wandering’.   6  Lis and Soly, ‘Ambachtsgilden’, 33–34.   7 Debates on the question whether early modern society was one of class or either order in Roche and Labrousse (eds.), Ordres; Bush, Social Orders. A nuanced class-approach in Friedrichs, ‘Capitalism’.   8 Among others, see Earle, The Making; Barry and Brooks (eds.), The Middling Sort; Barry, ‘The Making’.   9 One example is Kaplan, la fin. 10 Sonenscher, Work, ch. 5 and passim; Lis and Soly, ‘Different Paths’, ‘Export Industries’, and ‘Subcontracting’. 11 See e.g., Kaplan, ‘Les corporations’; Thillay, Le faubourg. 12 Lis and Soly, Worthy Efforts, ch. 1, esp. 18.

Corporatism, Proletarianization and the Patriarchal Order  213 13 Barry, ‘Identité’ and ‘Bourgeois collectivism’. A state of the art in Boone and Stabel (eds.), Shaping. 14 Duplessis and Howell, ‘Reconsidering’. 15 Lis and Soly, ‘Different Paths’, ‘Ambachtsgilden’, 17–19, ‘Corporatisme’, 366– 367, ‘Craft Guilds’, 14–17 and ‘Export Industries’. 16 Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 99, 102–103, 187–191. 17 Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 187–195, 308. 18 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 72. 19 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 59–83. 20 Thijs, Van ‘werkwinkel’, 220–221. 21 Lis and Soly, ‘Corporatisme’, ‘Export Industries’, 119 and ‘Subcontracting’. 22 Soly, Urbanisme, 200–203, 406–424; De Meester, ‘Migrant Workers’. 23 Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 134–138; Deceulaer, ‘Entrepreneurs’, esp. 140–144. 24 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 65. 25 Sosson, Les travaux, 167–188; Lis and Soly, ‘Subcontracting’, 100–101 (with reference to the unpublished doctoral thesis of Jos Vermaut, ‘De textielnijverheid in Brugge en op het platteland in westelijk Vlaanderen voor 1800. Konjunktuurverloop, organisatie en sociale verhoudingen’, Ghent, 1974, 480–489, where four categories of wool weavers are identified ranging from a small number of affluent subcontractors up to subcontractees and proletarianized masters working for wages in other masters’ shops). 26 Sosson, ‘Les métiers’, 342; Lis and Soly, ‘Corporatisme’; ‘Export Industries’, 119–123; and ‘Subcontracting’. 27 Dewilde, Corporaties, 109–111 (quote on p. 110). 28 De Munck, Technologies, 136 and ‘One Counter’, 36. The guild of tanners and shoemakers split only in the final quarter of the seventeenth century. 29 Dewilde, Corporaties, 129–131; Van Damme, Verleiden, 233. 30 Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 43. 31 Des Marez, L’Organisation, 481; Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 49. 32 Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 129–130. 33  Jacobs, ‘De ambachten’, 593; Dewilde and Poukens, ‘Confraternities’, 673; Dewilde, Corporaties, 143–178. 34 Willems, Het Antwerpse kuipersambacht, 139–143 and 167–181; De Kerf, De circulatie, 174–175. 35 De Munck, ‘La qualité’, 123–124; ‘One Counter’, 35–36. 36 De Munck ‘One Counter’, 36. 37 De Munck, ‘La qualité’, 127–128; ‘One Counter’, 36. 38 See e.g., Verhavert, Het ambachtswezen, 68. 39 City Archives Antwerp (CAA), Notary Archives (N) 2913, 9 February 1752. 40 Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 174–176. 41 De Munck, Technologies, 64, and ‘Construction’, 91. 42 CAA, Guildes and Trades (GT) 4255, 17 January 1595, art. 6ff. Additional exemples in De Munck, ‘Skills’, 214; and ‘One Counter’, 33–34. 43 One example in De Kerf, De circulatie, 204, Ftn 486. 44 Schlugleit, De Antwerpse goud- en zilversmeden, 242–248; De Munck, ‘Skills’, 214. 45 While my own work on product quality is largely based on the wood, metal and leather sector, similar arguments surfaced in the food industry, with such groups as the bakers. See for instance Dewilde, Corporaties, 97. Nor was this limited to the Southern Netherlands. For ’s-Hertogenbosch and other cities in the Dutch Republic, see Prak, Republikeinse veelheid, 279–296. 46 Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 131–132.

214  Corporatism, Proletarianization and the Patriarchal Order 47 Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 49–50. 48 Cf. Van Damme, Verleiden, 92–101 and chs. 5 and 6. 49 De Munck, Technologies, 244–245. 50 Quote in De Vries, The Industrious Revolution, 146. See also: Bettoni, ‘Usefulness’. 51 Munro, ‘Urban Regulation’, 46 and ‘Medieval Woollens’, 198–201. 52 Verhavert, Het ambachtswezen, 87; De Munck, Technologies, 237–238. 53 Prak, ‘Guilds’ and ‘Painters’. 54 Munro, ‘Spanish “merino” Wools’, 432. Also Des Marez, L’organisation, 289– 291 and Endrei and Egan, ‘The Sealing’. 55 Des Marez, L’organisation, 266, 291. 56 Van Deun, ‘Het Antwerpse tinnegietersambacht’, 40; De Munck, Technologies, 239. Even guild-based bread could be marked, as has been recorded for Leuven: Dewilde, Corporaties, 97. 57 Van Deun, ‘Het Antwerpse tinnegietersambacht’, 40; De Munck, Technologies, 239; ‘Skills’, 217. 58 Verhavert, Het ambachtswezen, 88; De Munck, Technologies, 237. 59 ‘opdat wie ’t siet oft coopen wil, weten mach wat hy coope’. Verhavert, het ambachtswezen, 88. 60 Des Marez, L’organisation, 286ff, 291ff. The diversity here is huge, also regarding where, when and to what extent products and the application of hallmark was monitored—which could range from the right to search workshops up to the obligation to have every product inspected at the guild house by control masters. 61 De Munck, ‘Agency’, 4 (with additional references). 62 Montias, Artists, 74–75; De Munck, ‘Agency’. 63 De Munck, ‘Agency’, 10–13. Mitchell, ‘Innovation’, 13; Clifford, ‘‘‘King’s Arms”  ’, 89 and ‘Concepts’, 64  242–248. 65 Schlugleit, De Antwerpse goud- en zilversmeden, 232–233 and 270ff; De Munck, ‘Skills’, 224; Blondé and Baatsen, ‘Zilver’. 66 Des Marez, L’organisation, 286. 67 De Munck, ‘Skills’, 224–225; ‘One Counter’, 39–43. 68 De Vries, ‘Luxury’ and The Industrious Revolution, chs. 2 and 4. Also Blondé and Van Damme, ‘Een crisis’, 66–76 and 81–83. 69 An empirical approach based on probate inventories in Blondé and Baatsen, ‘Zilver’. See also: Van Damme, ‘Zotte verwaandheid’. 70 Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 180–182 (with additional references). 71  Richardson ‘Brand Names’. 72  An introduction to Mauss’ concepts from a value-perspective in Graeber, Toward, ch. 6. 73 More detail and references in De Munck, ‘Menselijke kwaliteiten’ and ‘Artisans’. Cf. also Ferry, ‘Fetishism’. 74 Endres, ‘Handwerk-Berufsbildung’, 381–382. A more nuanced approach and further references in Kluge, Die Zünfte, 230–242. 75 Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 330–331. Similar figures for the Coopers in Bruges and Antwerp in Sosson, ‘La structure sociale’, 464–465; Willems, ‘Loon naar werken’, 46. 76 Prak, ‘Identité urbaine’, 914–915; Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 245, 247. 77  Cf., Van Werveke, Gent, 51–52. 78  Stabel, ‘Social Mobility’, esp. 159. 79  Similar arguments in Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 334. 80  Cerutti, ‘Du corps’, 325–328; Klüge, Die Zünfte, 244.

Corporatism, Proletarianization and the Patriarchal Order  215   81 The changes in 1577 and 1585 as well are visible on the graphs of new masters. Dambruyne, ‘Guilds’, 37–54; and Corporatieve middengroepen, 179, 194, 216, 232, 235–246, 329, 336, ch. 2.  82 Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 330–331.   83  Ehmer, ‘Ökonomischer’, 104.   84  Cf. Friedrichs, ‘Capitalism’, 31.  85 Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 331, 337. Similar figures are recorded for the Antwerp coopers, which also coupled a rather high social position to a relatively high occupational continuity. Willems ‘Loon naar werken?’, 46.  86 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 335.   87  E.g., Van Werveke, ‘Ambachten’, 7–8 and Gent, 47–48.   88  Stabel, ‘Social Mobility’, 167–168. Also Sosson, ‘La structure’.   89 A nuanced view and additional references in Klüge, Die Zünfte, 243–242, esp. 234.   90 Shephard, ‘Social’ and Garden, ‘The Urban Trades’.  91 Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 333–334.  92 Van Quathem, ‘Sociale mobiliteit’, 118; Saliën, Op de leest geschoeid, 46; Pepermans, Sociaal-economische geschiedenis, 72; Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 334.  93 Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 334.  94 Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 335–337.  95 Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 302.  96 Stabel, De kleine stad, 242; Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 302.  97 Des Marez, L’organisation, 70.  98 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 79–80. Similar arguments in Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 292ff.  99 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 272. 100 Scholliers, ‘Vrije en onvrije’, 285–322, 288, 291–292; and CAA, GT 4341, 31 March 1543, art. 5–6. 101 Dambruyne, ‘De gentse bouwvakambachten’, 79–90; Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 80; Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 294; De Munck, ‘Meritocraten’, 89–95. 102 Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 293–294, 300–301. 103 De Munck, ‘Meritocraten’, 100–101. 104 De Munck, ‘Meritocraten’, 101. 105 As suggested by Klüge, Die Zünfte, 242–245, esp. 244. 106 De Munck, Technologies, 161–163. 107 Des Marez, L’organisation, 82. 108 Recent views and further references in De Munck, Technologies, chs. 3 and 4. 109 Ehmer, ‘The Artisan Family’, 202–203. 110 Des Marez, L’organisation, 86–94. 111 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, ch. 2.3 and 5. Also: Boone, Gent, 49–61. 112 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 195–198, 299–300ff, 335ff. 113 ‘niet weerdich (waeren) omme de voorseide neeringhe te dienen’. 114 ‘van minder conditie ende vrijheijt’. Both quotes are from Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 321. 115 See ch. 3, Ftn 10. 116 Dambruyne, ‘Guilds’, 46 and Corporatieve middengroepen, 194. 117 ‘zoo wanneer dat zy sterven zoo sterft de neeringhe ooc’. Cited in Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 198, Ftn 119. 118 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 195ff.

216  Corporatism, Proletarianization and the Patriarchal Order 119 ‘stelde elcke neerynghe zonder veel gheweens / te coope voor zes carolus gulden eens’. Cited in Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, IV. 120 Nederman, Community, ch. 2. 121 Verhavert, Het ambachtswezen, 84. 122 Des Marez, L’organisation, 50. 123 Des Marez, L’organisation, 80–81. 124 An overview with additional references in Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 212–213. 125 De Munck, Technologies, 84, Ftn 124. Also: Schlugleit, Geschiedenis, 75–76; CAA, GT 4115, Request 24 April 1677; GT 4263, Request 27 June 1705. 126 De Munck, ‘From Brotherhood’, 7. 127 Des Marez, L’organisation, 82–83. 128 Something similar is argued by Des Marez, L’organisation, 84. 129 Des Marez, L’organisation, 81–82; Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 208–209. This also applies to France. Cf. Coornaert, Les corporations, 197. 130 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 209. 131 Des Marez, L’organisation, 50, 80–81. 132 Verhavert, Het ambachtswezen, 84 en 105–106; Van Buyten, Leuven anno 1789, 70. 133 See e.g., Des Marez, L’organisation, 55; Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 183. 134 Des Marez, L’organisation, 55, 65. 135 Recent perspectives and further references in Krausman Ben-Amos, ‘Service’ and ‘Failure’; Brooks, ‘Apprenticeship’, esp. 77; Prak, ‘Moral Order’, esp. 179. 136 De Munck, ‘From Brotherhood’, 14–19. Also: Goldberg, ‘Masters’, 60. 137 Des Marez, L’organisation, 211, 265. 138 Des Marez, L’organisation, 264. 139 Des Marez, L’organisation, 255. 140 Lis and Soly, ‘Corporatisme’, 377, 381–387; Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 144. 141 Des Marez, L’organisation, 55, 258–259. 142 Des Marez, L’organisation, 72, 418–419; Thijs, ‘Religion’, 159. 143 Crossick, ‘Past Masters’, 7–9. 144 Wiesner, Working Women, 163–164; Farr, Artisans, 245. 145 See database master gold- and silversmiths of Raoul De Kerf. 146 Ehmer, ‘The Artisan Family’, esp. 208–212; Crossick and Haupt, The Petite Bourgeoisie, 20. 147 Thijs, Van geuzenstad, 91–96 and ‘Religion’, 160. See also: Schulz, Handwerksgesellen. 148 Dambruyne, ‘De Gentse bouwvakambachten’, 87. 149 De Munck, ‘From Brotherhood’, 11. 150 Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 142–143. 151 ‘syne proeve inde selve ambachte nyet gedaen en heeft maer daegelijks voor vrije meesters tzijns huyse is werckende en cousen naeyende voor alle meesters die hem tewerck stellen zonder andersints aen iemant verbonden te syn’. Quoted in Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 143. 152 ‘l’engagement d’un apprenti par un maître donne lieu à un contrat dont les stipulations sont en majeure partie imposées par le métier’. Godding, Le droit privé, 470. 153 One exception is an ordinance of 20 September 1365 which stipulated that a master carpenter was to appear with his new apprentices before the sworn of the guild. Des Marez, L’organisation, 44–45. 154 De Munck, Technologies, 63–64 and ‘Gilding’, 230–232.

Corporatism, Proletarianization and the Patriarchal Order  217 155 The expression appears in Henry Sumner Main, Ancient Law: Its Connection with the Early History of Society, and Its Relation to Modern Ideas (London, 1961), 170. 156 See e.g., Atiyah, The Rise; Steinfeld, The Invention. 157 Orren, Belated Feudalism; Steinfeld, Coercion; Hay and Craven (eds.), Masters; Deakin and Wilkinson, The Law. 158 De Kerf, De circulatie, 168–172; De kerf, ‘The Early Modern Antwerp Coopers’ Guild’, 246–252. 159 De Kerf, De circulatie, 209, 213–244. 160 De Kerf, De circulatie, 200–205. 161 De Munck, ‘In loco parentis?’ and Technologies, ch. 5.3. 162 Ibidem. Compare with Grießinger and Reith, ‘Lehrlinge’; Rushton, ‘The Matter in Variance’, 94; Griffiths, Youth and Authority, 321. On the Southern Netherlands: Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 272–273. 163 De Munck, ‘In loco parentis?’ and Technologies, ch. 5.3. Also: Goldberg, ‘Masters’, 61. 164 De Munck, Technologies, 215. 165 This is not to say that they were free from responsibility, emotions and reciprocity. See Krausman Ben-Amos, ‘Gifts and Favors’, 310–314. 166 Stabel, ‘Social Mobility’, 160; De Munck, Technologies, 43–44; De Munck and De Kerf, ‘Wandering’. 167 Grießinger and Reith ‘Lehrlinge’; Reith, ‘Apprentices’. 168 Grießinger and Reith ‘Lehrlinge’. 169 Olivier-Martin, L’organisation, 129; Endres, ‘Handwerk-Berufsbildung’, 383; Lis and Soly, ‘De macht’, 20; Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 288, 293; Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 39, 78. Also: Kaplan, ‘L’apprentissage’, 455–456. 170 Schulgleit, De Antwerpse, 73–74; De Kerf, De circulatie, 216, 220. 171 Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 264. 172 See e.g., Grießinger and Reith, ‘Lehrlinge’. 173 Des Marez, L’organisation, 55–56 (with more examples). 174 An overview and references in De Munck, Technologies, 177–178. 175 De Kerf, De circulatie, 62. Also De Munck, ‘From Brotherhood’, 9–14. 176 De Munck, Technologies, ch. 1; De Munck and De Kerf, ‘Wandering’. 177 E.g., Van Buyten, Leuven anno 1789, 89–90; Stabel, ‘Social Mobility’, 173. 178 Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 269–270, 279–280. 179 See Ftn 2. 180 De Kerf, De circulatie, 200–201, 218–220. Also De Munck, Technologies, 66–67. 181 Some must-reads are: Howell, Women; Wiesner, ‘Women’s Work’. Also: Hutton, Women and Deceulaer and Panhuysen, ‘Dressed’. A recent state of the art in Crowston, ‘Women’. 182 Epstein, Wage Labor, 123. 183 E.g., Dambruyne. 258–259, 262. 184 Howell, Women, 2–3. 185 Cf. Crowston, Fabricating. 186 Howell, Women, 97, 124, 155–156 (with further references). 187 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 260–262. 188 Howell, ‘Women’; Wiesner, ‘Women’s Work’; Lynch, Individuals, 137ff. 189 Howell, Women, 133–137; Cowan, Urban Europe, 22. 190 Wiesner, ‘Women’s Work’, 67. 191 Howell, Women, 2. 192 Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 294.

218  Corporatism, Proletarianization and the Patriarchal Order 193 Saenen, Bijdrage, Vol. 1, 57. 194 References in Van Den Broeck, ‘ “Marchands de tout” ’, 62–63 and Ftn 41. 195 Van Aert, Leven of overleven, 157. See also Decraene, Boundaries, 30–31. 196 ‘qu’il est assez nouveau et extraordinaire, et qui ne se pratique en aucune ville du Pays-Bas, qu’une femme marièe soi suppôt [d’un métier de tailleurs] pendant que son mari soit peut-être maître macon, charpentier, cordonnier ou artisan, et ainsi membre d’un autre métier tout différent’. Quoted in Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 191, 216–217. 197 Howell, Women, quote on p. 162. 198 Howell, Women, 164–167, 178–179; Wiesner, ‘Guilds’ (with additional references). For the Southern Netherlands, also Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 218, 229. 199 Des Marez, L’organisation, 114. 200 Des Marez, L’organisation, 108–109. 201 Lynch, Individuals, 137–139. Also: Wiesner, ‘Spinsters’. 202 Wiesner, ‘Spinsters’, 195–196; Lynch, Individuals, 140. 203 E.g., Des Marez, L’organisation, 115; Van Buyten, Leuven anno 1789, 86–87; Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 260. 204 Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 226. 205 See e.g., Wiesner, ‘Women’s Work’, 70. 206 Lynch, Individuals, 142–144. 207 Kittell and Queller, ‘ “Whether Man or Woman. . .” ’; Peter Stabel, ‘Working Women and Guildsmen in the Flemish Textile Industries (13th and 14th Century): Gender, Labour and the European Marriage Pattern in an Era of Economic Change’, paper presented at the Tenth European Social Science History Conference in Vienna, 23–26 April 2014. 208 Des Marez, L’organisation, 112. 209 Van Aert, ‘Tussen norm en praktijk’, 22–42 and Leven of overleven, 80–84. 210 Roper, The Holy Household. Also: Ozment, When Fathers Ruled; Roper, ‘The “Common Man” ’; Wiesner, ‘Women’s Response’; Lynch, Individuals, 142– 143, 153–154. 211  See Safley, ‘Civic Morality’, 179–181, 189; Lynch, Individuals, 151–153, 163–170. See also: Van der Heijden, van Nederveen Meerkerk and Schmidt, ‘Religion’. 212 For a connection with religious transformations, see Van der Heijden, van Nederveen Meerkerk and Schmidt, ‘Religion’. 213 Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 191–195. 214 See e.g., Wiesner, Working Women, 166; Wiesner, ‘Guilds’, 129–133; Cowan, Urban Europe, 22; Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 259. 215 Cf. Deceulaer and Panhuysen, ‘Dressed’. 216 Soly, ‘De dominantie’, 156–157; Soly, ‘Social Aspects’, 243. 217 Quote and references in De Kerf, De circulatie, 104. 218 See e.g. Kaplan, ‘Les corporations’. 219 Cf. Withington, The Politics, 217–218. 220 Coppens, ‘Réglementation’ and ‘Lois et usages’. 221 See e.g. Lis and Soly, ‘ “An Irresistible Phalanx” ’. Also Sonenscher, Work, chs. 3 and 8. 222 Roper, The Holy Household, 3. 223 Roper, The Holy Household, 171. 224 See e.g. Brown, Civic Ceremony, 30–31. 225 Hsia, Social Discipline, esp. 1–9. 226 See for example Shapin and Schaffer, Leviathan; Smith, The Body. 227 Trexler, ‘Florentine Religious Experience’. 228 Nederman, Community, 30–31. Also: Scott, ‘Influence’.

Corporatism, Proletarianization and the Patriarchal Order  219

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Corporatism, Proletarianization and the Patriarchal Order  227 Steinfeld, Robert J. The Invention of Free Labor: The Employment Relation in English and American Law and Culture. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991. Thijs, Alfons K.L. ‘Religion and Social Structure: Religious Rituals in Pre-Industrial Trade Associations.’ In Prak, Maarten, Lis, Catharina, Lucassen, Jan and Soly, Hugo eds. Craft Guilds in the Early Modern Low Countries: Work, Power and Representation. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006, pp. 157–173. Thijs, Alfons K.L. Van geuzenstad tot katholiek bolwerk: Antwerpen en de contrareformatie. Turnhout: Brepols, 1990. Thijs, Alfons K.L. Van ‘werkwinkel’ tot ‘fabriek’: De textielnijverheid te Antwerpen (einde 15de-begin 19de eeuw). Brussels: Gemeentekrediet, 1987 (Historische Uitgaven, reeks in-8°, Nr. 69). Thillay, Alain. Le faubourg Saint-Antoine et ses ‘faux ouvriers’: La liberté du travail à Paris aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles. Paris: Champ Vallon, 2002. Trexler, Richard C. ‘Florentine Religious Experience: The Sacred Image.’ Studies in the Renaissance 19 (1972): 7–41. Van Aert, Laura. Leven of overleven? Winkelhouden in crisistijd: de Antwerpse meerseniers (ca. 1648-ca. 1748). Antwerp, 2007 (Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Antwerp). Van Aert, Laura. ‘Tussen norm en praktijk: Een terreinverkenning over het juridische statuut van vrouwen in het zestiende-eeuwse Antwerpen.’ Tijdschrift voor sociale en economische geschiedenis 2 (2005) 3: 22–42. Van Buyten, Leo. Leuven anno 1789 . Leuven: Peeters, 1989. Van Damme, Ilja. Verleiden en verkopen: Antwerpse kleinhandelaars en hun klanten in tijden van crisis, ca. 1648—ca. 1748. Amsterdam: Aksant, 2007 (Studies Stadsgeschiedenis 2). Van Damme, Ilja. ‘Zotte verwaandheid: Over Franse verleiding en Zuid-Nederlands onbehagen, 1650–1750).’ In De Bont, Raf and Verschaffel, Tom eds. Het verderf van Parijs. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2004, pp. 187–204. Van Den Broeck, André. ‘ “Marchands de tout, faiseurs de rien”: Het Lierse meerseniersambacht tijdens de tweede helft van de 18de eeuw.’ Lira Elegans 3 (1993): 51–83. Van der Heijden, Manon, van Nederveen Meerkerk, Elise and Schmidt, Ariadne. ‘Religion, Economic Development and Women’s Agency in the Dutch Republic.’ In Ammannati, Francesco ed. Religion and Religious Institutions in the European Economy, 1000–1800. Florence: Firenze University Press, 2011, pp. 543–562. Van Deun, J. ‘Het Antwerpse tinnegietersambacht in het Ancien Régime.’ In Keur van tin uit de havensteden Amsterdam, Antwerpen en Rotterdam. Amsterdam, Antwerp and Rotterdam: Provinciaal Museum Sterckshof, 1979, p. 40. Van Quathem, Kristof. ‘Sociale mobiliteit en machtsverdeling in het Brugse schoenmakersambacht (1570–1790).’ In Lis, Catharina and Soly, Hugo eds. Werken volgens de regels: Ambachten in Brabant en Vlaanderen, 1500–1800. Brussels: VUB-Press, 1994, pp. 107–134. Van Werveke, Hans. ‘Ambachten en erfelijkheid.’ Mededeelingen van de Koninklijke Vlaamsche Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schoone Kunsten van België 4 (1942) 1: 5–26. Van Werveke, Hans. Gent: Schets van een Sociale Geschiedenis. Gent: Boekhandel Rombaut-Fecheyr, 1947.

228  Corporatism, Proletarianization and the Patriarchal Order Verhavert, Jan. Het ambachtswezen te Leuven. Leuven: Universiteitsbibliotheek, 1940. Wiesner, Merry E. ‘Guilds, Male Bonding and Women’s Work in Early Modern Germany.’ Gender and History 1 (1989) 2: 125–137. Wiesner, Merry E. ‘Spinsters and Seamstresses: Women in Cloth and Clothing Production.’ In Ferguson, Margaret, Quilligan, Maureen and Vickers, Nancy eds. Rewriting the Renaissance: The Discourses of Sexual Difference in Early Modern Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986, pp. 191–205. Wiesner, Merry E. ‘Women’s Response to the Reformation.’ In Hsia, Ronnie Po-Chia ed. The German People and the Reformation. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1988, pp. 148–171. Wiesner, Merry E. ‘Women’s Work in the Changing City Economy, 1500–1650.’ In Boxer, Marilyn J. and Quataert, Jean H. eds. Connecting Spheres: Women in the Western World, 1500 to the Present. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987, pp. 64–74. Wiesner, Merry E. Working Women in Renaissance Germany. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1986. Willems, Bart. Het Antwerpse kuipersambacht, 1580–1796. Brussels: Unpublished licentiate’s thesis VUB, 1996–1997. Willems, Bart. ‘Loon naar werken? Sociale mobiliteit in het Antwerpse kuipersambacht (1585–1793).’ Bijdragen tot de geschiedenis 82 (1999) 1/2: 31–62. Withington, Phil. The Politics of Commonwealth: Citizens and Freemen in Early Modern England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

5 Equality, Solidarity and the Decline of Brotherhood

The brotherhood-like nature of the early guilds would seem to imply a strong sense of equality among its members, but this is not to be understood as we would today. Around 1600, some large hosiery makers in Antwerp put the guild regulations to the test. In order to accept and execute orders of thousands of items a time from the military they not only subcontracted other masters, but sent out work to women, children and aged masters as well. This threatened to upset the relatively egalitarian structure of the guild and to result in a few masters gaining monopoly power. As a consequence, the tailors’ and hosiery makers’ guild protested, arguing that concentration and monopoly were bound to ‘aggrandize one or two members of the body while disfiguring others, which is not to be permitted in a well policed city’.1 What is remarkable about this argumentation is that rules to preserve equality were defended with the use of bodily metaphors and with reference to the corporative structure of the industry and the city—while corporatism and equality are of course far from connected by necessity. How exactly, then, was the corporative ideology related to equality in the late medieval and early modern city? On the face of it, equality in this context could be considered stronger than present-day conceptions of it. While they all had voting rights in the early guilds’ general assembly, guild confreres were considered equal in the face of God and part of the same universal soul. This does not necessarily imply equality in a socio-economic sense however. As social and economic historians have already argued, ‘(t)he rhetoric of guild equality proved no match for the realities of economic exchange’.2 Nor should equality be seen, on the urban level, as an island in a feudal sea, in which a select group of burghers enjoyed ‘liberties’ to be understood through the prism of private law. Equality did not have much of a substantive meaning before the end of the ancien régime. Starting from the Christian idea that all humans—both poor and rich, as is often uttered in the sources—are equal before God, it was more of a political claim used to obtain rights or to achieve pax amicitia and the preservation of the common good of the city.3 As such, it did not prevent the body politic being conceived in a hierarchical way, based on different members.

230  Equality, Solidarity and the Decline of Brotherhood The latter point is perhaps best illustrated through the guilds’ participation in such civic ceremonies as the Corpus Christi and Holy Blood processions in which guild members marched along as a collective of equals more or less according to their place in the political power structures of the city.4 In Belgium, there is a strong tradition of addressing urban ritual and ceremony from a political perspective, focusing on city-state relations, and the development of a ‘theatre-state’ (a concept coined by the anthropologist Clifford Geertz). Civic ceremonies such as Joyous Entries and the propagation of collective devotions alike are thereby seen as events in which power relations are symbolically negotiated—with the symbolic claims of the Burgundian and Habsburg princes gradually gaining ground in the cities under their rule.5 These are still valid perspectives, but as Andrew Brown has recently argued, the city-state conflict is not the only relevant frame of reference, especially not when including more regular religious and civic ceremonies such as yearly processions. Specifically, the broader context of religious and urban history is important too.6 This is about people immersed in the religious and subject to the devotional. Processions could feature them barefoot, bareheaded and on their knees, singing and praying for good weather, for protection against the plague, peace and good fortune on the occasion of warfare—including good luck and prosperity for the feudal lord.7 In his attempt to understand corporatism as a political theory Antony Black has described what he called the guild ethic as being imbued with notions of charity, which, in turn, formed the source of friendship and equality in brotherhoods. Unfortunately, his efforts to see guilds as heralding a modern type of civil society has led him to underexpose transformations in the late medieval and early modern period, thus also underestimating the impact of religious, political and ideological transformations.8 Closer to my approach has been research on confraternities, which has focused on the notion of egalitarian brotherhood while taking into account both the religious and the political context.9 In this work, brotherhood ideals are considered to have waned. After, roughly, 1500 the confraternities in Italy would have been more princely and aristocratic there, as well as more individualistic.10 Nicholas Terpstra has for instance described the erosion of egalitarian brotherhood in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Bologna in the context of the city’s transition from independent civic commune to a papal regime and the rule of a small oligarchic elite. This was accompanied with professionalization, bureaucratization and the increasing exclusion of women and small artisans from the confraternities’ boards.11 Did late medieval and early modern guilds in the Low Countries experience a similar evolution? Research on confraternities in northwest Europe has described the period of the Reformation as a fault line, stressing the difference between pre-Tridentine and post-Tridentine confraternities. In a nutshell, the former are seen as more exclusive (towards women too) but more egalitarian brotherhoods, membership of which implied a strong

Equality, Solidarity and the Decline of Brotherhood  231 commitment while attributing a certain prestige in return. The latter, in contrast, are often seen as more inclusive but, simultaneously, both more hierarchical and less demanding in the practical engagement of members. On the one hand, they were often founded by ecclesiastical authorities and run by local elites, both religious and lay.12 On the other hand, lay people of all social layers, including women, were stimulated to become members and participate in the devotional program.13 Most historians have referred to this as an example of increasing social disciplining, but it was also part of a wider trend of confessionalization and—hence—a restructuring of community.14 Moreover, as the devotional program was often rather limited, it remains to be seen to what extent a sense of community was implied at all. Taking my cue from these approaches, I will in this chapter examine the notions of equality and brotherhood as expressed and practiced by the guilds in the urban context. First, I will focus on equality. To date this has been examined only on a discursive level. While Black himself studied the political philosophy of the time, political historians have recently demonstrated that in daily political practice as well, a discourse on friendship and community was used.15 Yet it remains unclear whether and how equality, brotherhood and friendship were cultivated and maintained in practice and how this changed in the long run. Nor is it clear to what extent guild brethren actually adhered to the corporative ideals and how their commitment evolved over time. This will be examined in the first sections of this chapter, arguing that both the ideal of equality and the commitment to the corporative bodies waned drastically from at least the sixteenth century on. With a view to a better understanding of the evolutions concerned, I will subsequently zero in on religion. As already suggested, Catholicism was a communal religion to the core. Catholic rituals revolved around community and gathering around the body of Christ. This was expressed in masses and rituals like Corpus Christi processions, in which the political body materialized as something natural and eternal.16 For present-day observers this is perhaps hard to understand, but anthropologist Mary Douglas has already pointed to a connection between the way the human body is experienced and the way a society or community is imagined.17 More important for my purpose here, the civic and the sense of community were profoundly contingent upon the specific nature of the religious, which transformed drastically in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The nature of these transformations has been subject to debate the last few decades. The old narratives of modernity invoking disenchantment and desacralization have been replaced with a call for taking into account waves and cycles of desacralization and resacralization.18 In addition, historians of religion have pointed to huge differences about such fundamental notions as transubstantiation and the nature of signs, not only between early modern Catholic and Reformed theologians, but between the different strands within the Catholic and Reformed camps as well.19 Nevertheless,

232  Equality, Solidarity and the Decline of Brotherhood the analysis of the guilds’ practices in the Southern Netherlands strongly suggests that the Christian ideal of individuals having communion—which was strongly contingent upon the presence of god in relics and the host and of the sacrality of such material places as chapels and churches—waned in the long run, notwithstanding the fact that this region ultimately remained Catholic. This is perhaps best tested with a look at poor relief and mutual assistance, which will be analyzed in the last sections of this chapter. To date, charity and poor relief have often been examined somewhat onesidedly. Social historians have addressed it as a check on social unrest and an instrument in the hands of the elites either to fight food shortages or discipline a recalcitrant labor force—with the causes of long-term transformations being sought in economic transformations and proletarianization, processes of state formation, and a changing attitude towards the poor. Specifically, it has been argued that at least from the fifteenth century on poor relief regulations were actually used as labor regulations and to discipline the labor force.20 Distinguishing deserving from undeserving poor on the basis of the ability to work while issuing bans on begging, poor and proletarianized people were forced to work and wages were kept down.21 As a result, ideas such as those of the Humanist Jean Louis Vivès, whose De Subventione Pauperum (1526) was widely read in the cities examined here, tend to be reduced to a posteriori justifications instrumentally used by economic and political elites. More broadly, a long-term trend of rationalization and secularization has been surmised, under the influence of Max Weber’s ideas in Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft among others.22 Yet this has recently been qualified by historians studying poor relief from a religious perspective, who stress transformations within the religious sphere rather than an evolution towards secularization.23 Recent research on the Dutch Republic during and after the Revolt, has moreover shown that the formation of separate confessional communities created severe tensions between a civic and a confessional model of poor relief—with the former being focused on all the local house poor and the latter on people from the same religious group (while stressing social behavior more than residential status).24 This tension was most prominent in cities dominated by Calvinists like those in the Dutch republic.25 Taking her cue from these studies, Katherine Lynch has added a long-term perspective, arguing that caritas, the virtue based on the love of God, was what formed and demarcated the early communities—with the church as it were serving as an example of community formation.26 Yet Lynch, just like Black, stresses continuity rather than discontinuity, and she largely left out one important building block of the urban community, namely the guilds, which in my case study formed an important ingredient of urban poor relief schemes. My focus on these schemes will show that the very source of solidarity— based in the notion of caritas—was fundamentally at stake. This is already suggested in practices related to equality, to which I will turn first.

Equality, Solidarity and the Decline of Brotherhood  233

Nahrung and the Ideal of Equality With a view to comprehending the rationale behind the guilds’ privileges, historians have often invoked E.P. Thompson’s concept of ‘the moral economy’ or Werner Sombart’s concept of Nahrung.27 Both imply that economic activity should be profitable to the wider community and that every member of the community has a right to a decent living based on the local production of wealth—without privileging either exclusion or competition. This concern for Nahrung would have resulted in checks on the grain trade (export bans) and the regulation of the production and sale of bread, which aimed at the protection of local consumers against both shocks in the price of grain (due to harvest failure and speculation) and fraud and malpractice on the part of grain merchants and bakers.28 In line with these ideas, the monopoly power of large producers or merchants was curtailed throughout the period under study here. Speculation and presale were looked upon with suspicion in virtually every local community and were banned as much as possible.29 The rules often came about on the initiative of the municipality, although guilds may also have been preoccupied with the lot of customers. In the guild of tailors in Antwerp customers who felt duped could file a complaint with the guild board.30 In the fifteenth century, a strife was often apparent between guilds and the municipality about the control of the controlling mechanisms. In line with their political successes, guilds typically succeeded in gaining more grip and power.31 In the Brussels brewery business, for example, two controllers (pegelaars) were appointed by the municipality until the mid-fifteenth century. Henceforth, the guild’s sworn officials nominated two candidates in each of the four districts of the city. From this list of eight the municipality then selected four controllers (there were actually eight controllers, but four were replaced each year). A more straightforward preoccupation with equality was apparent too. Regulations related to the purchase of raw materials could be enacted to that end. Among the Leuven shoemakers, raw materials had to be bought by the master in person (if not by a qualified journeyman), so as to prevent him from sending out several persons. Fishmongers could only bid for a limited number of lots of fish, while basket makers had a ruling which enforced a master to share half of his raw materials at the request of another member of the corporation.32 In Brussels, shoemakers, furriers and fullers had to be prepared to pass part of their raw materials to a fellow member at the price they had purchased it themselves. The shoemakers issued an additional ruling which stipulated that the steward of the guild had to notify all masters whenever a merchant from overseas arrived with tanned hides.33 Other measures geared towards equality among masters included limiting the working day (to prevent masters from attracting a disproportionate share of the available work), installing rotation systems and the drawing of lots for the distribution of places on markets, and bans on pressing customers to buy

Figure 5.1 (a+b) Grain entering the city of Ghent under the supervision of a clerk. Two miniatures from the Biblia figurata symbolizing both the power of the city over its hinterland (the Ghent ‘staple right’ required to unload all grain passing through the rivers Scheldt and Leie and preserve part of it for the Ghent market) and its care for Nahrung (the grain being carefully distributed in equal shares). Saint-Bavo’s Cathedral Ghent. © www.lukasweb.be—Art in Flanders vzw, photo Hugo Maertens.

Equality, Solidarity and the Decline of Brotherhood  235

Figure 5.1 (a+b) Continued

in cabarets or luring them from other masters.34 In order to forestall the cornering of the market on journeymen by masters, a ban on luring each other’s apprentices and journeymen was an option as well.35 Some guilds even bought instruments collectively, as happened with the dyers and stone sculptors in late medieval Brussels.36

236  Equality, Solidarity and the Decline of Brotherhood Even more important were limitations to the production capacity of masters. Virtually all guilds which risked concentration trends installed such limits at a certain point in time. In sixteenth-century Ghent brewers, blacksmiths, millers, tinsmiths, belt makers, white leather curriers, wood breakers and probably every single master in virtually all trades could run only one atelier. Retailers in turn could only have one shop or one stall at the market.37 Master linen weavers in Brussels were allowed to accept orders only if they could be worked in their own atelier and they could not pass orders without the permission of the guild board and the merchant who had delivered the raw material.38 Moreover, the size and scope of the separate workshops were held in check. Among the skippers rotation systems were introduced as was the case in Ghent.39 More often the size of firms was limited by capping the number of instruments and tools or journeymen. Brussels fullers could only use three tubs in 1474; the shearers could work with a maximum of three journeymen.40 In Leuven, a limit of three looms for every master weaver was operative in the guild of linen weavers, while for cabinet makers the limit was five workbenches.41 Some of these measures may have been related to concerns about product quality, such as when the fullers in Brussels also capped the load of cloth every tub could contain.42 Moreover, small workshops may have made sense in other respects as well. Peter Stabel has recently argued that measures to keep workshops small were ‘not so much the result of egalitarian policies of the guilds and a liability for entrepreneurial initiative, but rather a pragmatic economic response to demand and to the necessity of producing a standard quality’ (italics in original).43 Stabel thus occupies a middle ground of sorts between the positions of Martha Howell and Robert Duplessis on the one hand and Catharina Lis and Hugo Soly on the other. Howell and Duplessis on the occasion of their research on Leiden and Lille argued that what they called ‘small commodity production’ was a successful economic system based on small individual workshops, the latter being moreover protected out of a concern for equality from the part of policy makers. Catharina Lis and Hugo Soly however objected, arguing that workshop size was kept small for the benefit of merchants, who dreaded the competition of large masters.44 Scanning the available empirical material, there is something to be said for both positions. Johan Dambruyne in his work on sixteenth-century Ghent has argued that most of these rules were clearly issued with a view to preserving a certain equality among masters, but in this city the field of tension between mercantile and industrial interests may have been less intense relative to, for instance, Antwerp. As Dambruyne admits, rules related to workshop size were rather sparse in Ghent. In the sector of tick and linen weaving a maximum of four looms per master was installed, but this was exceptional.45 In Antwerp, in contrast, where mercantile interests were reputedly powerful, such rules were ubiquitous, and they were moreover hotly debated during the sixteenth century—a period of economic and demographic expansion.

Equality, Solidarity and the Decline of Brotherhood  237 This has been seen as proof that the magistracy tergiversated between industrial and mercantile interests and to a certain degree checked the power of large industrial masters for the benefit of merchants.46 However, this reading is based on the premise that guilds themselves did not hold concentration trends in check—while, as it appears, the relative absence of regulation did not prevent small firms from dominating in Ghent before 1540.47 Power issues notwithstanding, the long-term trends were in any case similar in every city examined. Concentration occurred in an ever larger range of industries, especially in the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. It occurred among the Ghent yarn twisters, who on average worked with nine journeymen (as compared to one among the tick and linen weavers) in the second half of the sixteenth century. The two largest entrepreneurs in this sector ran five twining mils and about thirty workers.48 This is rather similar to the cloth dressers in Antwerp, where the largest company employed twenty-eight workers, while three others had twenty-plus employees in 1540.49 Nor is this limited to textiles or export industries. In the construction sector as well, concentration trends were huge. For eighteenth-century Ghent, Johan Dambruyne has calculated that nine masons employed 130 journeymen (both free and unfree) and twenty-one apprentices, while another 160 loose workers for aiding in bricklaying were listed.50 In Antwerp and elsewhere workshop size regulation was gradually relaxed in a broad range of industries during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries too. The cabinet makers increased the maximum from two journeymen per master at the end of the fifteenth century to six per master (in addition to the masters’ children) at the turn of the seventeenth.51 While one or two journeymen per master or simply ‘one workbench or stall’ per master was a typical rule in the fifteenth century, in Brussels a shoemaker could employ a maximum of nine workers in 1671.52 Among the Brussels tailors, the maximum was ten journeymen in 1680.53 All this does not refute the view of Lis and Soly in itself, but it suggests that equality among masters was more evident before say the sixteenth century. Limitations to workshop size were mostly introduced as a reaction to increasing polarization. In fifteenth-century Brussels, for instance, the number of journeymen per master was a hotly debated issue in the shoemaking industry. As a result of sole-making developing into a large-scale specialized and serial industry, the maximum number of workers per atelier was limited to five in 1467 (one master, one couturier, one sole maker, again assisted by one couterier, and one apprentice). Shoemakers who fabricatedc their soles themselves, could employ one sole-maker and one couterier to assist him.54 Similar rulings were issued in the garment industry in Antwerp in the early seventeenth century, where the challenge was to deal with hosiery makers who catered for the military and employed perhaps dozens of workers—including women, children and smaller masters.55 In all such cases, limitations to workshop size were not remnants of the distant past, but were issued specifically to counter concentration trends.56 This suggests

238  Equality, Solidarity and the Decline of Brotherhood that a certain equality among masters, perhaps related to a clear distinction between masters and merchants, existed before. The guilds themselves at least argued that the maximum number of journeymen was needed ‘to ensure some degree of equality among masters’.57 Yet even so, the equality referred to should not be understood in its nineteenth- or twentieth-century meaning. It was imbued instead with strong ideas about hierarchy, privilege and the city as an organic whole. The Antwerp hosiery makers referred to above, worried more about the standing of small masters working for larger ones than they did about the position of women and children or perhaps even workshop size. They specifically denounced the fact that masters worked for such a small wage that it looked like they worked as journeymen (in knaepschappe).58 As a consequence, the deregulation of work shop size cannot be explained exclusively with reference to economic scale and concentration trends. As argued in the previous chapter, the ideal was one of independent masters who featured as head of a household containing wife, children, servant and apprentices. This ideal was coached in a corporative culture, where the master’s household was a small cell in a large vertical chain of patronage relationships. An adequate understanding of the deregulating trend in the early modern period thus implies taking into account the political and cultural fabric as a whole.

The Fiscalization of Solidarity and the Monetarization of Membership The regulation of workshop size was related to the development of other mechanisms to preserve at least a minimum of equality, or at least solidarity. While inequality was gradually permitted and justified, large masters were expected to carry a larger share of the burden of the guilds’ need for income—to be used, among other things, for charity. This is revealed by an in-depth analysis of how the guilds’ taxes evolved over time. While guildbased masters traditionally paid a yearly tax—called jaergeld (year money) or kaarsgeld (candle money)—additional guild-based taxes were often in proportion to either the output or the number of workers a master employed from the sixteenth century onwards.59 Although research is in its infancy here, a first survey of the available data points to a certain ‘fiscalization of solidarity’—not one introduced from above as is traditionally understood, but rather devised from below.60 One of the earliest additional taxes was that to be paid upon hiring additional workers. A tax based on the number of workers was already in place in fifteenth-century Brussels.61 In the Ghent guild of goldsmiths it was decided that every master had to contribute 20 Flemish groats plus 8 Flemish groats per worker for a special tax in 1543–1545.62 The Brussels’ tailors’ guild ruled in 1728 that every master was to pay half a stiver to the guild weekly, plus half a stiver for every journeyman in his service.63 An important side effect of this type of tax was that it justified the presence of

Equality, Solidarity and the Decline of Brotherhood  239 unfree journeymen.64 In the Ghent St Lukes’ guild masters paid 12 Flemish groats yearly for every unfree journeyman in service in 1508. In the guild of the Ghent tailoring industry it was ruled in 1597 that every hosiery maker could employ as many workers as he thought convenient (including female workers) provided that a yearly tax of 48 Flemish groats (plus 2 Flemish groats to the steward) was paid per worker.65 As early as 1509, this was even calculated on a daily basis in the masons’ guild, which then ruled that 1 Flemish groat was to be paid for every workday of an unfree laborer.66 Other taxes as well were relative to the size of the firm and the financial capacity of masters. One type was calculated on the basis of the equipment used. On the occasion of an exceptional tax in 1560, the Ghent yarn twisters paid 48 Flemish groats per twining mill. Among the Ghent blacksmiths, a master working with one furnace paid 8 Flemish groats yearly, a master with two furnaces (which was not allowed before) paid 12.67 Yet another type of tax was levied on output; it proliferated from the seventeenth century on in particular—although the so-called cleargelden to be paid by the Ghent skippers were already based on the frequency with which a boat navigated up or down the Leie or Scheldt in the sixteenth century.68 Among the Antwerp tailors, a contractor of work for military purposes was to pay half a stiver per piece of work around 1600, allegedly as a contribution to the control of quality. Among the hosiery makers a similar system was introduced in 1606.69 The Antwerp tanners in 1746 paid one stiver per tanned hide.70 Last but not least, the guilds’ taxes were sometimes simply calculated on the basis of the financial capacity of the masters. To that end the masters in Ghent were divided into three or four categories (taxed one, two and three guilders or three, six, nine) on the occasion of the so-called ommestellingen in some Ghent guilds—as was for instance the case with the old cloth sellers in 1705 and 1773.71 Even as early as the early sixteenth century and in a relatively egalitarian group as the shoemakers (in Ghent) the masters were ranked ‘according to the quality and size of his trade’ in order to calculate the tax due from every master.72 In short, equality among masters not only declined over time, but the very conceptualization of equality and solidarity—best called friendship and brotherhood in order to avoid anachronism—may have transformed over time. This is vindicated when looking at yet another transformation, namely the decline of the guilds’ gift culture, which was subject to a certain monetization. In the early ordinances, entrance fees paid to the guild often included (or were even limited to) payments in kind. The first ordinances in Antwerp and Brussels typically list two types of payments simultaneously: a monetary fee next to wine.73 This is reminiscent of a gift culture and creating reciprocal bonds in a hierarchical context. As is well known from the anthropological literature, gift-relations differ from monetized and commodified social relations in that they create and maintain a social bond, while in market exchange the instantaneous bond between two parties dissolves after each transaction. Whereas paying a price or a fee winds up any

240  Equality, Solidarity and the Decline of Brotherhood obligation between the parties, a gift produces an obligation to give something in return—thus creating an enduring social relationship.74 Looking at payments in kind from this perspective, a new layer is added to our understanding of the brotherhood ideals and the hierarchical context in which they materialized. In sixteenth-century Ghent, entering a guild still implied giving silver drinking cups in a great many of the guilds. While these cups were to be engraved with the weapon or emblem of the guild (next to having a gilded board), the guilds’ rationale of requiring these as a payment, might have been very calculative. After all, silver was an investment—and a good one at that, in eras of inflation like the sixteenth century.75 Moreover, some of the guilds demanded two (e.g., the shoemakers and the cabinet makers), three (e.g., the bakers) or even four drinking cups (the cloth dressers). This suggests that the cups were indeed seen as a monetary payment, the more so since the weight and hence also the value was fixed.76 Yet, it is perhaps not a coincidence that these drinking cups referenced confraternal gatherings and togetherness too. Why not be paid in silver plain and simple? In 1583 the Antwerp gold- and silversmiths did return to payments in silver so as to counter inflation, which depleted their income.77 Meals and drinks were in any case seen by the guild deans as a means to promote ‘good mutual acquaintance and friendship’.78 Prospective masters in virtually all guilds were required to offer drinks and meals to either the whole guild or the guild board. Meals created conviviality on a broad range of occasions, including processions, feasts for the patron saint, the election of the board, and exceptional political circumstances.79 As has been shown earlier, the cost of these meals could be exceedingly high—as a result of which they were often seen as instruments used in an exclusive policy.80 A reconstruction of Frederik Verleysen for the Antwerp Guild of the Four Crowned (gathering some groups in the construction sector) reveals that in the mid-eighteenth century, it could total 250 guilders, which is more than a year’s wage for a skilled artisan.81 But this is not necessarily at odds with creating a communal bond. Having a meal offered by a new master may also have served to create a bond in a gift-like way.82 My argument here is not that payments in kind and treats can be shoehorned as a pure form of gift exchange, but rather that up to the fifteenth century at least gift-like mechanisms were operative in the context of a more general sense of Christian communion and offering related to the body of Christ. Far more ubiquitous than offering silver drinking cups, at least in the early period, were payments in wine or wax (or fees calculated in units of wine or wax), which both referred to the liturgical context of gatherings and hence to the religious dimension in which the communal ideals were coached.83 In this vein, the meal was akin to the mass. Not only was a meal served on the occasion of the feast for the patron saint, but it also shared the meaning of bonding by breaking bread and sharing wine. In the early history of the guilds, the meals would even have taken place in the church— traces of which have been found as late as the sixteenth century. Conversely,

Equality, Solidarity and the Decline of Brotherhood  241 guild halls were sometimes furnished as a quasi-sacral room with candles, tapestries and paintings of the patron saint or other religious scenes.84 Looking at it historically, the references to such practices in the written sources of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries could be seen as traces of the disappearance of such communal and Christian practices. This is certainly the case with the meals. Most references to the meals in guild-related sources are either about abolishing the meal because of the high cost or converting a meal actually offered into a monetary payment to help alleviate the guild’s debt burden. Sometimes, this happened under pressure from the municipality.85 In Brussels the urban magistracy limited consumptions on the occasion of processions and parades in the second half of the fifteenth century.86 In Ghent the municipality issued a ban on extra financial burdens related to treats imposed by the guilds on members in 1605.87 The Antwerp magistracy limited the yearly consumptions for the tailors’ guild to sixty to seventy guilders in 1755. The guild accounts moreover suggest that this was effective, given that this guild only drank and ate to the tune of twenty-six to twenty-eight guilders in the late 1760s, while this had easily been ten times as much before.88 Nor was this only imposed from above. The importance of collective meals as such appears to have waned. Following trends of oligarchization, gatherings were often limited to the guild board from at least the seventeenth century on. In the tailors’ guilds examined by Harald Deceulaer this was already the case in the sixteenth century. While the Ghent tailors’ guild itself imposed a limit of 120 guilders yearly in 1684, their collective meals with the masters were cancelled in 1557.89 Moreover, next to substituting meals with a monetary payment, it was sometimes transformed discursively into ‘a congratulation’ (proficiat wensen) which evokes a more meritocratic approach to becoming master.90 Of course, even before, these meals were not examples of egalitarian brotherhood as we would imagine today. Typically, the attendees were assigned a place according to rank and hierarchy.91 This was for instance the case with meals of the archery and crossbow guilds in Bruges, where the tables were ranked in three or four social categories.92 In a ruling of 1689 on the general guild meetings of the Ghent carpenters, a distinction was not only made between general meetings and meetings for the board, but strict rules were also enacted regarding obedience and discipline of the masters during the meetings, including being quiet, decent and respectful. As soon as the deans knocked the table, all members had to remain silent.93 In the English context, Gervase Rosser thus sees an ‘aristocratic model’, as the seniors took their place at ‘the dais end’ and special rules applied for paying respect to ‘the elders’: their word was law and the feast was over as soon as they left the room.94 Journeymen were not present at all.95 Even so, what communal spirit there was until the fifteenth century was certainly lost in the seventeenth. The most thorough and extensive analysis of the collective practices of guilds after 1585 is Frederik Verleysen’s doctoral dissertation on the sociability of guilds in Antwerp, Brussels and Ghent. In

242  Equality, Solidarity and the Decline of Brotherhood it, the meals are described as moments of conspicuous consumption and vehicles of political lobbying. Instead of rank-and-file masters, high-ranking public officials were often invited—including the urban magistracy and the representatives of the feudal lord.96

The Decline of Civic Duty To be sure, this is not a matter of exclusion plain and simple. It should rather be seen, in my view, as a decline in the commitment to the corporative group and order from the part of both the elite and the rank-and-file. The literature on the urban revolts and the advent of the guilds tends to come down on the side of a close involvement in the collective in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. While oaths are seen as establishing strict loyalty to the group’s common good, the guilds literally come into the spotlight as military organizations. In chronicles they are depicted as armed men marching behind banners in uniforms. Once acknowledged politically, guilds moreover formed the basis of the military organization of the city. One of the conditions of acknowledging the Brussels’ guilds in 1365 was to strictly supervise the military equipment and organization of their members.97 In Leuven, twentyfive guilds appear as the basis of the military organization of the town as early as 1267, each guild having two ‘heads’ and one banner. In the charter of the Leuven weavers of 1360, the guild was itself divided into districts called ‘tents’, each with two ‘headman’ and one ‘dager’ who was responsible for the wake.98 From 1421, the Brussels guilds also guarded the city gates (alongside guards from the patrician families), while the urban guard was subdivided into geographical units supervised by the guilds’ sworn (although they could themselves be supervised by a captain assigned by the municipality in times of crisis).99 Their military role was intimately connected to their sense of commune, among other things via various ‘sign systems’, including battle songs and cries, attire, and coats of arms.100 In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, entering a guild was typically conditional upon acquiring the right weapons, harness or livery.101 In sixteenth-century Ghent it could be mandatory for new members to participate—armed and harnessed—in the so-called Auweet, a yearly quasi-military parade in which guilds displayed their military power and commitment.102 However, this again changed rather dramatically in the long term. From the fourteenth century on serments or gildes specialized in the art of war and surveillance took shape.103 Or else, militias were organized on a geographical basis, as was the case in Liège from the sixteenth century on.104 Furthermore, during the fifteenth century the guilds gradually ceased to battle in their entirety; they would send out about a dozen men instead.105 In Bruges, the urban militias were guild-based until the fifteenth century, but in 1472 a Civil Militia was installed, which was composed of all burghers between eighteen and sixty years old and was governed by a commission composed of the bailiff, the burgomaster, one

Equality, Solidarity and the Decline of Brotherhood  243 alderman, one councilor and one pensionary.106 In fifteenth-century Brussels, the obligation for guilds to serve the duke was abolished, while the local service was reorganized. Henceforth the guilds had to provide only tents, material equipment or else financial means.107 In the end, the civic militias were themselves replaced by mercenary armies in the service of the prince or state, which is often seen as a form of decay, given that the former fought for republican ideals while the latter fought for money. The military role of the guilds was still crucial during the revolt and in the Calvinistic Republics, but this was in fact their swansong.108 Coincidentally or not, the commitment of guild members to the collective waned significantly within practically the same time frame. To start, the uniforms disappear from the guilds’ ordinances, and perhaps also from sight. In the second half of the fifteenth century wearing a uniform on the occasion of processions and feasts, was still urgently required—although the military connotation may have been on the retreat by that time.109 This is illustrated by a legal complaint filed against a dean of the Bruges’ tinsmiths in 1475. On the occasion of the Holy Blood procession, Reynoud Willems had shown up in the wrong outfit. The deans of the guilds with which the tinsmiths were gathered urged him to conform, but on the next occasion (the Corpus Christi procession) the dean persevered, by having his torchbearer clad wrongly. Apparently, this was still a grave transgression, given that the miscreant was eventually banished from the county of Flanders for fifty years.110 In the seventeenth century, however, it was no longer necessary for members of occupational guilds to possess or purchase a livery, let alone a harness or weapons. Possibly the board was still morally obligated to have a tabard of the same colour for processions and other parades, as was stipulated in Brussels in the second half of the fifteenth century, but even here references become scarce after the fifteenth century.111 Moreover, virtually every guild experienced huge problems with the commitment of its members. Whether it be processions, masses, feasts and meals, commemorations, and burials of co-members, from at least the fifteenth century on the guild boards complained almost in chorus about members being absent. To a certain degree absenteeism and lack of commitment may have been a problem from the start. Already in the first written ordinances, sanctions for absentees were mentioned as well as meals.112 Likewise, in the earliest ordinances penalties were already prescribed for members who refused to assume office when elected, as was for example the case in the earliest charters of the cloth guild in Valenciennes.113 In Leuven, fines for being absent from masses for the patron saint were foreseen as early as the fifteenth century, such as with the masons and the blacksmiths.114 The Brussels carpenters’ guild issued a rule to enforce presence at the burial of co-members in 1411. Barely one or two generations after the guilds’ victory in 1421, absenteeism was so widespread that guild boards often gathered alone.115 Nevertheless, according to Guillaume Des Marez, who examined the late medieval Brussels guilds in detail, the situation really grew dramatic

244  Equality, Solidarity and the Decline of Brotherhood in the sixteenth century. In 1539, the coppersmiths filed a request to the magistracy to obtain permission to raise the fine, claiming that the guild’s officials—much to the disgrace of the guild—marched alone behind the torches during processions and parades.116 Moreover, fines continued to rise in the sixteenth and seventeenth century. In 1618 the bakers in Leuven raised the fines after a parade at which barely one third of the members had shown up.117 To no avail, however. In the seventeenth century, it appears to have been standard that the guild board marched alone in processions in Antwerp.118 To date, this declining commitment to the group has been attributed to either social polarization or scale—apparently, by the guild boards themselves as well. Mid-seventeenth century the Antwerp coopers proposed to divide the city into quarters so as to be able to induce at least the most proximate masters to attend the funerals of co-members.119 In this vein, the type of guild may have been an important factor indeed. According to Gervase Rosser the rate of absenteeism must have been lower in guilds who recruited locally.120 And Verleysen argued that conviviality persisted in the Ghent guild of butchers, the membership of which was limited to a handful of families.121 Conversely, the mercers in Lier, a relatively large guild with 300 plus members, hardly had any collective activities in the second half of the eighteenth century.122 However, while social polarization may itself have been an effect of a changing sense of community, a declining commitment to the corporation was part of other transformations too. Note that this co-occurred with the monetization of entrance fees, the substitution of monetary fees for meals and drinks, and the introduction of uniform apprenticeship terms and standardized master pieces, which are themselves symptoms of a more businesslike and bureaucratized approach. Historians studying confraternities and guilds have connected this to the literature on the so-called ‘civilization offensive’, and the disciplining efforts of post-Tridentine elites.123 To a certain degree, this approach may make sense for guilds as well. Some guilds eventually compelled their members to attend mass every Sunday, as was the case with the bakers in Leuven and their weekly mass at the altar of St. Arnold. Moral rules related to the private sphere remained in force in Leuven as well, including the rule that adultery could exclude one from membership or access to a guild’s meetings.124 But, the decline of corporative values should be taken into account as well. Recent research by Hadewijch Masure on religious brotherhoods in Antwerp has revealed that they experienced similar transformations. In the long sixteenth century the confraternal values as expressed in such common activities as masses declined—notwithstanding increasing expenditure on meals and the like. Some brotherhoods became more oriented to the public and perhaps even more inclusive, but all brotherhoods grew more hierarchical— with collective activities often being reserved for the board.125 This may moreover have been related to a shift away from devotional activities like masses for the departed towards such public and conspicuous expenditures as those related to banquets and processions.126

Equality, Solidarity and the Decline of Brotherhood  245 What is perhaps most striking is the degree to which members refused to assume office. In the fifteenth century already guild members assigned to carry torches, which in Brussels was the duty of the youngest (most recent) members, could sometimes have themselves replaced, on condition of paying a recompense.127 Moreover, from the sixteenth century on, guild members on an impressive scale tried to avoid serving as a dean, which was for example the case with the Antwerp hosiery makers.128 Among the Antwerp mercers, some members were prepared to pay no less than 100 guilders to avoid office.129 In part, this lack of enthusiasm may be due to the costs involved in taking office. On the one hand, assuming office took time, so there was certainly an opportunity cost. In some guilds, offices may have provided access to political power, or else to public assignments, for example in the construction sector.130 But in a lot of cases, assuming office must have been a bad idea from an investment perspective—the more so since the deans were responsible for the deficit at the end of the financial year. In the Ghent guilds it was customary in the sixteenth century for the outgoing deans to credit the guild at the end of their service.131 In 1564, the Antwerp tailors’ guild owed the old deans the total sum of 800 guilders (for the past ten years alone).132 In this context, a great many of the smaller masters must have refrained from assuming office, while others may have lacked the necessary reading and writings skills. However, rich textile entrepreneurs were also accused of dodging office. Among others, this was the case with the Antwerp silk weavers’ in the mid-seventeenth century.133 It would seem that a sense of citizenship and the idea of being a member of a corporative body politic had declined. As such, it is perhaps significant that citizens avoided wider councils too, as in Valenciennes in the early seventeenth century; or evaded assuming the office of quarter master, as in Antwerp in the second half of the seventeenth century.134 The very fact of framing this as a balance between cost and benefits is already at odds with assuming office in a republican style. Hence the need to look at it from the perspective of political ethics and thinking, and from its religious dimension. In a recent synthesis on public services in the Low Countries Manon Van Der Heijden has examined the extent to which professionalization and bureaucratization characterized public office in early modern cities. Starting from the observation that civic duty and private interest were difficult to disentangle in the late medieval context, she argues that professionalization occurred in some respects. Formal rules, fixed wages, and transparent procedures for recruitment based on capabilities and expertise were on the rise—answering both increasing scale and a call to limit corruption and bribery. Simultaneously, however, venality of office and the importance of patrimony and personal ties did not decline—rather the reverse. Oligarchic rule actually triumphed in the eighteenth century.135 In my view, these trends may both be symptomatic for the loss of a communal or civic sense of duty that previously prevailed. While the famous Dutch lawyer Hugo Grotius still argued in the first half of the seventeenth century that private property

246  Equality, Solidarity and the Decline of Brotherhood cannot be separated from the debts of the government because town dwellers are part of the urban community—a reasoning which in all likelihood also lurked behind the practice of having guild officials settle the yearly accounts personally—such a sense of community must have waned by the sixteenth century, if not earlier.136

The Transformation of Religion and the Civic Community In order to understand these transformations adequately, it has to be kept in mind that guild-membership enabled transcendence of the individual as well as the temporary. With their eye on a decent burial, most guild members paid a certain ‘death debt’ (doodschuld) during their membership, which could vary according to the type of mass envisaged (more or less prestigious, with or without the guild pall, etc.).137 On the surface, this could be seen as an insurance mechanism of sorts, but during the burial of a member, brethren were usually involved in ways other than simply being present. While the guild board would show up in mourning cloaks and the youngest members could for example carry torches, a select group of co-members often carried the coffin. The latter was often draped with the guilds’ pale, plus, perhaps, some silver insignia referencing the guild.138 Moreover, according to Otto Gerhard Oexle burials served not only a social goal—in present-day terminology: creating social capital—but also helped to imagine and produce an organization that reached beyond the limits of mortal life.139 On regular Sundays and Holy days—including the name day of the patron saint—masses were spoken by the priest who served as a chaplain to the guild. Virtually all medieval brotherhoods and guilds generated suffrages so as to shorten the time of the soul in purgatory.140 This included a yearly requiem mass for the souls of the deceased brethren (and their families), which mostly took place the day after the feast of the patron saint.141 The importance of the devotional and spiritual is also illustrated by the sheer omnipresence of patron saints and altars.142 Every guild from its very foundation up until its abolishment, worshipped a patron saint, who was renowned for having mediated between the worldly and the eternal and who was moreover seen as the ‘member of Christ’.143 Moreover, most guilds from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century either possessed an altar or shared one with another guild.144 In Ghent in 1540 no less than 86% of the guilds had an altar or a chapel in one of the local churches. In addition, nine Ghent corporations had their own chapel attached to a guild house or their own almshouse.145 Such material artifacts also mediated between the here and the hereafter. As is well known, medieval Christianity was not about an abstract idealized relationship with God, but rather a sacramental religion, in which the sacred was accessible through matter. Hence also the focus on the body of Christ, relics, and the immanence of God. The religious was literally located in places and objects.146

Equality, Solidarity and the Decline of Brotherhood  247

Figure 5.2  Portrait of the deans of the Confraternity of the Holy Sacrament, kneeled before the Holy Sacrament. Oil painting on canvas, 1673, maker unknown. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Gift of John G. Johnson for the W. P. Wilstach Collection, W1904–1901–1952.

Thus, religious transformations must have impacted seriously on the collective spirit in corporations—the more so since the religious intersected with the political. The expansion of the guilds’ altars and chapels was part of a wider trend of urban investments in devotion and liturgical celebration, in the fourteenth and the fifteenth century in particular.147 While the number of general processions instituted by the municipality was on the rise, members of the urban political elite and office holders founded devotions in which the municipality was implicated, for example when the magistracy was to assign poor people to attend and to pray for the benefactor’s soul. In 1372, a daily mass was funded at an altar in the townhouse of Bruges. The Corpus Christi procession, which initially was not a civic event, was partly appropriated there by the city around 1475.148 The Bruges magistracy invested most heavily in the Holy Blood procession (paying for liveries,

248  Equality, Solidarity and the Decline of Brotherhood trumpeters, plays, etc.), increasingly so from the mid-fourteenth century. This procession evoked the city as a body politic by marching along the newly erected fortification walls (finished in 1297) and by route-wise connecting these walls with the most important spaces within the town.149 The guilds participated to an increasing degree. Some guilds had alters in churches before 1300, as was the case with the Bruges carpenters. Yet they also impacted upon the sacrality of the urban landscape by building almshouses and chapels. In Bruges the blacksmiths had their own alms house (of St Eligius) in 1335, the skippers in 1415. The most prestigious guilds had their own chapel as far back as the early fourteenth century, but new ones were added in the course of the century. If not, existing chapels were expanded. The blacksmiths for instance enlarged their free-standing chapel of St Eligius (in the Smedenstraat, close to a city gate) in 1352.150 The heydays are again to be situated in the fifteenth century. The Antwerp guilds were most active in building altars in the second half of the fifteenth and the first half of the sixteenth centuries.151 In Ghent, guild altars and chapels were erected from the fifteenth century on in particular.152 In the wake of the larger guilds, smaller guilds too erected altars and chapels, even followed in their turn by brotherhoods of journeymen.153 With the help of guilds and brotherhoods, the city as a spatial and material entity gradually transformed into a sacred space.154 According to Paul Trio, a Belgian historian of religious brotherhoods, even purely religious confraternities often concentrated on the civic community, beyond their own group or parish.155 As it appears, then, the guilds were integrated in the urban body politic simultaneously with the enthusiasm for the Eucharist cult and the belief in the presence of the body of Christ in Corpus Christi processions and other such ceremonies.156 However, soon criticisms were uttered ever more compellingly. While the guilds faced ever more successful attacks on their political power, the feasts and worshipping practices of guilds and brotherhoods came under attack from the Reformation as well. All over northwestern Europe the Reformation was a violent rupture, not least for guilds and brotherhoods, who saw their altar tables removed or abolished, the church interiors whitewashed, the church plate melted, etcetera.157 The guild meals and feasts were increasingly looked upon with suspicion as well; they were perceived as occasions of conspicuous consumption and greed. As is well known, the guilds in the northern Netherlands after the Revolt hardly resemble those in the older heartland of the Low Countries. While they mostly lacked houses and chapels, the processions, feasts for patron saints and the like had declined drastically.158 In the Southern Netherlands, in contrast, restoration set in after 1585. Soon after the final victory of the Catholic Spanish Habsburgs, altars were rebuilt and redecorated, often at the instigation of the lay authorities. In Antwerp, the burgomasters in the Monday Council already ordered the guilds to do so only a few weeks after the Fall of Antwerp and the Reconciliation in 1585. Before the turn of the century no less than twenty guilds

Equality, Solidarity and the Decline of Brotherhood  249 had started doing so in the cathedral, their significant debts notwithstanding.159 At least some of the guilds were themselves eager to do so—as can be illustrated by the powerful guild of the Antwerp mercers. The latter even sold a house which had been in their possession for more than a century and a half to finance the erection—as one of the first guilds ever—of a marble altar in the Our-Lady-Cathedral (at a total cost of about 3500 guilders).160 Historians of the early modern period have often addressed this from the perspective of wielding prestige. Next to investment ostentation may have been a driving force for the guilds, as argued by Johan Dambruyne in particular. Thus, the significance of altars, patron saints and perhaps other types of material culture may have changed nonetheless. It has been argued in the case of such Italian cities as Florence and Bologna that the introduction of a new ethic of obedience co-emerged with the substitution of rituals that glorified honor and rank for rituals that emphasized community and equality.161 Something similar may apply to the Southern Netherlands. While the churches of Antwerp and Ghent, no doubt among others, experienced a decline in devotional gifts in the first decades of the sixteenth century,162 research in the Southern Netherlands has often conflated a decline in conviviality with a decline in investment in religious activities. Expenses for religious and collective activities declined from 46.6% to 23.8% between 1620 and 1774 for the Ghent butchers; and for the Ghent skippers from 20.4% to 6.9% between 1720 and 1774.163 Yet more important may have been transformations in the character of the investments and the goals behind them. The Reformation, the Renaissance and Humanistic ideas did not bring about a decline of ritual and ceremony, perhaps on the contrary,164 but there are reasons to believe that the Corpus Christi metaphor waned along with the communal character of the procession.165 In the annual parades the chambers of rhetoric, which included a broad range of artists and highly skilled artisans, often assumed responsibility for devising and developing the so-called puncten or tableaux. In them, the religious character (with scenes about the Annunciation, the Seven Sorrows of Mary and the Last Judgment—next to folklore elements such as, in Antwerp, the Giant) was ousted in favor of icons and themes of Classic Mythology and a strong tendency to allegorize old as well as new themes.166 Simultaneously, the religious symbols used by the guilds transformed as well.167 During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries universal Christian symbols came to the fore. While the guilds used to stage scenes and personae from the Old Testament and had above all worshipped their patron saint, universal Catholic symbols such as the Passion of Christ, the Holy Sacrament and Our Lady prevailed in the first half of the seventeenth century.168 In Antwerp, the devotion of Our Lady in particular escaped the decline, due among other things to the influence of the Jesuit Order.169 In the eighteenth century, the Antwerp streets would have contained no less than 500 images or sculptures of the Virgin Mary.170 In Brussels and Ghent as well an intensified devotion of

250  Equality, Solidarity and the Decline of Brotherhood Mary left traces, as is exemplified by the images of Mary at the facades of the meat house—which were financed by the butchers’ guild.171 What we observe here may have been related to a waning of corporatism as a political imaginary. In public ceremonies, Antwerp was notoriously presented as a ‘community of commerce’, rather than of production. During the famous landjuweel (theatre festival) of 1561, the organizing chamber of rhetoric (the Violieren) praised Antwerp’s mercantile success and the merchants’ good qualities.172 Related to that, the importance of hands-on manufacturing may have waned. While the rhetoricians helped create a vernacular intellectual culture and pleaded for access to knowledge and education for middling groups, they mostly had the liberal arts in mind, as is again apparent from the 1561 festival.173 As such it was connected to a process in which visual artists distanced themselves from the ‘mere handiwork’ of the large majority of the artisans. While sculptors had shared the same guild as the masons, plasterers and roofers (the ‘Four Crowned’) they distanced themselves from the ‘mechanical arts’ of the latter in the course of the sixteenth century. Arguing that their conste (art) involved theoretical knowledge and acquaintance with the classical examples, they eventually separated from the masons around 1600.174 About half a century later, the Antwerp art academy was founded, which not only gathered the ‘fine arts’, but embodied specific ideas about the importance of ingenium as something more than simply crafting.175 This illustrates once more the extent to which religion intersected with communal and corporative ideals. While religious transformations matter a great deal, they cannot be examined in isolation. Nor can the long-term transformations be aligned to a Weberian perspective of secularization. More relevant an approach seems to be one in which the changing connection between religion, politics and ceremony is taken into account. Edward Muir has notoriously described a long-term shift in which civic and religious rituals during the early modern period transformed from events in which God was actually considered present during the ritual towards rituals rather presenting and communicating something.176 This can be connected, in my view, to both the changing nature of the body politic and the role of crafts and manufacturing guilds in it. On the one hand, the communal and corporative dimension of religion may have dissolved, to be replaced with a more individual relationship with God and the eternal, or with the Christian community in a more abstract sense.177 By the late Middle Ages, devotion became more privatized and geared towards a return—in the form of prayers for their soul—for the founders of masses and almshouses themselves.178 What disappeared, then, may have been precisely the communal and at the same time civic dimension of religion as practiced by early guilds and brotherhoods. In its place would come post-Tridentine mass organizations geared towards devotion but lacking the same civic and corporative spirit. Or else, brotherhoods emerged which retreated from the body politic and formed rather exclusive clubs of wealthy citizens preoccupied with their personal salvation.179

Equality, Solidarity and the Decline of Brotherhood  251 On the other hand, manufacturing guilds may have lost credibility owing to the dissolution of the religious ground of intrinsic value. As I argued in chapters 3 and 4, the importance of intrinsic value—which was the key justification of the manufacturing guilds’ political privileges—was contingent upon the immanence of God. The raw material gave access to God’s wisdom and creative power in such a way that the talent, dexterity and ingenium of the artisan did not determine the value of the product eventually produced. What mattered was the bond of the artisan with the broader body politic of the guild and the city as forged by the immanence of God. This is exactly what disappeared in the long run. As explained by Jacques Gélis, the individual body separated from the larger collective body from the sixteenth century on, owing to the new world view forged by such scientists as Andreas Vesalius, who literally helped to demystify the body in his anatomical sessions. Henceforth, the human body was to come to terms with itself, which resulted, among other things, in a more obsessive preoccupation with health and sickness.180 This is corroborated by the transformations in the visual culture of the guilds themselves, which became preoccupied with the martyrdom of their patron saint at the end of the sixteenth and the early seventeenth century. The fascination with the martyrdom of saints had already increased in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, under the influence of a new devotional culture stressing the imitation of Christ by the individual believer.181 Yet during the Counter-Reformation the fascination with martyrdom and suffering bodies intensified.182 A triptych of Ambrosius Francken delivered to the guild of the shoemakers in 1589 depicts their patron saints H. Crispinus and H. Crispianus as they are skinned, drowned, cooked and beheaded.183 Some guilds even changed patrons in this context. In the archives of the Antwerp tailors, one H. Bonifacius emerges, while the tailors had worshipped H. Cornelius before. In contrast to the latter, the new patron saint had suffered martyrdom.184 In addition, patron saints were often portrayed as performing ‘good works’ as was the case with a triptych of Ambrosius Francken for the barber-surgeons’ guild, featuring ‘The charity of H. Cosmas and H. Damianus’ (1593).185 The patron saints had transformed from mediators into role models. Eventually, the guilds had recourse to a more abstract and universal Christian community under the care of one apostolic church. This is exemplified by the cult of Christ, which often replaced the patron saint on the triptychs above the guilds’ altars from the late sixteenth century on. In Antwerp after 1585 an image of Christ adorned the altar pieces of at least the tailors, the mercers, the linen weavers, the bakers, the fishmongers, the wine sellers and the schoolmasters.186 In part this was a consequence of the Council of Trent, where excesses of medieval devotion were denounced, and in the wake of which it was sometimes even mandatory to select an image of Christ or another scene from the New Testament for an altar triptych.187 In Ghent after Iconoclasm in 1566, the guilds still favored their patron saints when redecorating their altars, next to scenes related to their profession.188 Yet,

252  Equality, Solidarity and the Decline of Brotherhood the civic community may have lost its sacred character nonetheless, as the religious sphere disengaged from the worldly and political spheres. In Antwerp, a distinction would have materialized between, on the one hand, allegorical references to trade, commerce and the Scheldt and, on the other, such typical religious scenes as the Annunciation and the Last Judgment.189 This was part of a broader rethinking of civic ceremonies and the role of middling groups in them during and after the Reformation and the Revolt. The image of the city—which around the mid-sixteenth century attracted rhetoricians from all over the Low Countries and was at the vanguard of contemporary civic culture—was secularized, not only due to censorship on the part of the Habsburg prince, but also because of the growing religious diversity among the rhetoricians themselves and, related to that, a growing privatization and individualization of religion. This did not lead to a withdrawal of the rhetoricians from the public sphere, but to an investment in an idealized image of the city as a unified moral community in which diversity and dissent was transcended. In the words of Anne-Laure Van Bruaene, the rhetoricians staged a ‘counterfeit community’.190 In the eighteenth century, the need for Christian symbols and themes was no longer urgent at all—to say the least. While the guilds’ altars and chapels were neglected, their wards could just as well dress in a Roman uniform on the occasion of a civic parade.191 And while the Antwerp blacksmiths in 1744 complained that the offerings no longer sufficed to organize their masses, the Antwerp butchers staged the fable of the abduction of the Virgin Europe by Jupiter during the civic parade. In the eighteenth century, classic mythology and Greek-Roman themes and symbols became prominent.192

Misericordia, Caritas and a Market for Mutual Insurance in the House of God A focus on poor relief and mutual aid as organized by the guilds may be the best way to illustrate the changing sense of community hinted at above, although long-term transformations in this field have often been reduced to a linear ‘from church to state’ or ‘from private to public’ narrative. Partly in response to this, historians of religion as well have addressed poor relief, often concentrating on the impact of the Reformation. In this context, such organizations as brotherhoods and guilds came to the fore too. Protestants not only dispraised the activities of brotherhoods who allegedly sought benefits exclusively for their own members, Luther and others simply no longer believed that ‘good works’ like masses for the souls of the deceased would lead to salvation; henceforth this was up to ‘faith alone’. Protestantism thus undermined the traditional connection between the here and now and the eternal, but ‘love among men’ continued to be cherished and was infused with a new language to promote charity and gift-giving.193 In Catholic regions as well, poor relief practices in brotherhoods and guilds transformed, although this has been studied less extensively. With respect to the Italian case, a shift has been observed from mutual aid towards

Equality, Solidarity and the Decline of Brotherhood  253 philanthropic and outward forms of charitable activity in brotherhoods— paralleling the latter’s more public role and display in processions and the like.194 This implies, in fact, a more individualistic approach, in which aid no longer resulted from the self-effacing piety of a confraternal member subordinate to the community, but rather from the virtue of an individual in search of salvation.195 A similar evolution may have affected the guilds in the Southern Netherlands, but here guild-based poor relief has mostly been looked at through the lens of their poor boxes exclusively.196 Up to a certain degree, this may be justified. In contrast to such famous brotherhoods in the Italian region as the Venetian Scuole Grandi—which provided a type of assurance for their members and alms for outsiders—most brotherhoods in the Southern Netherlands did not organize poor relief. They instead organized spiritual and devotional activities.197 Yet in the medieval context, it may be artificial to separate mutual assistance and devotion. As Andrew Brown remarks ‘[a] history of charity needs to be set within a more general history of religious practice in the town’.198 Both in the notion of caritas and in the practice of collectively burying a co-member the religious and the social are inseparable. Even praying for the soul of a fellow creature may be seen as aid. Nor is it useful to distinguish socio-religious practices related to charity and mutual aid from the political. Charity in the Middle Ages was central to political office and authority. It was part of a broader moral duty which was essential to every political and rational subject endorsing the common good.199 Consequently, guilds in the Southern Netherlands are excellent organizations through which to examine the politico-religious character of poor relief and mutual assistance in civil society. From their very inception, guilds embodied the caritas ideal, which in guild discourse emerged among such notions as friendship, community, unity, and mutual aid.200 Moreover, guilds organized religious activities as well as simply providing alms and shelter. This was, in turn, not unrelated to the guilds’ efforts to be included in the body politic of the city.201 In line with the presence and public visibility of their altars and chapels, rich guilds also invested in almshouses (or ‘houses of God’—godshuizen in Dutch), which in Brussels and Bruges were mostly established in the fourteenth century.202 In sixteenth-century Ghent, seven guilds had their own almshouse: the weavers, fullers, free skippers, tailors, tick weavers, blacksmiths and brewers. Here as well, most were already erected in the fourteenth century.203 Wealthy guilds such as the mercers were particularly active on this front. In Antwerp they owned an almshouse with chapel, in Brussels they ran a number of houses grouped around their prayer retreat den Heilant, and in Leuven the mercers had obtained from Hendrik Colnea a house with a courtyard, which was furnished as an almshouse for five old or poor members of the guild.204 In Brussels artisanal groups were divested from their role in the management of these institutions around such key dates in the guild revolts as 1306 and 1360.205 The proliferation of almshouses was part of a movement in which more and more lay people adopted a religiously inspired and contemplative life,

Figure 5.3 Distribution of bread to the poor of the Ghent parish of St Jacob by the masters of the local Table of the Holy Spirit, 1436. The so-called three members of the Ghent government are each represented by a master, as two are identified as belonging to the patriciate, one to the wool weavers’ guild and one to the so-called ‘small trades’. Archive of the St. Jacob church, Ghent. © www.lukasweb.be—Art in Flanders vzw/photo Hugo Maertens.

Equality, Solidarity and the Decline of Brotherhood  255 which in this period was also encouraged by the Brethren of the common life (Devotio Moderna). The municipal authorities endorsed this and tightened the moral codes in hospitals, for instance by imposing a dress code, the exercise of chastity, fasting on Fridays, reciting grace for the meal, receive sacraments, etcetera.206 This is why historians have recently refuted the term secularization and have referred to a long-term process of laicization instead.207 From early on poor relief in cities was a layered and compartmentalized system, with institutions ranging from cloisters and beguinages to the parishes with their ‘Tables of the Holy Spirit’ (Heilige Geesttafels)—which were typical for the Low Countries (next to Catalonia)—to provisions of the municipality and even the feudal lord.208 During the late medieval period lay and public officials increasingly appropriated and impacted upon religious practices, poor relief included.209 Among other things laymen became involved, from the twelfth century on, in the foundation of almshouses and brotherhoods catering for the needs of pilgrims or with a concern for Christian burials, while municipal governments started to cater for the needs of local poor through the foundation of hospitals.210 All this culminated in a certain communalization of poor relief.211 In Bruges the local poor were referred to as pauperibus nostris (‘our poor’) as early as 1236.212 From the late twelfth century on, the town authorities there ran the St. John’s Hospital and other smaller foundations which not only cared for the sick, but also fed, lodged, clothed and buried the poor. Before 1227 a lepers’ hospital was founded under civic auspices. And in the late thirteenth century civic authorities were involved in the re-foundation of the Potterie hospital (1276), the expansion of the St. John’s hospital, the control over orphans’ inheritances (1287), etcetera. In the course of the fourteenth century, the five parish tables in Bruges gradually distributed more doles (mostly food) than the Potterie hospital, which was the most important institution for the shamefaced poor before.213 As to access to poor relief, recent research has moreover suggested that the urban body politic became more important as a frame of reference during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In late medieval Brussels, residence within the city walls became more significant a condition for entitlement to poor relief—including to relief schemes not run exclusively by the civic authorities.214 There remained, however, a tension between private and corporative initiatives. On the one hand, wealthy citizens often preferred to found smaller institutions such as almshouses or ‘houses of God’, which provided food and shelter for a particular group, such as a specific group of widows or aged people, in return for prayers for the benefactors’ souls—and often also money.215 The growing number of endowments for the poor tables in Bruges in fact signaled a preoccupation with one’s soul in the afterlife. Guilds were often involved in this, for instance when guild members were called upon as intercessors, by the obligation to be present and pray for the souls of benefactors at liturgical services paid for by the latter.216 On the other hand, poor relief and almsgiving could include outsiders and strangers. Although the

256  Equality, Solidarity and the Decline of Brotherhood guilds’ almshouses were often reserved for their own elderly people, guilds sometimes gave alms to non-members too.217 The London livery companies in the sixteenth century helped not only their co-members, but also outsiders, even from the outer city.218 This tension is captured by the distinction between caritas and misericordia made by Katherine Lynch. While the latter term refers to almsgiving to the poor in general and might also involve giving alms to complete strangers, caritas implied an ongoing bond between giver and receiver.219 In fact charity re-produces this bond very much like in a gift-relationship—with alms conveying the spirit of the giver and creating an obligation to him. In this vein, it comes as no surprise that guilds mostly organized charity for their own members. This was certainly so when it comes to access to almshouses, which only accepted members, as illustrated by the mercers in Bruges as well as the fullers and weavers in Ghent.220 Nor did these almshouses cater for the poorest of the poor for that matter; they rather served as retirement homes for moneyed old masters—given that one needed some property to have access.221 Simultaneously, however, the guilds in the Southern Netherlands distributed alms not only to poor masters, but also their widows—as the fourteenth-century accounts of the Bruges weavers’ guild show.222 To a certain degree, the wife and children of masters would seem to have been included among the possible receivers of aid too—probably as a matter of course.223 In addition, journeymen could be entitled, as was the case with the earliest mutual aid associations.224 Some account books even record alms given to wandering journeymen looking for refuge or a job in Antwerp.225 Nor was this at odds with poor relief and mutual aid being imbued with a corporative spirit. It could be mandatory for those receiving aid to wear distinctive clothing in the case of both guild and municipal aid. Ghent tailors receiving aid from the guild dressed in black, with the clothes moreover being marked with silver-colored scissors stitched to it. The poor of the Ghent skippers wore cloaks with anchors attached.226 Yet rather than seeing the guilds’ poor relief schemes as opposed to the municipals’, they were part and parcel of the ideal of the city as a house of God in which every needy person was taken care of. Nearly all organizations selected on a more or less territorial basis, their focus on specific social groups notwithstanding. Moreover, the fact that the guilds’ poor relief provisions were geared towards members, implies that it was reserved for burghers—the guilds thus assuming responsibility for part of the urban body politic. And whenever women, journeymen and apprentices were not taken care of, this can be explained by the fact that this was the masters’ responsibility, which implied that they were also included. Widows were a special case from this perspective, but they were often taken care of too. Of course, this was an ideal at best, and one diluted from the outset by the existence of vagrant and ‘masterless’ workers. In the high Middle Ages, these poor were often seen as worthy of help too, but in the late Middle

Equality, Solidarity and the Decline of Brotherhood  257 Ages poverty seems to have lost its sacred status and the poor were increasingly looked down upon. This trend co-emerged with a more calculative approach on the part of authorities and a more efficient management of resources, for which a distinction was made between deserving and undeserving poor. The origins of this process would go back to the fourteenth or even thirteenth century. While such hospitals as St. John’s in Bruges were open to pilgrims and passing travelers at first, they gradually limited access to ‘indigent burghers’. The foundation of hospitals would have been part of the same trend to focus on specific groups of mostly shamefaced poor.227 Municipal authorities had their own agenda. They tried to incorporate, control and rationalize the existing poor relief schemes, among other things by establishing a ‘common bourse’ (a civic poor table), which materialized often around the mid-sixteenth century.228 This was in turn connected to processes of state formation. For Italian cities it has been amply demonstrated that confraternities and their activities related to poor relief were incorporated by the civic authorities and were increasingly dominated by civic elites.229 In the Low Countries, this was less outspoken, among other things because of the tension between urban authorities and princely rule. Yet the trend was similar. Burgundian and Habsburg princes issued restrictions on vagrancy (e.g., Duke Philip the Good in Flanders in 1461) and on begging (e.g., the bans of Charles V in 1531), which had an impact on the urban level, including the guild level. In 1422, banishment for one year awaited any individual between fifteen and sixty years old who refused to work as a weaver, fuller, carder or spinner in Brussels; under pressure from the drapers, these rules were even tightened in the following years.230 Thus, guild-based poor relief schemes and practices and the transformations they experienced were caught in a broader web of political and religious transformations on the urban level and beyond. This is endorsed by Ilana Krausman Ben-Amos, who connected mutual aid and assistance to community formation and a gift perspective, arguing that informal bonds and practices were replaced with institutions geared towards anonymous subjects and market mechanisms. She argued that generosity and hospitality declined in the early modern period, as is illustrated, for England, by the waning of the tradition of giving food and drink to strangers and vagrants at the city gates. In the seventeenth century, funeral doles and help ales declined there too, as well as posthumous bequests for the poor. Simultaneously, new types emerged, such as annual and life subscriptions, which reinforced the fame of the givers during their life and thus yielded a more secular form of return. Likewise, market mechanisms were on the rise, as is apparent from the expansion of registration fees and the collection of money through ads, balls, dinners, concerts and the like.231 Some of these developments resemble those related to the communal spirit of guilds. This becomes clear when zeroing in on the guilds’ poor relief schemes proper. At first sight, the loss of corporative spirit signaled above co-occurred with a rise in poor relief and mutual aid schemes. Research on

258  Equality, Solidarity and the Decline of Brotherhood the Low Countries has sketched a strong distinction between the Dutch Republic and the Spanish Netherlands after the Revolt. The guilds were able to earmark a larger share of their income for poor relief, due in part to the guilds in the cities of the Dutch Republic no longer facing expenses for processions and for maintaining and decorating altars and chapels (while their income had moreover increased because of the demographic shift from the Southern to the Northern Netherlands). While the Calvinist municipal governments (and even regional estates) banned what they considered squandering money on idolatry and superstition, the funds previously spent on altar services, decorations, feasts and the like were to be directed to the ‘common causes’ of the municipality or at least used for the care of sick and needy brothers.232 This has helped to create the image of the Dutch Republic as the most bounteous region in Europe.233 However, the decline of religious and collective activities in the Southern Netherlands was also related to rising expenses for poor relief and mutual aid. Among the Ghent butchers, the relative share of expenses for mutual aid rose from 17.8% to 37.2% between 1620 and 1774.234 Moreover, the most important institutional instrument for guild-based poor relief in the early modern period—the so-called poor boxes (armbussen)—originated in the late medieval heartland of the corporations. For German cities, Sigrid Fröhlich has described an evolution in which such boxes branched out from the guilds’ general box as specific fees were asked and specific rules for entitlements to support were defined.235 This is exactly what happened in the Southern Netherlands. Although earlier examples are recorded, the majority of the boxes emerged in the fifteenth (e.g., Brussels and Leuven) and the sixteenth centuries (e.g., Antwerp)—apparently in cycles of demographic and economic expansion.236 Some historians consider these poor boxes to be at the very roots of our modern social security system—with both solidarity and compulsory membership as key characteristics.237 Neither of these were self-evident, however. Sometimes membership of the poor box and membership of the related guild failed to overlap entirely. While the Brussels cobblers and blacksmiths forced their new members to become members of the poor box, the sculptors, knife makers and wine sellers made membership voluntary because not every master was prepared to pay the fees.238 Conversely, non-guild members were free to join the poor box of both the hosiery makers and the blacksmiths in Leuven.239 From the sixteenth century on it was mostly mandatory for guild masters to pay the entrance fees and yearly taxes of the box, so that the boxes indeed resembled a compulsory social security system.240 Even so, the teleological view is to be qualified. While most historians have understood the proliferation of poor boxes as an extension of poor relief and mutual aid altogether, the very nature of poor relief may have transformed in the process. For one thing, the absence of a poor box did not equal the absence of poor relief. Before the installation of poor boxes, poor relief was often distributed in other ways, such as the distribution of alms

Equality, Solidarity and the Decline of Brotherhood  259 in a guild’s chapel.241 Other schemes sometimes emerge from the founding charters of the poor boxes themselves, in which reference was for example made to a pre-existing ‘honourable confraternity’.242 As is well known, in Brussels and elsewhere confraternities such as those of Saint Eloy catering to the poor of a range of occupational groups pre-dated the guilds. Established by artisans from the metal trades among others, the administrators of this confraternity visited the poor during four civic feasts to distribute alms (mostly food and clothing).243 This type of poor relief was appropriated by the civic authorities in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries—with membership thus being abolished—while the political guilds established later limited poor relief to their own members.244 Nor have poor boxes necessarily increased entitlements to poor relief, perhaps even the reverse. While masters’ widows and journeymen were often supported before, this was no longer self-evident once a poor box was founded. The box of the Antwerp tailors, established in 1498, is a case in point. A new master had to contribute one Brabant schilling to the box, while the yearly fee amounted to six Brabant groats. Yet if a master’s wife wanted to be entitled to aid, an entrance fee and yearly fees were to be paid for her too.245 In Brussels, a master’s wife would receive doles at a lower rate unless additional fees were paid on her account. When both fell ill with the wife not having paid, only the husband received support; and whenever she was paid for, they could both receive doles—although sometimes capped.246 Likewise, the establishment of a poor box was an additional step in the exclusion of journeymen and apprentices. While the latter sometimes had to contribute to the box—i.e., via their master, who was sometimes taxed per apprentice—they were mostly not entitled to assistance from the box.247 Moreover, the distinction between deserving and undeserving poor materialized in the poor boxes as well. While begging was typically forbidden for anyone receiving assistance from the box, the boxes’ rules sometimes included bans on attending taverns and pubs. If disability resulted from reckless behavior, fighting, drunkenness and the like, no assistance was given at all. Charity in these boxes was strictly conditional on, on the one hand, paying the fees and, on the other, social and labor disciplining. This could even include behavior which did not incur a risk of becoming unable to work, such as gambling, and living in concubinage.248 How, then, are we to understand the erection of these boxes at all? Recent research by Marco Van Leeuwen has approached poor boxes in the Low Countries from a neo-institutional perspective, describing them as mechanisms to exclude free-riding and solve such classic insurance problems as adverse selection and moral hazard. In the latter case, the available funding might be tapped by people reported to be needy or ill unfairly (or perceived as such). Adverse selection results from a lack of information and transparency about the real risks of the insurer, which in the case of poor boxes might materialize when immigrants with insufficient skills to find a job subscribe.249 Both in the North and the South poor boxes indeed

260  Equality, Solidarity and the Decline of Brotherhood devised rules to counter these potential insurance problems. First, there were waiting periods; one often had to have contributed for a certain time before being entitled to assistance.250 In Brussels the terms ranged from one up to six years. The latter term was prescribed by the sculptors, where aliens even had to wait ten years. As well as distinguishing between groups, the period could also be adapted, as was done by the Brussels cobblers, who prolonged the term from two to four years shortly after the foundation of their box.251 Other mechanisms ensured that payments were in proportion to the financial capacity of the box. In Antwerp needy silk weavers (in 1580) received six stivers a week, the ribbon makers seven.252 The box of the Brussels old cloth sellers also forecasted six stivers a week in case of illness, but wives of old cloth sellers could only expect four stivers a week.253 A rule of thumb of sorts apparently existed that doles equaled weekly what was contributed yearly (sometimes one third less).254 In addition, the rules stipulated what exactly qualified as cause for assistance. Typically this included sickness, disability because of an accident, and age, but not unemployment.255 In the long run, these boxes evolved into insurance schemes with voluntary membership altogether. Whenever new boxes were founded in the seventeenth or eighteenth century, they were typically not compulsory. Such was the case with boxes founded by journeymen, although they could also be used for collective actions against masters, in the context of which nonmembership could lead to being barred from access to work by the journeymen.256 The poor boxes of the guilds proper evolved in the same direction. In the eighteenth century, only 10% of the masters of the Brussels tailors subscribed to their poor box, the membership of which was voluntary, with the number moreover declining in the course of the century. Needless to say, it was not the poorest of the poor who subscribed.257 In 1787, this sector witnessed an attempt in Brussels to erect a poor box for mutual support for both masters and journeymen, with membership again being voluntary. In the existing poor boxes of the Brussels tailors membership had vanished altogether from 1755. Capitalizing on their property and rents, only some charity proper (distribution of bread and meat) remained.258 In short, the foundation of poor boxes was a move away from the caritas ideal of the corporations and the urban body politic to an insurance system. While the founding ordinances enacted that doles from a poor box could not be accumulated with doles from the municipal poor table,259 poor boxes firmly installed the principle that one had to have contributed in order to be entitled. Moreover, the corporative spirit of taking care of wives, journeymen and apprentices was no longer self-evident. This certainly does not mean that solidarity was non-existent, but it had to be enforced to an increasing degree. In the Antwerp guild of tailors a rule was issued in 1610 which stated that a master had to pay three guilders for every apprentice he engaged—thus obligating larger masters to contribute more.260 Apparently, guild solidarity had ceased to be self-evident even among members.

Equality, Solidarity and the Decline of Brotherhood  261

Conclusion Examining the long-term transformation to which the guilds were subject leads to a range of olden questions. In addition to the possible decline of a gift culture, processes of commodification and state formation come to mind. As to the latter, it might be worthwhile recalling that these processes were connected in traditional historical sociology to wider processes of juridicization, bureaucratization, and—in the terminology of Max Weber—the disenchantment of the world. In a way, craft guilds serve as a lens through which to observe these fundamental and long-term transformations, on the condition that guilds and guild-based masters are not approached from the perspective of opportunity costs and instrumentalized ideas of power in advance. In my view, it is essential to include a moral and religious dimension and the possibility that guild-based masters grew more calculative over time while their guilds transformed into bureaucratic institutions. Of course, the precise meaning of devotional activities has been subject to discussions among historians too. The ideas about devotional instruments and practices being symptoms of wholeness and commonality with such cultural historians as Mervyn James have been criticized. The focus has shifted to power relations and the creation of distinction and separateness.261 What has remained underexposed, however, is the long-term transformations these practices and rituals witnessed, not only with regard to

Figure 5.4 Board of the Bruges tailors’ guild gathered in their guild hall in the presence of poor and disabled people, 1754. Oil painting on canvas of Pieter Beuckels. Musea Brugge, inv. nr. O.1450. © www.lukasweb.be—Art in Flanders vzw/photo Hugo Maertens.

262  Equality, Solidarity and the Decline of Brotherhood their form and shape—but with regard to their very nature and meaning too. Oftentimes, historians have used different definitions of rituals. Some have started from a consensus model, considering rituals as mirroring and reproducing the social order in the city.262 Others started from a model of conflict, thus concentrating on the production and reproduction of power relations. Here rituals are considered to stage and legitimize a certain social order, while concealing the real or objective social relations.263 In the wake of this approach, a ‘constructivist’ approach has prevailed, in which rituals are seen as instrumental in the construction of social order.264 According to Richard Trexler, political rituals did not ‘mirror’ social relations, but rather served a goal and compensated for the lack of cohesion in the city.265 The dominant approach today is one of rituals not only ‘expressing’ or ‘mirroring’ pre-established forms of hierarchy and community. Rituals are instead now seen as performative, in that they not only communicate something but create a community too.266 Hence the use of such metaphors as ‘forging a sense of common identity’, ‘binding the social fabric’, etcetera. Feast and ceremonies are seen as rites de passages in which disparate elements and characteristics of the urban social fabric ‘transubstantiate [into] a mystic body’.267 However, this is still very much indebted to rituals being instruments in the hands of certain actors, who invest in them intentionally. Most actors themselves, however, must have felt immersed in them and overwhelmed by them—as a result of which agency becomes difficult to attribute to specific actors instead of, say, the relic itself. Moreover, the nature and agency structure of religious and civic rituals may have changed over time, so that, rather than starting from a specific definition, historians should examine the very process of this transformation. As to the late medieval period, collective rituals were imbued with Christian morals and spiritual feelings, in which the worldly and the eternal were bridged through patron saints and collective rituals such as Mass and processions. During such rituals a sense of commune emerged in which every individual was connected to the holy and the eternal, i.e., the universal soul. This was in turn contingent upon God being present in such material things as relics and the wafer. As well as connecting individuals, this material approach helped to connect the religious to the civic. Along with masses and urban processions, sacred and semi-sacred buildings such as chapels and almshouses transformed the city into a house of God, in which—theoretically—every Christian would be taken care of. As an ideal, this was increasingly cultivated in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. In the cities and city-states on the Italian peninsula, the civic and caritas ideals came to overlap in the Middle Ages—as expressed in the term caritas patriae and materialized in the activities of such large charitable confraternities as the Orsanmichele in Florence, which in the fourteenth century shifted focus from the miserabiles to the famiglia povera.268 Even in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century London, the charity of livery companies was still seen as a key feature in the image of London as a godly city.269

Equality, Solidarity and the Decline of Brotherhood  263 However, the Reformation helped to install a more individualized and more abstract approach to the holy. While the subsequent confessionalization movement again emphasized the Christian community, something had changed for good. To start with, the community no longer overlapped, as a matter of course, with the civic. Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Protestant cities are shown to have experienced a field of tension between the confessional and the civic—with the former now focusing on a universal Christian community beyond the boundaries of the city. While attention shifted from the hereafter to the now, poor relief turned into ‘a civil obligation to the Christian commonwealth’.270 Related to that, poor relief as organized by the guilds lost its confraternal and caritas character to be replaced with a more businesslike organization of mutual aid and insurance. This is similar to the late medieval shift from communal and cooperative forms of charity to a more individual and personal search for religious and social benefits as described by Miri Rubin in her case study on medieval Cambridge.271 In absolute terms, guild-based poor relief did not necessarily decline in the process, but the sense of brotherhood on which it had been based waned in the long run. Guild brethren ceased to commit to the collective as something eternal, as emerges from their reluctance to attend funerals, masses, processions and other guild meetings. Moreover, they grew reluctant to assume political office, which is additional proof of the corporative spirit dissolving. Mine is not a claim that religious transformations caused all this, but it was in all likelihood related to it. While the necessity and urgency of the corporative community was based in part on its eternal character, lay people may have increasingly gained access to the sacred autonomously.272 In addition, from being immanent in all things on earth, God in the long run grew transcendent.273 This must have had an impact on the way relics, wafers, altars and the like mediated between the here and the hereafter, and, thence, on the relationship between brethren. Nor is this to claim that these collective events disappeared completely. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries requests surface, asking for the re-introduction of meals, as was the case in a 1635 request from the Antwerp pewterers—who on the occasion referred to the meal as an ‘old custom’. But whenever they were reintroduced or continued to be held, they changed character. As is apparent from the research of Frederik Verleysen, meals had turned into instruments used to increase the guilds’ status, prestige and political clout through ostentation and lobbying. As such, the declining importance of meals as a communal and spiritual event was part of a broader trend in which meals were converted into monetary fees to the guild. So, while polarization and oligarchization surged, businesslike and bureaucratic regulations substituted for the sense of brotherhood in guilds. This is reminiscent of the ideas of Max Weber, who described a long-term evolution from personal obligations towards a community to more calculating and individualistic values. But reducing this to secularization and rationalization would of course be reductionist and teleological too. For one

264  Equality, Solidarity and the Decline of Brotherhood thing, while a more individualized relationship with the sacred remained important, the rationale of saving souls through poor relief may have had a strong continuity.274 Moreover, there is an important social and economic dimension to all this. In addition to the process of oligarchization sketched in previous chapters, the difference between small and large masters grew in the late medieval and the early modern period. The guilds also allowed for this during phases of economic expansion—as is exemplified by the incremental deregulation of workshop size in the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. In this context, solidarity did not so much wane as change character. While the corporative, and to a certain degree egalitarian, sense of brotherhood dissipated, measures were installed which obligated a limited fiscal solidarity on the part of large masters.

Notes   1 ‘begrootinge van een of twee leden van een lichaem met verminkinge van d’ander, dwelck in een goede wel gepoliceerde stad nyet en behoort toegelaten te worden’. Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 144–145.   2  Stabel, ‘Guilds’, 209.   3  Recent perspectives and further references in Frenz, Gleichheitsdenken.  4 Brown, Civic Ceremony, 91; Lecuppre-Desjardin and Van Bruaene, ‘Déambuler’, 49.  5  E.g., Soly, ‘Plechtige intochten’; Arnade, Realms; Thøfner, A Common Art. Recent perspectives in Lecuppre-Desjardin (ed.), La ville; Speakman Sutch and Van Bruaene, ‘The Seven Sorrows’.  6 Brown, Civic Ceremony, 12, 27, 52–54. See also: Hanawalt and Reyerson, ‘Introduction’, pp. xii–xiv; Cartwright, ‘Forms’, 120–121; Brown, ‘Ritual’.  7 Brown, Civic Ceremony, ch. 2.  8 Black, Guild.   9 Recent perspectives and further references in Terpstra (ed.), The Politics; Eckstein and Terpstra (eds.), Sociability; Terpstra, Prosperi and Pastore (eds.), Faith’s Boundaries. For the Southern Netherlands, see Trio, ‘Les confréries’ and Van Dijck, ‘Het verenigingsleven’. 10 Eckstein, ‘ “Con buona affetione” ’, 49. E.g., Weissman, Ritual; Pullan, Rich and Poor. 11 Terpstra, Lay Confraternities. 12 For a dynamic view on the field of tension between members and the Religious and worldly authorities, see Van Dijck, ‘Een strijd’. 13 Trio, Volksreligie, ch. 4, ‘Middeleeuwse broederschappen’ and ‘Les confréries’; Thijs, Van geuzenstad, 84–91; Marinus, De contrareformatie, 255–272; Van Dijck, ‘Het verenigingsleven’ and ‘Bonding’, 171–172; Decraene, Boundaries, 53–54. Compare with Black, ‘The Public Face’ and Church, 130–140. 14 For the connection between religious transformations and social disciplining, see, among others, Hsia, Social Discipline and The World. Also: Thijs, Van geuzenstad. 15 Dumolyn, ‘Privileges’ and ‘ “I Thought of It” ’. 16 Mervyn, ‘Ritual’, 23–24; Berlin, ‘Civic Ceremony’, 15 and 20; Zika, ‘Hosts’; Rubin, Corpus Christi; Muir, Ritual, ch. 5; Lecuppre-Desjardin and Van Bruaene, ‘Déambuler’, 53. Also Bossy, ‘The Mass’; Duffy, The Stripping. 17 Douglas, Natural Symbols, ch. 5. See also Mervyn, ‘Ritual’, 6; Verleysen, Het hemelse festijn, 81–82, 137–138, 257. A synthesis with due attention to the

Equality, Solidarity and the Decline of Brotherhood  265 relationship between the individual body, the collective body and religion in Gélis, ‘Le corps’. 18 Walsham, ‘The Reformation’. 19 Wandel, The Reformation and The Eucharist. 20 Lis and Soly, Poverty; Jütte, ‘Poor Relief’, esp. 31–34; Haemers and Ryckbosch, ‘A Targeted Public’, 223. 21 Soly, ‘Continuity’, esp. 88–92 (with further references). 22 A critical view in Van Nederveen Meerkerk and Vermeesch, ‘Reforming’. 23 See e.g., Grell and Cunningham (eds.), Health Care; Grell, Cunningham and Arrizabalaga (eds.), Health Care; Safley (ed.), The Reformation; Pullan, ‘Catholics’. Also McCants, Civic Charity, ch. 1. 24 Parker, The Reformation; Lynch, Individuals, ch. 3, esp. 123–131. Introduction in the issue of confessionalization: Harrington and Smith, ‘Confessionalization’ and Headley, Hillerbrand and Papalas (eds.), Confessionalization. 25 Lynch, Individuals, 123. 26 Lynch, Individuals, ch. 3. 27 Thompson, ‘The Moral Economy’ and Sombart, Der moderne Kapitalismus, vol. 1, 29–39. 28 See e.g., Des Marez, L’organisation, 230–242. 29 For Brussels, see e.g. Des Marez, L’organisation, 226–227. 30 Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 347. 31 Des Marez, L’organisation, 272–279, 380. 32 Verhavert, Het ambachtswezen, 67. 33 Des Marez, L’organisation, 224–225. 34 Des Marez, L’organisation, 223; Verhavert, Het ambachtswezen, 69, 71. 35 E.g., Des Marez, L’organisation, 265; Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 82. 36 Des Marez, L’organisation, 213–214. 37 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 75. Other examples in Espinas, Les origines, Tome I, 1103 and Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 43. 38 Des Marez, L’organisation, 264. 39 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 78. 40 Des Marez, L’organisation, 64, 221. 41 Verhavert, Het ambachtswezen, 68. Other examples in Lis an Soly, ‘Corporatisme’, 371–372. 42 Des Marez, L’organisation, 221. 43 Stabel, ‘Guilds’, 205. 44 Lis and Soly, ‘Ambachtsgilden’, 12–19 and ‘Export Industries’, 119–123. 45 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 66, 74–76, 164. 46 Examples in Thijs, Van ‘werkwinkel’, 219–257 and De Munck, Technologies, ch. 3.1. 47 Dambruyne, ‘Guilds’, 37. See also Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 70–71, 165. 48 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 67–68. 49 Thijs, Van ‘werkwinkel’, 221. 50 Dambruyne, ‘De Gentse bouwvakambachten’, 60. 51 De Munck, Technologies, 131–132. 52 De Munck, ‘One Counter’, 31; Des Marez, L’organisation, 222. 53 Des Marez, L’organisation, 222. 54 Des Marez, L’organisation, 64, 212–213. 55 Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 144–145. 56 Cf. Verhavert, Het ambachtswezen, 72. 57 Quote from 1603 in De Munck, Technologies, 131.

266  Equality, Solidarity and the Decline of Brotherhood 58 Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 144. 59 De Munck, ‘Fiscalizing’, 182–186. Also: Dambruyne, ‘De Gentse bouwvakambachten’, 85–86. 60 De Munck, ‘Fiscalizing’. 61 Des Marez, L’organisation, 120. 62 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 81. 63 Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 299. 64 E.g., Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 302. 65 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 76, 80. 66 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 80. Additional examples on p. 76 and in De Munck, Technologies, 155–157 and ‘Fiscalizing’, 182–186. 67 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 81. 68 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 153. 69 Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 145. 70 De Munck, ‘Fiscalizing’, 185 (with additional references). 71 Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 335–336. 72 ‘volgens de qualiteyt ende groodtte van zijnder neeringhe’. Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 81–82. 73 Examples in Des Marez, L’organisation, 76 and De Munck, Technologies, ch. 2.3. 74 Some critical anthropological introductions on the rationale of gift exchange: Godelier, L’enigme; Graeber, Toward, ch. 6. Historical views in Davis, The Gift; Bijsterveld, ‘The Medieval Gift’; Krausman Ben-Amos, The Culture. 75 Cf. Howell, Commerce, ch. 3, esp. 159–171. 76 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 188. 77 De Munck, Technologies, 89. 78 Quoted in Verleysen, Het hemelse festijn, 36. See also: Rosser, ‘Going’, 431, 438; Crombie, ‘Honour’. 79 Verleysen, Het hemelse festijn, 26. 80 Some examples in Des Marez, L’organisation, 102. 81 Verleysen, Het hemelse festijn, 34–35 (with more examples). 82 See e.g., Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 361. 83 Espinas, Les origines, Tome I, 1076. 84 Rosser, ‘Going’, 433–437. 85 See e.g., Verleysen, Het hemelse festijn, 290–295. 86 Des Marez, L’organisation, 436. The Brussels magistracy already probihited certain gatherings and meals in the fourteenth century, but this was rather part of a wider distrust of gathering, as they also referred to wearing uniforms. See e.g., Des Marez, L’organisation, 102–103. 87 Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 361. 88 Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 357, 361. 89 Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 361. Additional examples in Verleysen, Het hemelse festijn, 290–295. 90 Verleysen, Het hemelse festijn, 292–293. 91 Thijs, Van geuzenstad, 158–159; Vandenbroeck, ‘Stadscultuur’, 78–79; Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 360–361. 92 Crombie, ‘Honour’, 109–712. 93 Verleysen, Het hemelse festijn, 41–42. Similar arguments in Des Marez, L’organisation, 421. 94 Rosser, ‘Going’, 443–444. 95 Verleysen, Het hemelse festijn, 32. 96 Verleysen, Het hemelse festijn, 27–31, 50–51. Also: Deceulaer and Verleysen, ‘De politiek’ and Van Dijck, ‘Een strijd’. 97  Des Marez, L’organisation, p. 389.

Equality, Solidarity and the Decline of Brotherhood  267   98 Verhavert, Het ambachtswezen, 94–95.   99 Favresse, L’avènement, 232–233; Des Marez, L’organisation, 403–407; Van Uytven, ‘Beroering’, 178. 100 Braekevelt et al., ‘The Politics’, 23. 101 Verhavert, Het ambachtswezen, 95. 102 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 189; Van Bruaene, ‘A Breakdown’, 277–278. 103 Des Marez, L’organisation, 399–402. 104 Hansotte, Les institutions, 271. 105 Verhavert, Het ambachtswezen, 95–97. 106 Mertens, ‘Bestuursinstellingen’, 326. 107 Des Marez, L’organisation, 386–407. 108 Marnef, ‘The Towns’, 93. 109 Cf. Rosser, ‘Going’, 435; McRee, ‘Unity?’, 192–193. 110 Brown, Civic Ceremony, 1–3. 111 Des Marez, L’organisation, 175. 112 Espinas, Les origines, Tome I, 1072. 113 Oexle, ‘Die mittelalterlichen Gilden’, 211. 114 Verhavert, Het ambachtswezen, 47. 115 Des Marez, L’organisation, 422–424, 429–439. 116 Des Marez, L’organisation, 436–437. 117 Verhavert, Het ambachtswezen, 53. 118 Van Elsacker, ‘ “Secretelijck opgegeten” ’, 138. 119 Verleysen, Het hemelse festijn, 90. 120 Rosser, ‘Going’, 439. 121 Verleysen, Het hemelse festijn, 294. 122 Van Den Broeck, ‘ “Marchands de tout” ’, 62–63 and 68–74. 123 References and recent views in Van Dijck, ‘Een strijd’ and ‘Het verenigingsleven’. 124 Verhavert, Het ambachtswezen, 56. 125 Masure, ‘ “And Thus the Brethren Shall Meet” ’. 126 Lynch, Individuals, 120 (with additional references). 127 Verhavert, Het ambachtswezen, 52; Des Marez, L’organisation, 437. 128 Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 118–120. 129 Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 119–120. 130 Dambruyne, ‘De Gentse bouwvakambchten’, 84; Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 266–267. 131 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 159, 265–266. 132 Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 354–355. 133 Scholliers, ‘Vrije en onvrije’, 287; Thijs, Van ‘werkwinkel’, 213; Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 120. 134 Guignet, Le pouvoir, 45; Van Honacker, Lokaal verzet, 138–139. 135 Van der Heijden, Civic Duty, ch. 4. See also: Vermeesch, ‘Capability’. 136 The reference to Grotius in Van der Heijden, Civic Duty, 139. 137 Des Marez, L’organisation, 432; Verleysen, Het hemelse festijn, 91–92. 138 Verleysen, Het hemelse festijn, 89–90. 139 Oexle, ‘Die mittelalterlichen Gilden‘, 213–214. 140 Brown, Civic Ceremony, 135, 162. One example is the Bruges Our Lady bridge-workers in 1291, in Huys, Duizend jaar, Annexe II, 147–148. 141 E.g., Espinas, Les origines, Tome I, 1069; Verhavert, Het ambachtswezen, 50–51; Verleysen, Het hemelse festijn, 91, 252–253. 142 An introduction in Brown, The Cult. For the Southern Netherlands, see Heirwegh and Van Belle. Les saints patrons. Also: Verleysen, Het hemelse festijn, 148, 149 151–152, 233–238.

268  Equality, Solidarity and the Decline of Brotherhood 143 Verleysen, Het hemelse festijn, 156, 167. 144 For the erection and spatial distribution of altars in Antwerp, Brussels and Ghent, see Verleysen, Het hemelse festijn, 177–214. 145 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 100–102. 146 See Scribner, ‘Interpreting’, esp. 92, 95. Also Walker Bynum, Christian. Recent perspectives on the impact of the Reformation in Walsham, ‘The Reformation’ and Palmer Walden, ‘The Reformation’. 147 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 100–101; Brown, Civic Ceremony, 140, 162, 169–171, 174–176, 288, ch. 3. 148 Brown, Civic Ceremony, 127–128. 149 Brown, Civic Ceremony, 8–10, 54, 65, 186, 169–171, 174–176. 150 Brown, Civic Ceremony, 135, 138, 151 (Ftn 86), 321–328, appendix 5. 151 Thijs, Van ‘werkwinkel’, 192. 152 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 100. 153 Brown, Civic Ceremony, 153. 154 See e.g., Brown, Civic Ceremony, 186. See also McRee, ‘Unity?’ 155 Trio, ‘Les confréries’. Also: Trio and Bijsterveld, ‘Van gebedsverbroedering’ (I and II). 156 Muir, Ritual, 163–165. 157 E.g., Duffy, The Stripping, Part II. 158 See the chapters of Bos, Dambruyne and Thijs in Prak et al. (eds.), Craft Guilds. Also, Farr, Hands, ch. 6. 159 Verleysen, Het hemelse festijn, 213–214. 160 Verleysen, Het hemelse festijn, 214–218. 161 Weissman, Ritual Brotherhood, 197–198. Also Terpstra, Lay confraternities. 162 Marnef, ‘Instellingen’, 260–261 and ‘The Towns’, 88. 163 Verleysen, Het hemelse festijn, 312. 164 Hanawalt and Reyerson, ‘Introduction’, XV. 165 Lecuppre-Desjardin and Van Bruaene, ‘Déambuler’, 56. 166 Cartwright, ‘Forms’, 122; Lecuppre-Desjardin and Van Bruaene, ‘Déambuler’, 54–56. 167 For the waning of saints from processions see Ramakers, Spelen, 249–257. 168 Verhavert, Het ambachtswezen, 54; Marinus, De contrareformatie, 250–252; Verleysen, Het hemelse festijn, 168–169. 169 Thijs, Van geuzenstand, ch. 3, esp. 67–73; Verleysen, Het hemelse festijn, 79. 170 Thijs, Van geuzenstad, 107–108; Verleysen, Het hemelse festijn, 170–173. 171 Verleysen, Het hemelse festijn, 171. Also Lecuppre-Desjardin and Van Bruaene, ‘Déambuler’. 172 Kint, ‘Theatre’, 327–336; Kint, ‘The Ideology’, 213–222; Van Bruaene, ‘A Counterfeit Community’. 173 Vandommele, Als in een spiegel, chs. 3 and 4. 174 Filipczak, Picturing; De Munck, ‘Corpses’, 346–347 (with additional references). 175 De Munck, ‘Corpses’, 342–348 and ‘Le produit’. 176 Muir, Ritual, chs. 5 and 6. See also Wandel, The Eucharist. 177 This may include highly politicized devotions. See e.g., Speakman Sutch and Van Bruaene, ‘The Seven Sorrows’, 278. 178 Brandt, ‘Mémoire individualisée’, 104–112. 179 Trio, ‘Les confréries’, 141. 180 Gélis, ‘Le corps’, 101–107. 181 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 101; Verleysen, Het hemelse festijn, 154–155. 182 Cf. Gélis, ‘Le corps’, 45–76, esp. 74.

Equality, Solidarity and the Decline of Brotherhood  269 183 Verleysen, Het hemelse festijn, 83–84, 166. 184 Or a more up-to-date patron saint was added, as the Antwerp School masters did. Verleysen, Het hemelse festijn, 160, 164–165. 185 Verleysen, Het hemelse festijn, 239–241. 186 Verleysen, Het hemelse festijn, 216, 243–245 (with further references). 187 Verleysen, Het hemelse festijn, 156ff, 241–242, 245. 188 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 101. 189 Cartwright, ‘Forms’, 123–129. 190 Van Bruaene, ‘A Counterfeit Community’. 191 Verleysen, Het hemelse festijn, 24, 303. 192 Verleysen, Het hemelse festijn, 304–310. 193 Krausman Ben-Amos, ‘Gifts and Favors’, 299–300. 194 Black, Italian Confraternities, 213; Terpstra, ‘In loco parentis’, 114; Black, ‘The Public Face’, 100; Decraene, Boundaries, 84–85, 99. 195 Cf. Eckstein, ‘ “Con buona affetione” ’, 51–52. 196 See e.g., Bos, ‘A Tradition’; Van Leeuwen, ‘Guilds’. 197 Cf. Pullan, ‘Catholics’, 445–446 and Rich and Poor, Part II. 198 Brown, Civic Ceremony, 196, and 207ff. 199 Pullan, ‘Catholics’; Lynch, Individuals, 106–107 (with additional references). 200 Dumolyn, ‘ “I Thought of It” ’. Also Dumolyn and Haemers, ‘ “Let Each Man Carry on” ’. 201 As argued by Jacobs, ‘Des hôpitaux’. 202 Jacobs, ‘Des hôpitaux’, 215–216; Brown, Civic Ceremony, 198. 203 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 99. Also De Voght, ‘Het Gentse antwoord’. 204 Verhavert, Het ambachtswezen, 60–61; Des Marez, L’organisation, 462–463. 205 Jacobs, ‘Des hôpitaux’, 245–249. 206 Brown, Civic Ceremony, 209–210. 207 This is the drift in for instance Safley (ed.), The Reformation. See also Terpstra, ‘Boundaries’, xi–xii. 208 Van Nederveen Meerkerk and Vermeesch, ‘Reforming’; Haemers and Ryckbosch, ‘A Targeted Public’, 218–224 (both with additional references). 209 Lynch, Individuals, 110; Brown, Civic Ceremony, 19–20 (with further references). See also the comments of Nicholas Terpstra in Terpstra, ‘Boundaries’. 210 Lynch, Individuals, 110–111. For Ghent, see Boone, Gent, 141–148; for Antwerp: Soly, ‘Continuity’, 93–95; For Bruxelles: Jacobs, ‘Des hôpitaux’. 211 Some detailed overviews: Bonenfant, ‘Hôpitaux’; Maréchal, De sociale; Jacobs, ‘Des hôpitaux’. Also: Lynch, Individuals, 110–113. 212 Brown, Civic Ceremony, 8. 213 Brown, Civic Ceremony, 8, 196–198. 214 Masure, ‘ “Eerlycke huijsarmen”, esp. 15–17. Similar tendencies existed in Bruges, see Maréchal, De sociale, 301–303. 215 Brown, Civic Ceremony, 197. 216 Brown, Civic Ceremony, 210–221. 217 Oexle, ‘Die mittelalterlichen Gilden‘, 215–216. 218 Archer, ‘The Livery Companies’, 17. 219 Lynch, Individuals, 107–109. See ook: Bossy, Christianity. 220 Maréchal, De sociale, 293–294; De Voght, ‘Het Gentse antwoord’, 15; Brown, Civic Ceremony, 198; Haemers and Ryckbosch, ‘A Targeted Public’, 221. 221 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 99. 222 Brown, Civic Ceremony, 197. 223 Haemers and Ryckbosch, ‘A Targeted Public’, 221. 224 See Thijs, ‘Religion’, 161; Bos, ‘Beroepsgebonden onderlinges’, 95.

270  Equality, Solidarity and the Decline of Brotherhood 225 Schlugleit, De Antwerpse goud- en zilversmeden, 71–72. 226 Decavele and De Herdt, Gent, 136; Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 365. 227 Maréchal, De sociale, 283–305; Brown, Civic Ceremony, 207–209. Recent perspectives in Jacobs, ‘Des hôpitaux’. 228 Lis and Soly, Poverty, 82–96, esp. 88. Recent views in Van Nederveen Meerkerk and Vermeesch, ‘Reforming’. 229 E.g., Terpstra, Lay Confraternities, 222–224. 230 Des Marez, L’Organisation, 475. 231 Krausman Ben-Amos, ‘Gifts and Favors’. 232 Bos, ‘A Tradition’, 179. 233 See e.g., Van Leeuwen, De rijke Republiek; Heerma van Voss and Van Leeuwen, ‘Charity’; Van Leeuwen, ‘Giving’. 234 Verleysen, Het hemelse festijn, 13. 235 Fröhlich, Die Soziale Sicherung, 263–264. 236 Huys, Duizend jaar, passim; Verhavert, Het ambachtswezen, 58; Des Marez, L’organisation, 420, 441–443; De Munck, ‘Fiscalizing’. 237 Fröhlich, Sigrid, Die Soziale Sicherung, 265. Compare with Bos, ‘A Tradition’; Van Leeuwen, ‘Guilds’. 238 Des Marez, L’organisation, 444. 239 Verhavert, Het ambachtswezen, 60. 240 Huys, Duizend jaar, passim; De Munck, ‘Fiscalizing’, 175; Also Masure, ‘ “Eerlycke huijsarmen” ’, 13. 241 Masure, ‘ “Eerlycke huijsarmen” ’, 7–8. 242 Des Marez, ‘L’organisation’, 441–442. 243 Des Marez, L’organisation, 463–467; Libois, ‘La confrérie’; Masure, ‘ “Eerlycke huijsarmen” ’, 6–7, 11–12, 16. 244 Masure, ‘ “Eerlycke huijsarmen” ’, 11–12. 245 Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 366–367. 246 Des Marez, L’organisation, 454–455. 247 E.g., Huys, Duizend jaar, Annexe I, 54; Masure, ‘ “Eerlycke huijsarmen” ’, 12–13. 248 Huys, Duizend jaar, 61 and Annexes; Des Marez, L’organisation, 457; Verhavert, Het ambachtswezen, 59; Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 367; De Munck, ‘Fiscalizing’, 175. 249 Van Leeuwen, ‘Guilds’. 250 E.g., Verhavert, Het ambachtswezen, 59. 251 Des Marez, L’organisation, 449–450. See also Huys, Duizend jaar, Annexe I, 15, 69, 74 and 88. 252 Huys, Duizend jaar, Annexe I, 97 and 102; Thijs, De zijdenijverheid, 77, 121. 253 Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 369–370. 254 Des Marez, L’organisation, 453–454 (including amounts). 255 Des Marez, L’organisation, 450; De Munck, ‘Fiscalizing’, 174–175. 256 Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 308; Thijs, ‘Religion’, esp. 157–161; Lis and Soly, ‘De macht’. Also: Fröhlich, Die Soziale Sicherung, 261–263. 257 Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 368–369. 258 Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 62, 308, 369–370. 259 Huys, Duizend jaar, 61; Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 367; De Munck, ‘Fiscalizing’, 173. 260 Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 367. 261 Cf. Hanawalt and Reyerson, ‘Introduction’, xi and the chapters by Lindenbaum and McRee in this book. Also Lindenbaum, ‘Rituals’. 262 E.g., Phytian-Adams, ‘Ceremony. 263 Recent perspectives (with a focus on guilds) for the Southern Netherlands in Verleysen, Het hemelse festijn, 136–145, 256–259. 264 Verleysen, Het hemelse festijn, 259–261.

Equality, Solidarity and the Decline of Brotherhood  271 265 Trexler, Public Life, esp. xvii–xxvi; Verleysen, Het hemelse festijn, 261–262. 266 Thøfner. A Common Art, 11–15. Also Van Bruaene, ‘A Counterfeit Community’ (with additional references). 267 Muir, Ritual, 233. Also quoted in Arlinghaus, ‘The Myth’, 225. 268 Cited in Lynch, Individuals, 110–115, with reference to Henderson, Piety, 354–345. 269 Archer, ‘The Livery Companies’, 16. 270 Quote in “Pullan, ‘Catholics’, 449. 271 Rubin, Charity, 295–299. 272 Brown, Civic Ceremony, 20. 273 For the impact of this on civic rituals, see, Muir, Ritual, chs. 5 and 6. 274 Cf. Eckstein, ‘ “Con buona affetione” ’.

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280  Equality, Solidarity and the Decline of Brotherhood Walker Bynum, Caroline. Christian Materiality: An Essay on Religion in Late Medieval Europe. Brooklyn: Zone Books, 2011. Walsham, Alexandra. ‘The Reformation and “the Disenchantment of the World” Reassessed.’ The Historical Journal 51 (2008): 497–528. Wandel, Lee Palmer. The Eucharist in the Reformation: Incarnation and Liturgy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Wandel, Lee Palmer. The Reformation: Towards a New History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Weissman, Ronald F.E. Ritual Brotherhood in Renaissance Florence. London: Academic Press, 1982. Zika, Charles. ‘Hosts, Processions and Pilgrimages: Controlling the Sacred in Fifteenth-Century Germany.’ Past and Present 118 (1988): 26–64.

Epilogue Dis/Assembling the Workplace and the Agora

When in 1795 the French revolutionary armies occupied the then Austrian (Habsburg) Netherlands, the French soon introduced the D’Allarde and Le Chapelier Laws, which abolished corporative privileges and banned social organizations and strikes. These laws have decisively marked a great deal of nineteenth-century labor history and have often been seen as key elements in the rupture between the so-called ‘ancien régime’ and nineteenth-century modernism. Alternatively, they are seen as the culmination point of a prior tendency to deregulate the economy in the context of proletarianization, concentration trends and social polarization. As we have seen, the maximum numbers of journeymen per master had already been relaxed in the sixteenth century and even before. In the eighteenth century, this not only accelerated, but the very distinction between free and unfree laborers crumbled too. From 9 March 1756 Ghent masons and carpenters could employ as many journeymen as they wanted, regardless of their origin. An edict of 1 September 1760 prohibited all corporations in Bruges from privileging free journeymen. And from 13 July 1775 all hat makers in the Southern Netherlands were free to employ all the workers they needed.1 All this eventually culminated in the region-wide abolition of all restrictions on hiring journeymen on 9 February 1784.2 The masters’ privileges followed suit. From about mid-eighteenth century, adjacent guilds were often obligated to merge, as happened in Ypres with the carpenters and cabinet makers in 1742, in Antwerp with the carpenters and cabinet makers in the 1750s, in Bruges with the cabinet makers and carpenters in 1762 and with the shoemakers and old shoemakers in 1769, etcetera.3 On the surface, this served to relieve their debt burdens (as it halted expensive juridical litigation about their privileges),4 but there was more. On 20 March 1773 (and 8 July 1776) all masters in what was then called the ‘fine arts’ were liberated from registering with the St. Luke’s guilds and becoming a master.5 Mercers often succeeded in enlarging monopolies in retailing finished products—including imported products—at the expense of craft guilds, the monopoly of which was thus reduced to fabrication.6 In extension, mercers’ guilds increasingly by-passed the manufacturing guilds’ privileges on production. In Brussels cloth merchants obtained the right to

282  Dis/Assembling the Workplace and the Agora have their cloth dyed by whatever dyer they thought convenient as early as 3 February 1703.7 With a view to circumventing the rules, membership of manufacturing guilds was moreover combined with membership of retailing guilds.8 In Ghent a substantial overlap in membership between the guild of the tailors, the hosiery makers and the old cloth sellers has been found.9 The rule that manufacturing masters sold their finished products either directly to customers (in local service sectors) or to merchants unengaged in production (in export sectors) gradually succumbed. In 1784, the Privy Council issued a survey with a view to listing and charting all guilds with their respective rules, privileges and properties. The guilds perceived it as a threat—and rightly so. Around the same time, the floodgates seemed to open. From 20 December 1783 on the inhabitants of Ostend could buy whatever they wanted outside the city walls in order to sell it inside.10 In Antwerp, Brussels and Ghent, the privileges of the butchers were undermined between 1783 and 1785 as non-members of the guilds were allowed to sell meat a few days a week. In 1786, the production of hats was allowed in places without hat makers’ guilds. From 15 September 1785 textile manufacturers were not only allowed to have their fabrics dyed by whomever they chose, but to have it carded, combed and sheared wherever they wanted too—as a result of which a modern vertically integrated firm was no longer at odds with the regulatory framework.11 At first sight, then, the institutional framework was eventually adapted to the transformed socio-economic reality, in which wholesalers and large entrepreneurs had integrated ‘small commodity producers’ in their production and distribution networks. However, all this was part of a broader political transformation in which other ‘privileges’ were at stake too. In 1783 the Habsburg emperor from the Austrian house in Vienna, Joseph II, had abolished 163 cloisters, while the old bishopric seminars were replaced with a state-led seminar (in Leuven) for the education of priests. With regard to the political and judicial system similar drastic interventions were promulgated in the 1780s, like the abolition of the Council of Brabant, which was considered to be acting in defense of the olden privileges of the duchy of Brabant, including the privileges of its cities. With respect to the guilds, political historians have pointed to processes of state formation, during which the autonomy of cities and the power of guilds within cities waned in the long run.12 From this perspective, the eighteenth-century measures to curtail the guilds’ privileges were but the ultimate culmination of the late medieval consolidation of the power of the Burgundian and Habsburg rulers. It all led to the so-called Brabantine Revolution (1789–1790), which to a large degree was a conservative movement in opposition to the enlightened, centralizing and rationalizing reformations imposed from above.13 In this context, the abolition of the guilds was perceived and experienced not only as a threat to political privileges and the regulation of the economy, but to a traditional order in which masters were distinguished from journeymen and cities from the countryside.14 From the mid-eighteenth

Dis/Assembling the Workplace and the Agora  283 century on in particular, an opposition materialized between enlightened and centralizing forces on the one hand, and a corporative opposition on the other.15 This was even the case in cities in the Dutch Republic, including ‘s-Hertogenbosch, the Brabantine (and largely Catholic) city incorporated in the Republic since 1629, where according to Maarten Prak the patriotic opposition to William V, the Prince of Orange, could be characterized as ‘corporative’.16 But, this corporatism was not an immutable legacy from a distant past. Prak rightfully argues that the Patriots should not simply be seen as ‘conservative’. While acting in defense of Brabantine privileges, they used new strategies—such as the use of a national press—and incorporated new political ideas—some of which were borrowed from classical republicanism, or envisaged a more radical type of political equality and participation. Thus, the ideal past they invoked was largely an imaginary one, different from the reality of late medieval corporatism.17 Nor can this simply be viewed as a political opposition between ‘particularistic’ and centralizing forces. Philippe Guignet, who extensively studied the cities North and South of the border separating the Southern Netherlands from France, pitched local particularism and corporatism against absolutist centralization, but the former was tributary for him to postTridentine Catholicism and Counter-Reformation ideas and discourses.18 Moreover, while these cities were still perceived and experienced as corporative compositions of ‘bodies’ at the turn of the eighteenth century, his analysis inevitably concentrates on the political oligarchies emanating from sixteenth- and seventeenth-century transformations.19 In his research on England, Phil Withington likewise situates the high tide of urban corporative culture, in which towns were perceived as centers of civic virtue, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; and he attributes the emergent corporate system to Humanist ideas.20 Yet both Guignet’s and Withington’s cases may have been not only more oligarchic but also more focused on classical republicanism than on a guild ethic as understood by Black. In Guignet’s cities along the French border, local political power and opposition was largely embodied by the aldermen, who by then may have often lost contact with the guild representatives.21 Moreover, the ‘warm solidarities of the urban communities’ while being perceived as proudly withstanding a more ‘individualistic, indeed, more intellectually elitarian and eventually laicizing religion’ may themselves have been subject to similar trends.22 Mine is a plea, therefore, to distinguish the corporative political culture in the fifteenth century from a more republican and more oligarchic political culture in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. When focusing on the strong guilds in the Southern Netherlands, a long-term process comes to the fore in which the urban body politic was structurally transformed to the disadvantage of guilds and corporative ideals between roughly the late fifteenth and the mid-seventeenth century. With English cities in mind, Thomas Hobbes in 1651 described corporations not as necessary members of the commonwealth but as ‘worms in the entrails of a natural man’.23

284  Dis/Assembling the Workplace and the Agora The positive connotation of corporations as such had declined, just as did religious brotherhoods without political power. The latter experienced such evolutions as individualization and privatization of piety and devotion.24 Maarten Van Dijck has for instance shown that membership gradually turned into a more individual matter. Rules like the obligation to attend the funeral of a co-member’s child disappeared after the sixteenth century. Moreover only members were allowed to the meetings then; and offering drinks to outsiders disappeared too.25 While these organizations became more hierarchical, their social activities either decreased or became more socially exclusive. As in guilds, board members from confraternities increasingly renounced their duties.26 As these transformations were very similar to the ones experienced by the guilds as described in this book, this hints at transformations on the level of what is now called civil society. Post-Tridentine religious brotherhoods were often impressive in terms of sheer membership levels, but their collective activities were minimal—and for the majority of the members, in all likelihood, non-existent.27 Even prior to their abolition in the sixteenth century, pre-Tridentine religious brotherhoods were no longer able to really enthuse people to engage in the collective.28 This is very suggestive of a new type of civil society emerging; one based on the voluntary association of free individuals and with a greater degree of autonomy vis-à-vis the state. Did a ‘modern’ civil society emerge in the eighteenth century after all and was Habermas right all along?29 This is not really the place to examine new forms of civil society emerging in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but my research can nonetheless help to open some of the black boxes upon which modern forms of civil society—whether real or imaginary—were built. In extension, I should be able to shed additional light on the relationship of individuals with the state, the market and the private sphere of the family alike. After all, the slow but persistent, if uneven, waning of the guilds necessarily impacted upon all these terrains.

Disassembling Civil Society In a nutshell, this book has recounted the history of a centuries-long swansong of communal and corporative ideals. From the perspective of corporative community, however, it started in rather promising fashion. Not only did the guilds in the Southern regions of the Netherlands obtain a great deal of political power compared to other regions in Europe, the cities in these regions were also more corporatively organized. While the Italian cities turned into oligarchic Republics, the late medieval cities in present-day Belgium to a degree lived up to the ideal of the city as a political body with different members, among which the guilds figured prominently. Among other things the pyramidal structure of the body politic and the absence of territorial mechanisms corroborated the idea that the metaphor of the body was more than mere rhetoric. These cities were really imagined as a body

Dis/Assembling the Workplace and the Agora  285 composed of house fathers, who together formed the body of a clan or a corporation, which in turn formed the members of the urban body politic. The urban body politic was seen as an organic whole, with both the different patrician families and the different guilds being the different members. These members themselves were in turn composed of members, i.e., either smaller groups or patres familias—the latter being the head of a household with, again, different members. As such, the ideal city was hierarchical to the core, notwithstanding the communal ideals. All this was to a large extent contingent upon religious sensitivities. While the metaphor of the body in political thought and ritual referred to the body of Christ and the Holy City, Christianity impacted upon the political structures and mechanisms in two related ways. First, the Catholic faith really fostered such communal practices as collective gatherings in mass or in processions, which were key to the guilds as a collectivity. Secondly, these gatherings were imbued with the idea that God was really present in such material artifacts as the host and a relic. The immanence of God was, in fact, a key condition for communal feelings, as it nurtured the idea that anyone present was part of the larger universal soul of Christianity. In extension, this religious ground helps to explain the guild ethic, which was expressed in such notions as brotherhood, equality and friendship and materialized in practices of mutual aid. In the cities it materialized moreover literally through the building of altars, chapels and almshouses. Nor were the implications in the socio-economic sphere insignificant. Access to the city as an economic unit was conditional upon being a member of the city as a political community. While citizenship was a standard requirement for mastership, apprenticeship served not only as a means to acquire technical knowledge but to become a moral and political subject too. Guild-based masters moreover connected their own economic and political standing to the public and political spheres in such rituals as urban processions and parades. Of course, it remains to be seen to what extent notions of friendship and mutual aid were really practiced in reality. This is impossible to tell given the current state of the art. Yet a long-term decline of the idea(l)s could be revealed when systematically looking at research based on regulations, account books and, to a lesser extent, juridical litigation and vernacular literature. From at least the sixteenth century on, but in all likelihood even earlier in some instances, the corporation waned as a meaningful and touting political organ for a growing number of freemen. Guild-based masters disengaged from office-holding in guilds, collective activities either waned or became more exclusive, and the presence of guilds in political and religious ceremonies was soon limited to the guilds’ boards. In the socio-economic sphere, this was accompanied by relaxing limits on workshop size and the transformation of mutual aid practices into bureaucratized insurance mechanisms. However uneven and irregular these evolutions often were, they can all be seen as symptomatic for the decline of whatever communal and confraternal spirit there had been inside medieval and late-medieval guilds.

286  Dis/Assembling the Workplace and the Agora Clearly, then, the decline of the guild’s power and ethos cannot be addressed from one perspective—be it economic, political or religious. While proletarianization, state formation, oligarchization and cultural and religious transformations were involved, these elements were deeply entangled. This is also why this cannot be connected to present-day definitions of civil society as a concatenation of voluntary associations independent of both the political sphere of the state and the private sphere of the family and the market.30 While membership was all but voluntary for those with economic and political ambitions, the guilds were an integral part of the urban body politic. Moreover, the guilds studied here cannot be seen as separate from the private sphere of market and family. On the contrary, master status largely overlapped with the status of both housefather (and husband) and manager of the family firm. To a degree, the disentanglement of these spheres was precisely what occurred in the long run. While the emergence of an oligarchic political elite inside the guilds and the retreat from politics on the part of the large majority of guild-based masters exemplifies the gradual separation of the political and the economic sphere, the guild and the private sphere of the family demerged as well. Schematically, the long-term evolution can be summarized as follows: in the late medieval period one was either born into the guild or entitled to membership only after a period of apprenticeship, in which one was socialized—as by a father—into a certain guild-related role. In the eighteenth century, in contrast, membership was defined in a bureaucratic, meritocratic and pecuniary way—which is why masters’ sons also often had to fulfill such obligations as finishing an apprenticeship term and master piece. The guild was now perceived as something exterior to both the political and the family. Without implying that ‘modern’ civil society organizations are entirely exterior to the political, something had changed profoundly as far as the guilds were concerned. Clear-cut fault lines are obviously difficult to pinpoint, but the midseventeenth century may have served as a tipping point of sorts. Corporative organisations such as chambers of rhetoric adapted to the commercializing environment and evolved into voluntary associations similar to the ones Habermas envisioned after the mid-seventeenth century.31 One of the most virulent anti-guild pamphlet ever—‘t Welvaren Der Stad Leiden (the prosperity of the city of Leiden) by Pieter De La Court—was published in the Dutch republic in 1659.32 From a practical angle, the juridical litigation of the guild of the gold- and silversmiths against Guillaume (William) De Rijck highlighted profound tensions between the apprentice as either a future master-citizen or simply a skilled laborer or entrepreneur. The latter view started to predominate from the second half of the seventeenth century on—even among guild-masters themselves. The tailors in Antwerp in 1673 complained that the deans of the hosiery guilds had admitted large numbers of apprentices, women and non-citizens to their guild; they stated that the masters concerned had encouraged the unfree to present certificates of

Dis/Assembling the Workplace and the Agora  287 apprenticeship from places where there was not even a guild.33 In Brussels at the turn of the eighteenth century, complaints are recorded that apprenticeship requirements were no longer being observed and artisans were becoming masters without having finished an apprenticeship term.34 Alternatively, the carpenters’ guild in Brussels enacted in 1705 that an apprentice could register for free if he declared that he would not apply for mastership afterwards.35 The central state institutions were often called upon by economic actors who wanted to circumvent the guilds’ privileges. This was particularly the case in a range of dossiers on dispensation of apprenticeship. Apprenticeship, the key pillar of guild privilege, was gravely undermined around the turn of the eighteenth century, when a growing number of immigrant artisans and entrepreneurs requested dispensation from apprenticeship before the Privy Council, which granted it in most cases.36 Scottish enlightenment thinkers were among the first to try to articulate the changes in the urban body politic. In intellectual circles, civil society was synonymous with the political community (as opposed to the state of nature) up to and including the eighteenth century. Most scholars now agree that Hegel was the first to really distinguish civil society from the state, and even then only in a rather ambiguous (I should say ‘dialectical’) way.37 Yet, among such thinkers as Adam Smith, David Hume and Adam Ferguson, civil society gradually became defined in its relationship with a free and self-regulating market, to be seen as a necessary bulwark against an oppressive state.38 Moreover, active citizenship was distinguished from passive citizenship in their search for a new political imaginary. While civic republicanism had traditionally invoked active (although disinterested) political subjects, Hume and Smith were satisfied with a more passive type of political involvement. For Hume and Smith, adequate political institutions rather than virtuous men were needed.39 Thus political institutions separated from ethics, which must have helped to turn guilds and religious brotherhoods into entirely outdated institutions. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, a vision of civil society emerged in which the guilds’ ‘privileges’ were considered ‘shackles’ to be freed from. In response, the guilds typically tried to safeguard their privileges, cultivating a profoundly corporative idiom about rights and privileges in the process. Yet even their own discourses were subject to change. After the mid-eighteenth century they invoked the ‘people’ (volk) or the cities’ inhabitants rather than citizens (poorters) or freemen in the possession of political rights, the latter moreover being called ‘natural’ rather than being based on privileges granted by a feudal ruler.40 While these guilds hardly resembled their late medieval counterparts, the political language as a whole had changed. From the thirteenth century on polis had been translated as civitas, which betrayed the power of the cities and urban actors. The term civitas was moreover connected to community (which was in turn used as a synonym for politica), as a result of which a confluence of state (or the city) and society had emerged.41 But, from the sixteenth century on, and more

288  Dis/Assembling the Workplace and the Agora explicitly from about the mid-eighteenth century, a distinction between state and civil society was gradually articulated—the ground perhaps being prepared by Leonardo Bruni, who had used the term societas civilis for Aristotles’ concept of Koinonìa Politikè.42 My book shows that this was intimately connected to changing political practices and realities, which included the decline of the corporative spirit. So this is not only about guilds losing the political or even ideological battle against large merchant entrepreneurs or free-market thinking. This book turns out to be about the transformation of the political as such. In the eighteenth century, the political is no longer understood as an ontologically grounded harmonious social whole, but rather as a compositional collective, i.e., a concatenation of deliberative individuals which constitute a whole only through the positing of an imaginary contractual past.43 In the Middle Ages, in contrast, ‘consent’ was not the aggregation of the individual wills of all equal individuals, but rather the consent of a relatively free ‘body’, which had obtained the right to have a say and share in governance.44 What emerged gradually was a sense of individuality and autonomy, with the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century individual becoming the ‘proprietors of their own capacities and of what they have acquired by their exercise’.45 Individual freedom henceforth had a natural origin and became a function of possession and merit.

The Depoliticization of Artisanal Labor This is not to say, of course, that economic developments did not matter. What I would instead like to highlight is the intersection of political, ideological and economic dimensions. In the past, social historians have fought heroic battles over the question of whether prime movers or causal factors are to be found in either class and capital or culture.46 In my view, it hardly makes sense to look for a prime mover or even a limited range of causes to explain what happened in guilds and beyond. My inspiration comes from Science and Technology Studies and Actor Network Theory, the proponents of which refrain from distinguishing explananda and explanans altogether. According to Bruno Latour, isolating a causal factor implies invoking abstractions like either class and structure or the aggregate will of individuals making rational choices. This not only involves a political position, but it is also contingent upon a modernist stance and therefore part of the evolution to be examined. The alternative position does not necessarily amount to surrendering to sterile description—perhaps on the contrary. Anyone who wishes to have the past speak to the present, is forced to include in the analysis the way reality and truth were represented and fabricated in the past itself, especially when knowledge and epistemology are implicated. After all, history is written by the victors of history, now as well as in the past. Resulting from a complex and power-laden process, their visions have been accepted as objective and true. Critically addressing the present-day status quo therefore

Dis/Assembling the Workplace and the Agora  289 implies opening the black boxes upon which these visions are built and examining the conditions which render them objective and ‘natural’. The importance thereof becomes particularly urgent when turning to the issue of labor, which was (and is) itself deeply entangled in all these dimensions. In the eighteenth century the encroachment on the guilds’ privileges was backed and legitimized by enlightened and liberal discourses of such French physiocrats as François Quesnay (1694–1774) and Anne Robert Jacques Turgot (1727–1781) and such Scottish political philosophers as James Stuart and Adam Smith. What these thinkers had in common was a virulent contempt of what they considered ‘privileges’, which in their eyes hampered freedom and efficient market mechanisms. Such views resonated in the Southern Netherlands, where it was for instance argued in 1762 by councilor Martin De Mullendorff of the Council of Finance that the Antwerp woolen and silk weavers were lagging behind because of the privileges of their workers and their use of old techniques.47 A central bone of contention was apprenticeship. While apprenticeship was key in the definition and guarding of the guilds’ privileges, these thinkers considered it detrimental in a broader sense. Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations notoriously distinguished the ‘human ingenuity’ of artists and engineers and other inventors from the mechanical work of the rank-and-file, arguing that ‘(l)ong apprenticeships are altogether unnecessary. The arts, which are much superior to common trades, such as those of making clocks and watches, contain no such mystery as to require a long course of instruction. The first invention of such beautiful machines, indeed, and even that of some of the instruments employed in making them, must, no doubt, have been the work of deep thought and long time, and may justly be considered as among the happiest efforts of human ingenuity. But when both have been fairly invented and are well understood, to explain to any young man, in the compleatest manner, how to apply the instruments and how to construct the machines, cannot well require more than the lessons of a few weeks: perhaps those of a few days might be sufficient’.48 In tandem with the political role of artisans and artists, the perception of labor, skills and talent fundamentally transformed. In the Southern Netherlands, the first cracks were already appearing in the late sixteenth century, and it was again a complex process involving both shop floor practices and institutional transformations. Long before the abolition of master status for visual artists in 1773, the latter gradually distanced themselves from the mechanical arts. Around 1600 the Antwerp sculptors for instance, aspired to demerge from the masons, with which they were grouped in the Guild of the Four Crowned. They argued that the officio mechanico of their colleagues was inferior to their own ‘art’ (conste). In the 1660s, the Antwerp

290  Dis/Assembling the Workplace and the Agora Art Academy was founded, in which painters, sculptors and architects were grouped as arti del disegno, considered more akin to the talents of ‘the men of letters’.49 To date, such transformations have not been connected to transformations in political thought and the body politic. Nevertheless, political subjectivity and voice was intricately bound to the perception of one’s value added to the common good in general or the economy in particular. This is also what was at stake in enlightened thinking. Long gone are the days when Smith’s thinking was reduced to the big bang of modern laissez-faire economics. Instead, the work of Smith and other political economists is now seen as part of a comprehensive reflection on the relationship of, on the one hand, economic practices and ideals and, on the other, ethics and politics. In the last instance, it is a reflection on political society per se, with the proviso that the most important problem identified by these thinkers was how to deal with what they called ‘commercial society’. Rather than guarding the market from the state, such commercial humanists as Montesquieu, Smith, Hume and Ferguson, were really searching for a substitute for the disinterested virtue of classical republicanism and civic humanism which they perceived as being threatened by commercial relationships.50 As Mark Jurdjevic has argued, this is not necessarily at odds with Italian (Florentine) Republicanism or classical civic Humanism.51 But it was in any case at loggerheads with the corporative conception of the body politic as composite and distinctive and based upon privileges. The market was now attributed a more constitutive role in human morality and ethics. While humans were ever in danger of succumbing to such passions as greed and self-indulgence in commercial society, their self-interests would nonetheless be steered towards civil behavior by the market, and thanks to the division of labor. Given that economic actors needed to be trustworthy and respectable, the market would in a way polish manners and morals.52 As such, the individual was now addressed, not in its connection with the polis or the body politic, but from the perspective of its being face-to-face with the market. This is crucial, as it presupposes precisely the evolution sketched in this book. What disappeared in the cities examined in the previous chapters were the communal and corporative mechanisms and values which encapsulated (at least in the political imaginary of guild-based artisans) both the individual and the market and which were in turn connected to religious feelings and practices. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries did not simply witness the ascendance of a free market to be defended from institutions, but a totally different relationship between the individual, on one hand, and the market, the state and the family on the other. My book attempts to add to the understanding of this history by including epistemological transformations and changing perceptions of labor, which, as we have seen, were intimately entangled with the political sphere. One of the most remarkable paradoxes in socio-economic history, and pre-eminently in labor history, is that the artisan’s political voice and clout declined

Dis/Assembling the Workplace and the Agora  291 in tandem with the growing importance of what economic historians now call ‘useful knowledge’.53 As Pamela Long and Pamela Smith among others have argued, artisans in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries developed a specific epistemology—one which informed the seventeenth-century scientific revolution because of the importance of experiment (trial-and-error) and observation.54 As explained in chapter 1, the underlying epistemic transformation may help explain why guilds gained access to the political sphere in the first place: their experiments and ever more accurate imitations of nature helped bridge the gap between nature and artifice, which had kept artisans and artists at arm’s length from the political. Yet, the ever growing importance of experimentation and observation did not give the artisans political clout in the long run. As Pamela Smith has cleverly remarked, ‘artisanal bodily experience was absorbed into the work of the natural philosopher at the same time that the artisan himself was excised from it’.55 What actually occurred during the enlightenment was a certain de-politicization of the artisans’ knowledge. While the artisans’ savoir-faire was intimately connected to the splendor of the city in civic humanism and other Renaissance thinking—including the Antwerp diamond cutters, who connected their skills and knowledge to the honor of the city in the late sixteenth century—technical skills and knowledge were reduced to a factor in the production process with Adam Smith and others. To quote Adam Smith: ‘(t)he improved dexterity of a workman may be considered in the same light as a machine or instrument of trade which facilitates and abridges labor, and which, though it costs a certain expense, repays that expense with a profit’.56 In a similar vein, the famous eighteenth-century no-nonsense entrepreneur and industrialist Josiah Wedgwood referred to his workers as ‘sett(s) [sic] of hands’.57 While an ethic of craftsmanship had existed in Antiquity and the Middle Ages and the religious value of human labor and industriousness had been stressed by Protestant Reformers, workers were now reduced to (in Diderot’s phrasing) human ‘automatons’, devoid of human spirit and political subjectivity.58 This movement may have been pioneered by humanist thinkers, who stressed the utility of professional activities, while religious connotations gradually disappeared after the mid-sixteenth century.59 But, labor was still directly connected to the common good there, while in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it was transformed—among others by Diderot, one of the authors of the famous Encyclopédie—into an abstract factor in ‘the wealth of nations’.60 This is in stark contrast to the guilds’ strategies, in which the value of labor was deliberately connected to the urban body politic in their rituals and visual culture, including the collective hallmarks which simultaneously referred to the urban body politic and the intrinsic value of the product. In fact, the value of the product (the guaranteed quality of the raw materials used) was connected to the political standing of the master, whose position as a freeman served as a guarantee to customers.

292  Dis/Assembling the Workplace and the Agora This connection was in turn based upon a historically contingent attitude towards value and materiality. As Pamela Smith has shown, matter was not something dead and passive for late medieval artisans, it rather gave access to God’s ultimate wisdom owing to God being immanent in all things created. In this vein, skills cannot, for this period, be reduced to sophisticated dexterity. Technical knowledge, skills and ingenuity are not simply located in the human body and mind of the artisan and artist as the nineteenthcentury view on talent and ingenium would have it. Given that God’s creative talent was itself present in matter, the creation of an artifact also involved the devout piety necessary to connect with the real Creator.61 This attitude dissipated in the long run, due, in all likelihood, to fundamental transformations in the attitude towards human and economic value. As Germano Maifreda has shown, the emergence of the classical type of economic thinking summarized as ‘political economy’ was related to such broad transformations as Renaissance thinking and Humanism, oversees exploration and the scientific revolution. While Renaissance thinking and Humanism for instance fostered a more abstract and mathematical approach, the confrontation with other value systems in the new world helped value to be seen as something relative and based upon convention, rather than intrinsic. Building on this, the so-called scientific revolution not only emphasized quantification and precision, but it also created a new approach to nature, which in turn fostered a greater appreciation of technology.62 Again, therefore, the loss of the guilds’ credibility cannot be reduced to economic or political transformations in a narrow sense. One way to illustrate this is through the gift-theory of Marcel Mauss, which in my view is complementary to the Marxian notion of the division of capital and labor.63 The waning of intrinsic value as the decisive factor in product quality and the disparagement of the collective trademarks could be seen as the disappearance of the ‘spirit of the giver’ from the guild-based masters’ products. The ‘spirit of the giver’ is to be understood here as the political status of artisans as urban freemen, which was forged through the connection between master-ship and urban citizenship and was literally stamped on the product. After all, this entanglement was nicely evinced with the guilds’ collective hallmarks, in which reference to intrinsic value (as defined in the guilds’ regulations), the city as a body politic and the master were often merged in one and the same mark (with, for instance, the master’s initials integrated in the emblem or weapon of the city).64 The disappearance thereof may have been connected to the waning of patronage-relationships as they must have existed between master and merchant or master and customer. As is well known, the difference between gifts and commodities was that gifts were instrumental in forging and maintaining social relationships—as they created an obligation to give something in return.65 Of course, it would be equally reductive when deducing that market exchange substituted gift exchange and that individualism replaced patronage relationships. Rather than as an alternative prime mover, I consider

Dis/Assembling the Workplace and the Agora  293 both the gift-perspective and the epistemic as additional factors necessary for a better understanding of the deep transformations the early modern period has witnessed. With regard to the value of products, I have in earlier work suggested that the removal of labor from product quality may have been contingent upon an epistemic transformation akin to the one sketched by Michel Foucault in his work on what he called the ‘archeology of knowledge’.66 The entanglement of intrinsic value, the political standing and the urban body politic resembles Foucault’s Renaissance episteme, in which things (and words) gave access to truth precisely because of God’s immanence—resembling and similitude being the prime principles.67 Hallmarks again perfectly illustrate what changed at the end of the ancien régime from this perspective. Starting from the eighteenth century references to the name of the master (or the family firm), the city and the quality of the raw materials used were applied in separate marks. The value of raw materials had literally demerged from both the political standing of the master and the city as a political context; nor was the master still connected to the body politic through these marks. Simultaneously, the importance of intrinsic value in product quality tended to wane altogether, with design, novelty and decoration—to be summarized as ‘fashion’—now becoming more important.68 And here again, a connection with epistemic transformations could be surmised. In fashion, the value of a product is conditional upon its place among a range of products or in a taxonomy of products. Moreover, the guilds’ collective hallmarks were in the eighteenth and nineteenth century typically replaced with discourses on product quality on trade cards and in advertisements, catalogues, leaflets and so forth. This resembles Foucault’s classical episteme, the advent of which he situates around the midseventeenth century. In the classical episteme, truth is manmade, produced in discourses and by building taxonomies—representation and difference rather than resemblance now being the underlying principles.69

Governmentality and the Emergence of the Urban as a Territory Similar perspectives help to better understand the place of the city as a more or less bounded body politic in the broader political framework. In order to understand this, it is important to stress first that the corporative idea exceeded the city. Not only were the cities themselves members of the broader body of the state, one could also become a member of the guild through an apprenticeship finished in another city—provided there was a guild there as well—as we have seen in chapter 3. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, guilds in the same industry but operating in other cities maintained systems of reciprocal freeing, in which they (or the municipal authorities) acknowledged each other’s apprenticeship. An immigrant from Brussels who fulfilled his apprenticeship term there was exempt from apprenticeship when arriving in Antwerp and could immediately take the master’s test.

294  Dis/Assembling the Workplace and the Agora This is entirely consistent with both economic approaches to the mobility of skills and Aristotelian approaches to the corporations as political communities. While social and economic historians have qualified the idea that guilds and cities were exclusive with reference, among other things, to the obligation to ‘wander’ for journeymen,70 it has been argued recently that a logic of ‘incorporation’ prevailed.71 What guilds and municipalities safeguarded was not access to a city but membership of a corporation, which perfectly chimes with what we know from religious brotherhoods, which did not generally recruit on a territorial basis either.72 As Maarten Van Dijck has shown, members of confraternities and chambers of rhetoric did not necessarily live in the parish, nor were they obliged to do so. People were rather considered members when they contributed to the annual meal, which is reminiscent of a deep confraternal logic, not confined by geographical boundaries or even proximity.73 Van Dijck has even shown that people could sometimes freely transfer to another confraternity and be exempt from the obligatory oath of entrance if the new confraternity honored the same patron saint as the old.74 Nevertheless, from about the mid-seventeenth century on, city walls did serve as a boundary. On the one hand, the political field of gravity shifted to the level of the territorial state, at the expense of the autonomy of both cities and guilds. On the other hand, however, the dissipation of the cities and the guilds as genuine ‘corporations’ turned the cities into bounded territories too. This is at least suggested by some fragmentary data reaped from regulations. Up to and including the sixteenth century, the guilds did not usually distinguish local-born from others when defining entry requirements.75 However, the system of reciprocal freeing gradually became obsolete from the second half of the seventeenth century on.76 Moreover, as shown in chapter 3, some guilds gradually started to differentiate the fees for those who had learned locally from those who had learned elsewhere—thus stressing the local context rather than the corporative context.77 This chimes with the situation in eighteenth-century Turin as described by Simona Cerutti in her analysis of dispensations of apprenticeship granted by the king. While citizenship was based there on either a certain ‘rooting’ (enracinement) or a certain ‘belonging’ (appartenance), the latter could be proven by the mastering of ‘local knowledge’, such as the ability to recognize the origin and quality of raw materials.78 Nor was this the only way in which a more territorial logic replaced the corporative logic. In theory the geographical range from which religious brotherhoods recruited their members could have increased in a post-Tridentine Catholic context owing to the importance of the Catholic identity.79 Yet in practice geographical boundaries would seem to have mattered more—at least in the eighteenth century. In eighteenth-century Aalst, an urban logic sometimes became apparent, for instance in the Holy Altar Confraternity, which was clearly focused on the city itself.80 In other confraternities in Aalst the emerging practices of registering the geographical origin of the members

Dis/Assembling the Workplace and the Agora  295 likewise suggests a growing preoccupation with this element.81 Last but not least, geographical origin gradually started to serve as a more important rationale for distinguishing deserving from undeserving poor. While begging and vagabondage were criminalized, access to poor relief became conditional upon residence and settlement for shamefaced poor as well.82 In short, from one stage in a pyramidically structured corporative body, the city turned into a governed territory—however fated it was to submerge soon into a larger territory itself. Along with the rise of individualism and economic liberalism, this shift can also be better understood thanks to concepts introduced by Michel Foucault, in particular his concepts of governmentality and bio-politics. These concepts imply that liberalism is not to be seen as the absence of rule resulting from a liberal ideology, but rather as the production of an individual which rules itself. Ruling materializes in a range of technologies and the practices of experts from medical doctors to architects and town planners, which together create a self-disciplining subject to be ruled through.83 According to Foucault, this was prepared for in the early modern period: it would have emerged from the doctrine of the reason of state, especially from the sixteenth century on. Principles of governance became autonomous from both the prince and the divine cosmological order of the world—with the state henceforth being seen as a perpetual reality. Moreover, political action was no longer grounded in the morality or ‘prudence’ of the prince and, hence, religiously motivated. Religion (or the ‘pastoral’, in Foucault’s terminology) receded not only from guilds but from politics and governance as a whole.84 Simultaneously, the well-being of the state and the welfare of the population started to coincide. While individual happiness prospers in a powerful and wealthy state, the latter’s success is contingent upon the strength and productivity of the population. In line with this, governing is henceforth done from a distance, not directly on the subject’s bodies, but through a focus on a population and based upon proto-statistical knowledge about the latter’s productivity. In this context, a Polizeiwissenschaft and bio-power emerged based upon calculative techniques.85 To date, these ideas have inspired research on governing on a state level, including canal building and the use of accounting techniques by ministers and monarchs.86 However, a similar approach may also shed new light on the transformation of the city as a body politic. In his famous lectures at the Collège de France in 1977–1978 Sécurité, Territoire, Population, Foucault argued that what was at stake in the eighteenth century ‘was the question of the spatial, juridical, administrative, and economic opening up of the town: resituating the town in a space of circulation’.87 The town from a closed and walled territory would have transformed into a space to be structured and governed with a view to the circulation of people and goods within and also across the cities’ boundaries. And indeed, in sharp contrast with the essentialist view of a Leonardi Bruni the city appears as an abstracted unity

296  Dis/Assembling the Workplace and the Agora in Adam Smith’s writings. While Adam Smith’s theory on economic development can in a way be seen as a theory on urbanization, the form and composition of the city is now explained through such factors as transportation costs, the division of labor and the level of demand.88 My case study moreover suggests that the perception and experience of the city as a territory did transform in reality too—although not necessarily as Foucault envisaged it. Foucault described a shift from acquiring, defending and ruling a territory to governing and administrating a population in the seventeenth century, but this was rather misleading. While feudal rule was in his lectures connected to guarding a territory, in actual fact a clear sense of territory and boundaries (contrary to ‘terrain’ and ‘land’) was largely absent before the seventeenth century. Alternatively, territory as an object of rule did not wane but rather emerged in the seventeenth century, along with the ideas about governing and administering a ‘national’ economy and a population.89 What actually happened is that the ‘quality’ and conceptualization of territory fundamentally transformed—as has been maintained by political theorist and geographer Stuart Elden in a fruitful dialogue with Foucault. From being a static terrain or land bearing economic fruits it transformed into an area which, in tandem with its population, was mapped, measured, ordered, and demarcated. Gradually territory was understood in geometrical terms, and it became part, as a material reality, of political technology.90 Thus, this may again be connected to epistemological transformations. Political historians have already pointed to the work of William Petty, who in his Political Arithmetik (1682) fostered a type of governance based on population and trade surveys. In such regions as Italy, France and the Low Countries, political decisions would have been based to an increasing degree upon data yielded with the help of accounting techniques, financial management, and mathematics, which partly replaced the late humanist reliance on rhetoric, history and law.91 Following Elden, however, the emergence of a territorial logic in the seventeenth century too was contingent upon epistemological transformations in general and developments in geometry in particular. The modern notion of measure as expressed by Descartes would for instance have fostered a view on land and territory as something autonomous, abstract and metrical which could serve as a base for calculations.92 Moreover, this transformation would have originated in cities, rather then at the level of the emerging nation state. In this vein, it is not very helpful to see cities, as Foucault did, as either exceptions (before the seventeenth century) or as forerunners.93 Nor is it fruitful to continue to simply oppose cities to central or territorial states. The fate that befell cities and guilds was largely similar to the fate that befell central states. And the fate that befell cities and guilds was connected to that which befell artisans, who from the smallest unit in the corporative logic transformed into the smallest unit in a calculative logic.

***

Dis/Assembling the Workplace and the Agora  297 Taken together, this cluster of transformations cleared the path for a separation of housefather and firm owner, living and working, and civil society and the state. In addition, the individual as an economic actor demerged from the individual as a political actor—save for an oligarchic and plutocratic elite that tended to instrumentalize the political if not for their personal interests then for a common good henceforth defined entirely differently. Most artisans were reduced to economic actors exclusively, even when they remained small independent shopkeepers or entrepreneurs. As manufacturers, they even retreated from the public sphere in a literal sense. While their public ceremonies lost importance, the manufacturing process was relegated to manufactories or to the back of the house. In a guild context, the production process was to take place in the front room. Working at the back, in cellars or attics was looked upon with suspicion. Yet several economic transformations combined to disfavor this situation. Apart from the rise of manufactories (which did not generally take place until the mid-eighteenth century) changes in the material culture and the display of products must have removed labor to the back of the house owing to the need for a pleasant shop-space at the front.94 This is related to transformations in the relationship between production and retail, as a result of which former independent masters no longer produced for their own customers (or a merchant in export industries) but for a wholesaler who then dispatched the products to shops (either his own shops or others).95 However uneven, a great many sectors experienced an evolution in which a wife no longer sold products made by her husband, but products delivered by wholesalers. In the Low Countries, this evolution must have been even more pronounced given that fashionable products were increasingly imported from the second half of the seventeenth century on. In a sense, then, the artisans were back to where they started. As we have seen in the first chapter, political participation was considered irreconcilable with working with one’s hands by both some famous philosophers from Antiquity and oligarchic elites in the early urban communes in Europe. According to Plato and Aristotle, who were mobilized in the Middle Ages and beyond to defend oligarchy and the exclusion from politics of artisans and commoners, the necessity to work allegedly precluded disinterested contemplation, which was necessary to act in the name of the whole community. This situation was partly reversed in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but the guilds’ victory was partial and in no way secured. As well as enacting that the Ghent guilds would be governed not by guild members but by outsiders elected by the aldermen and the representative of the count, the famous Carolinian Concession in 1540 described the guilds’ governors as ‘burghers of the city, not professing any craft or trade’.96 In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, political thinkers still pondered about whether industry and political participation were not mutually exclusive. The tension between ‘the state of nature’ and ‘the state’ or ‘civil society’ was in all likelihood even more pronounced in the writings of

298  Dis/Assembling the Workplace and the Agora seventeenth- and eighteenth-century theorists of social contract than it had been in late medieval political thinking.97 All the talk about ‘natural rights’ notwithstanding, it was now even less ‘natural’ for artisans to be accepted as political subjects. Discussions between the guilds and the municipality in Antwerp around the middle of the seventeenth century nicely illustrate this. The guilds urged the magistracy to grant them access to the ‘bowl of charters’ (the comme or Privilegekom), in order to settle some long-standing disputes about their rights and privileges. This was, however, denied to them, with the argument that the masters—especially the masters of subaltern guilds—would misread and mis-interpret the charters. The latter were referred to as the ‘secrets of the city’ to be kept by the magistracy—which was obviously a small oligarchic elite by then.98 The situation did not improve in the context of debates about the socalled ‘commercial society’, in which the artisans were also perceived as threatened by corruption. Among other things, the division of labor would have been a threat to their character. This is clear in the writings of Adam Ferguson, who argued that the separation of professions served ‘to break the bands of society, to substitute form in place of ingenuity, and to withdraw individuals from the common scene of occupation, on which the sentiments of the heart, and the mind, are most happily employed’. As a result, so argued Ferguson, ‘society is made to consist of parts, of which none is animated with the spirit of society itself’.99 This quote nicely summarizes the disentanglement of artisans from the body politic and of civil society from both the state and the private sphere of market and family. While the guilds had transformed into a separate juridical and institutional framework used to defend economic privileges, the value and virtue of individual artisans and workers was henceforth objectified and naturalized through market mechanisms. This is clearly one of the central tenets of Adam Smith’s writings. While he was surely not the advocate of free market thinking and laissez-faire politics nineteenth-century political economists have made of him, it is still true that for Smith (and others) ‘(w)orkers, not citizens, are the inhabitants of the burgeoning industrial age, and the workplace not the agora, provides their stage’.100

Notes  1  Van Houtte, Histoire, 72–74. More examples in Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 285.  2 Van Houtte, Histore, 79. See also Sonenscher, Work, ch. 8.  3 Van Houtte, Histoire, 58, 69–71 (with more examples); Vanden Berghe, Jacobijnen, 68. Similar measures in Lille and Valenciennes, which were under French rule by then. Guignet, Le pouvoir, 303–304.   4 The guilds’ autonomy in suing and incurring debts was curtailed too. Cf. Van Houtte, Histoire, 61–66.  5 Van Houtte, Histoire, 77; Dambruyne, ‘De Gentse bouwvakambachten’, 56; De Munck, ‘La production’, 594.  6  See e.g., Van Damme, Verleiden, 92–101, 233–239; Dewilde, Corporaties, 129–142.

Dis/Assembling the Workplace and the Agora  299  7 Van Houtte, Histoire, 77–78.  8 Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 75; Van Damme, Verleiden, 96; Dewilde, Corporaties, ch. 5 and ‘Expanding’.  9 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 253–257. 10 Van Houtte, Histoire, 99. 11 Van Houtte, Histoire, 100. Also Vanden Berghe, Jacobijnen, 67–70. 12 E.g., Van Honacker, ‘De politieke cultuur’ and ‘Alliances’; Boone and Prak, ‘Rulers’, 113–127; Prak, ‘Corporate’, 83–86, 93–95. 13 An excellent case study is Vanden Berghe, Jacobijnen. 14  See e.g., Prak, Republikeinse veelheid, 279–280. Also: Kaplan, ‘Social Classification’. 15 Cf. Vanden Berghe, Jacobijnen; Prak, Republikeinse veelheid; Guignet, Le pouvoir; Van Honacker, ‘De politieke cultuur’. Also Haupt (ed.), Das Ende (with additional references) and Schmidt, ‘Zünfte’. 16 Prak, Republikeinse veelheid, esp. 132–136, 190–197, 277–296, 317–324. 17 Ibidem, 196–197, 320–321. 18 Guignet, Le pouvoir, esp. 500–503. 19 Ibidem. Also Junot, Les bourgeois. 20 Withington, The Politics. 21 Cf. De Keyzer, ‘Opportunisme’. 22 Quotes in Guignet, Le pouvoir, 501 (‘une civilization traditionelle soucieuse de ne pas renoncer aux chaudes solidarités des communautés urbaines sacralisées au profit d’une religion individualiste, voir intellectuellement élitiste et à terme laïcisatrice’.) 23 Quoted in Withington, The Politics, 11. 24 E.g., Decraene, Boundaries, ch. 2 (with additional references) 25 Van Dijck, ‘Bonding’, 175. Van Dijck, ‘Bonding’, 165–166, 176–179; Decraene, Boundaries, 82. Also: 26  Dewilde and Poukens, ‘Confraternities’. 27 Van Dijck, ‘Bonding’; Decraene, Boundaries. 28 Trio, Volksreligie, 327–349; Van Bruaene, ‘A Breakdown’, 279, 288, 290. 29 See the interesting reflections of Van Dijck, ‘Democracy’. 30 A long-term view of the normativity of the concept in Trentmann, ‘Introduction’. 31 Van Bruaene, Om beters wille, 184–186; Goossens and Van Dijck, Rederijkerskamers’. 32 Cf. Lucassen, ‘Het Welvaren’; Davids, ‘From De La Court’. 33 Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 267. 34 Des Marez, L’organisation, 59, Ftn 2. 35 Des Marez, L’organisation, 59. This is similar to the so-called ‘alloués’ in eighteenthcentury France. 36 Deceulaer, Pluriforme patronen, 219; De Kerf, De circulatie, 261–276. 37 Khilnani, ‘The Development’, 17–24; Stedman Jones, ‘Hegel’; Terrier and Wagner, ‘Civil Society’. Khilnani, ‘The Development’, 17–18; Hall, ‘In Search’. Also: Boyd, ‘Adam 38  Smith’. 39 Terrier and Wagner, ‘Civil Society’, 11–15, 18–21. 40 De Keyzer, ‘Opportunisme’, 23–25. For the intricate relationship between the corporative insistence on privileges and the tradition of natural rights in eighteenthcentury France, see Sonenscher, Work, ch. 2. 41 Hallberg and Wittrock, ‘From “Koinonìa Politikè” ’, 33, 35–36, 38–44. 42 Significantly, the term societas replaced terms like communitas, communio and communicatio. Hallberg and Wittrock, ‘From Koinonìa Politikè’, 30, 33–35. 43 Hallberg and Wittrock, ‘From Koinonìa Politikè’, 47–48. 44 Oakley, ‘Legitimation’, 323–324. 45 MacPherson, The Political, 3–4. Quote in Oakley, ‘Legitimation’, 326.

300  Dis/Assembling the Workplace and the Agora 46 For an excellent reader, see Joyce (ed.), Class. 47 Heirwegh, Les corporations, 168–169. 48 Smith, An Inquiry, Book I, 151–153. 49 Filipczak, Picturing, 11–19; De Munck, ‘Corpses’, esp. 342–348. 50 See, among others, Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment, 462–505; Hirschman, The Passions; Pocock, Virtue, 194; Varty, ‘Civic’, 31–32; Boyd, ‘Adam Smith’. 51 Jurdjevic, ‘Virtue’. 52 Hirschman, The Passions; Varty, ‘Civic’, 31–34; Boyd, ‘Adam Smith’, 455–458. 53 See, in particular, Mokyr, The Gifts. 54 Smith, The Body; Dear, Roberts and Schaffer (eds.), The Mindful Hand; Long, Artisan/Practitoners. 55 Smith, The Body, ch. 6, quote on p. 186. Also quoted in De Munck, ‘Corpses’, 333. 56 Smith, An Inquiry, Book II, p. 217. 57 Quoted in McKendrick, ‘Josiah Wedgwood’, 46; and Farr, Artisans, 144. 58 Schaffer, ‘Enlightened Automata’, 126–134; Schmidt, ‘Zünfte’, 186; Lis and Soly, Worthy Efforts, 422, 485–488; De Munck, ‘Artisans’, 55–61. 59 Lis and Soly, Worthy Efforts, 422–425. 60 Lis and Soly, Worthy Efforts, 468ff. See also Maifreda, From Oikonomia. 61 Smith, ‘Artists’, ‘Vital Spirits’, and The Body. 62 Maifreda, From Oikonomia. 63 Cf. De Munck, ‘Artisans’, 61–65. 64 De Munck, ‘Agency’. Also: De Munck, ‘Guilds’, 144–145 and ‘Artisans’, 67–69. 65 For a further elaboration of the argument, see De Munck, ‘Artisans’. 66 A synthesis and elaboration of Foucault’s ‘archaeology of political economy’ in Vigo De Lima, Foucault’s Archaeology. 67 Foucault, Les mots, esp. Ch. 2. 68 For the Southern Netherlands see Van Damme, ‘Zotte verwaandheid’ and ‘Middlemen’; Blondé and Van Damme, ‘Een crisis’ and ‘Retail Growth’. 69 Foucault, Les mots, esp. chs. 3–6. A similar application of Foucault’s ideas in Leschziner, ‘Epistemic Foundation’. 70 See e.g., Reith, ‘Circulation’. 71 Cf. Davids and De Munck, ‘Beyond’. 72 Decraene, Boundaries, 33. 73 Van Dijck, ‘Bonding’, 166–167. 74 Van Dijck, ‘Bonding’, 167. 75 There were exceptions, although outsiders were then often distinguished on the basis of the principality. E.g., Sosson, Les travaux, 135–141; De Kerf, De circulatie, 187. 76 De Munck, Technologies, 176–177; De Kerf, De circulatie, 258. 77 Examples can be found as early as the fifteenth century, e.g., Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 188. 78 Cerutti, ‘Suppliques’. 79 Van Dijck, ‘Bonding’, 171–172. 80 Decraene, Boundaries, 135. 81 Decraene, Boundaries, 134. 82 Winter, ‘Caught’ and ‘Regulating’; Masure, ‘ “Eerlycke huijsarmen” ’. 83 Cf. Rose, ‘Towards’. For an eye-opening application to nineteenth-century urban history, see Joyce, The Rule. 84 See e.g., Soll, ‘A Lipsian Legacy?’, esp. 311. 85 Foucault, ‘La gouvernementalité’. His whole series of lectures at the Collège de France of which this was part, appeared in English as Foucault, Security. 86 See e.g., Mukerji, Impossible; Soll, The Information Master, ch. 4. 87 Foucault, Sécurité and (In English) Security, 27. 88 Stull, ‘The Urban Economics’. 89 Elden, ‘How’.

Dis/Assembling the Workplace and the Agora  301   90 Elden, ‘How’, esp. 14; and The Birth, 279–321.   91 See e.g., Soll, ‘Accounting’.   92 Elden, ‘Missing’; and The Birth, 279–321.  93 Foucault, Security, 91–92; Elden, ‘How’, 13.   94 De Munck, ‘Artisans’, 69–70.  95 De Munck, ‘One Counter’, 41 and ‘Artisans’, 223–224. Also Dewilde and Poukens, ‘Confraternities’; Dewilde, ‘Expanding’ and Bert De Munck and Reinoud Vermoesen, ‘Shops, Labour Relations and Distribution Networks: The Emergence of Retail and the Disappearance of Producer—Retailers in Alost, c.1650—c.1800’, Paper presented to the Third Flemish-Dutch Conference on the Economy and Society of the Low Countries before 1850, Antwerp, 31 January‑1 February 2008.   96 ‘un bourgeois d’icelle ville non faisant aucun mestier ou stil’. Quoted in Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 294, Ftn 299.  97 Partridge, Consent, 11ff.   98 Van Elsacker, ‘ “Secretelijck opgegeten” ’, 156.  99 Quote in Varty, ‘Civic’, 37. Also: Terrier and Wagner, ‘Civil Society’, 15–17 (quote on p. 15). 100 Carson, ‘Adam Smith’.

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Index

Aire 32 almshouses 253 – 255 Alpertus of Metz 29 Amsterdam 48, 130 Anneessens, F. 94 Antwerp: bans on manufacturing products in hinterland 146; burghership 48; circumvention of guild privilege 286 – 287; civic ceremonies 249, 252; decline of civic duty 245; declining commitment to guilds 244; entrance fees 142 – 144; establishment of guilds 127; establishment of silk weavers guild 123; fiscalization of solidarity and the monetarization of membership 239; guild density 129 – 132; guild structure 46; hallmarks 152; immigration 154 – 159; loss of power of guilds 80; meals 263; merging of guilds 281 – 282; political participation 92, 94 – 97; political practice 52; political transformation 289 – 290; poor boxes 259 – 260; poor relief and mutual aid 253; power relations 42, 73, 78, 101 – 102; privileges of butchers 282; quality marks 188; registration fees for apprentices 145; revolts 99; standardized master trials 133, 135; status of women 206; workshop size regulation 236 – 237 apprentices: circumvention of guild privilege 286 – 287; citizenship 47; contracts 198 – 205; distinction between journeymen and 204 – 205; hereditary succession 191 – 199; immigration 154 – 160; incorporation 157 – 158; master status and 106,

179; political transformation and 289 – 290; registration fees for 145; status within guild 4, 15, 46, 53; terms 123 – 138, 192 – 194 Aquinas, T. 14, 54, 104 Aristotle 14, 51, 196, 297 Arras 7, 43 Artevelde, Jacob van 7 artisanal labor 288 – 293 Artois 32, 39, 43 Augsburg 93, 99 Badiou, A. 2 Bardoel, A, A. 44 Basel 76 Belgium 5, 230 Ben-Amos, I. K. 257 Black, A. 9, 16, 55, 75, 230 – 231, 283 Blickle, P. 99 Bloch, M. 1 boarding 199 – 200 body politic: city as 295 – 296; community and 96; corporative conception of 13, 55 – 56; fabrication of urban body politic 73 – 107; guilds and 4, 11 – 12, 17 – 18, 45 – 47, 51, 53; intrinsic value and 149 – 153; oligarchic elite of 36; power and 76 – 81; revolts and 31; state formation and 76 – 81; structure of 98 Bologna 230 Bossy, J. 17 Brabant: burghership 48; communal patterns 34 – 35; demographics 6 – 7; electing urban community 82; establishment of guilds 126; guild density 129; guilds and Calvinist Republics 100; immigration 154,

308 Index 159; incorporation 157 – 158; loss of power of guilds 80; majority voting 91; poor boxes 259; power relations 39, 42 – 43, 73; revolts 31 Brabantine Revolution 282 Brescia 32 Broadhead, P. J. 99 brotherhoods 230 – 231, 239, 244, 250, 253, 284; religious brotherhood 244 Bruges: burghership 49; civic ceremonies 161, 247; demographics 6; electing urban community 81 – 82; establishment of guilds 126; guild structure 45, 47; hereditary succession 192; incorporation 157 – 158; majority voting 91; merging of guilds 281; military role of guilds 243; poor relief and mutual aid organized by 253, 255, 257; power relations 78; revolts 43 – 44, 53, 131; urban patriciate 39; war 7 Bruni, L. 52, 288, 295 Brussels: boarding for apprentices and journeymen 199; burghership 49; circumvention of guild privilege 287; civic ceremonies 241, 249 – 250; communal patterns 34; decline of birth and inheritance 194; electing urban community 82; entrance fees 138, 191; equality 233 – 235; establishment of guilds 127; fiscalization of solidarity and the monetarization of membership 238; guild density 129 – 132; guild structure 46; hereditary succession 192; immigration 154; incorporation 158; majority voting 89 – 90, 92; merging of guilds 281 – 282; minimum wages for fullers 44; political participation 96; poor boxes 259 – 260; poor relief and mutual aid 253; power relations 42, 78, 102 – 103; privileges of butchers 282; quality marks 188; recruitment base of inner councils in 93; revolts 44, 131; status of women 208; workshop size regulation 237 – 238 Bucer, M. 100 bureaucratic societies 92 – 98 burghership 47 – 50, 125, 157, 194 burghership fees 48 – 49 burials 246

Calvinist Republics 76, 80, 90, 98 – 104, 243 Cambrai 32 caritas 232, 253, 256, 259, 262 – 263 Castile 76 – 77 Cerutti, S. 294 charity 232, 252 – 260 Charles I, Count of Flanders 40 Charles of Lorraine 94 Charles the Bold 78 Charles V, Holy Roman emperor 80, 93, 95 – 96, 98, 138, 191, 196, 257 Charter of Kortenberg, 6 Christianity 8, 16 – 18, 46 – 47, 56, 240 – 241, 262 – 263 citizenship 47 – 50, 155 – 156, 245, 285 civic ceremonies 56, 86, 106, 230, 252 civic community 246 – 252 civic duty 242 – 246 civic emancipation 36 – 39 civil society 3 – 6, 284 – 288, 297 – 298 civitas 104 Clark, A. 206 class interests 44 – 45 Clito, William (Duke of Normandy) 40 Cobbe, A. 73, 97 Cohn, S. 11, 30 Colnea, H. 253 Cologne 32, 33, 48 – 49 communal patterns 32 – 36 commune: characteristics of 1 – 2; city as 55; establishment of urban 36 – 39 concentration trends 181 – 186, 236 – 237 Concessio Carolina 95, 101, 195 – 196, 297 conciliar movement 106 confraternities 230 – 231, 244 contracts 200 – 202 corporatist ideology 45 – 46, 56, 99, 126, 209, 250, 283 – 284 Corpus Christi processions 56, 106, 230 – 231, 247 – 248, 249 Counter-Reformation 251 craft guilds 50 – 53 d’Allarde law 281 Dambruyne, J. 93, 95, 130, 196, 236 – 237 Davis, N. Z. 103 Deceulaer, H. 93, 96, 191, 241 De Kerf, R. 201 – 202 De Keyzer, M. 98 De La Court, P. 286

Index  309 Delft 189 De Rijck, G. 286 De Ryck, W. 179 Descartes, R. 296 De Vries, J. 149 Diderot, D. 5, 291 Diest 53 Dinant 53 Douai 7, 39, 43 – 44, 47, 82 Dumolyn, J. 53, 74 Duplessis, R. 236 Ehmer, J. 4 – 5 Eighty Years War 8 Elias, N. 99 Emden 99 England 47, 94, 188 entrance fees 48, 95, 96 – 97, 99, 124–125, 132, 136 138 – 146, 154, 157, 159–160, 184, 191, 193, 196–198, 210, 239, 244, 257–259, 263, 294 entry barriers 142 – 143, 160 Epstein, S. E. 123 – 124, 137, 145 equality 233 – 238 factions 55, 82 – 83 Farr, J. 130 Ferguson, A. 287, 298 Ferrara 32 feudal rulers 73 – 74 Flanders: communal patterns 35; demographics 5 – 10; establishment of guilds 126; guild and city ordinances 207 – 208; guild density 129; immigration 154; incorporation 157 – 158; majority voting 92; political structures 75; power relations 39, 42 – 53, 73, 77 – 78; revolts 31 Florence 50, 74, 81, 93, 104, 159 Foucault, M. 2, 13, 293, 295 – 296 France 47, 77, 92, 102 Francken, A. 152, 251 Frankfurt 47 – 49 Fröhlich, S. 258 Geneva 205 Genoa 30, 32, 93, 127 Germany 7, 33, 48 – 49, 258 Ghent: bans on manufacturing products in hinterland 146; boarding for apprentices and journeymen 198 – 199; burghership 49; civic

ceremonies 249 – 250; decline of birth and inheritance 194 – 195; decline of civic duty 245; demographics 6; electing urban community 82; entrance fees 138 – 139, 143; establishment of guilds 126; guild density 130; guilds and altars/chapels 246; guilds and Calvinist Republics 98 – 102; guild structure 45 – 46; hereditary succession 190 – 192; majority voting 90 – 92; merging of guilds 281 – 282; patron saints 251; political participation 297; poor relief and mutual aid 253, 258; power relations 77 – 80; privileges of butchers 282; recruitment base of inner councils in 93; registration fees for apprentices 145; revolts 43 – 44; standardized master trials 133; urban patriciate 39; war 7; workshop size regulation 236 – 241 Ghent Revolt of 1539 91 – 92 ‘Ghent War’ of 1379 – 1385 34 ‘gift economy’ 190 gift exchange 239 – 241 gildonia 50 – 51 government: bureaucratic societies 92 – 98; decision-making procedures 87 – 92, 105; elections 81 – 86; Germanic tradition 75 – 76, 87 – 89, 104; oligarchic communities 92 – 98; Roman tradition 75 – 76, 87 – 89, 104; state formation 76 – 81, 93, 158 – 159 governmentality 13, 293 – 298 Gramsci, A. 2 ‘Great Privilege’ 78 – 80, 101 Grotius, H. 245 Guignet, P. 283 guilds: abolition of 281 – 282; access to municipal government 76 – 81; appointment of board 74; apprentices 15, 46, 47, 53, 106, 123 – 138, 154 – 160, 179, 192 – 194, 198 – 205, 289 – 290; burghership 47 – 50, 125, 157, 194; Calvinist Republics and 76, 80, 90, 98 – 104; charters 131; citizenship and 47 – 50; civic community 246 – 252; corporatist ideology 45 – 46, 56, 99, 126, 205 – 209, 230 – 231; debates 135 – 138; decline of 15 – 16; decline of civic duty 242 – 246; declining commitment to 243 – 244; drinks and meals 240 – 241; elections 81 – 86;

310 Index entrance fees 95, 96 – 97, 138 – 146; entry barriers 142 – 143, 160; fiscalization of solidarity 238 – 242; founding of 130 – 131, 159 – 160; Hansa guilds 47; ideology 16; incorporation 156 – 160; intrinsic value and 149 – 153, 187, 189 – 190; journeymen 4, 15, 46, 53, 73, 84, 88, 94, 99, 123, 130, 132, 136 – 137, 146, 154 – 155, 157, 179, 192 – 193, 199 – 200, 204 – 205, 237 – 239; loss of power 80; majority voting 90 – 92; manufacturing guilds 7 – 8, 16; membership 45 – 48, 74, 94 – 95, 132, 238 – 242, 258, 282, 284 – 286, 294; merchant guilds 29, 47, 88 – 89; military role of 242 – 243; participation in civic ceremonies 86, 230; political economy of 13 – 15; political transformation 281 – 288; poor relief and mutual aid organized by 252 – 260; power struggles 73 – 74, 77, 84 – 85, 96; product standards 148 – 152, 186 – 190; regulations 14 – 15, 124 – 125, 132, 187, 233 – 236, 239; role of religion 246 – 255; scholarly perspectives on 3 – 5; spreading of 126 – 130; status of women in 205 – 209; subcontracting 181 – 186; textile guilds 88 – 89; types of 5; umbrella guilds 45 – 46, 77, 97; workshop size 236 – 239 guild-tradition 46 – 47, 56 Guy of Dampierre, Count of Flanders 40 – 41 Habermas, J. 3, 4 Haemers, J. 11, 53 Hainaut 32, 35, 39, 43, 47, 127 hallmarks 148 – 152 Hansa guilds 47 Hegel G. W. F. 287 Henry III, Duke of Brabant 42 Henry of Ghent 104 hereditary succession 96, 102, 190 – 194 Hill, C. 17 Hobbes, T. 54, 283 Holland- Zeeland 35 Holy Blood procession 56, 86, 161, 230, 243, 247 – 248 Hondschoote 154 Howell, M. 236 Huije, J. 209

Hume, D. 287 Humphries, J. 125 Iconoclasm 98 – 99, 144 immigration 153 – 157, 160 incorporation 156 – 160 insurance schemes 259 – 260 intrinsic value 149 – 153, 187, 189 – 190 Italy 7 – 8, 32, 34, 49 – 50, 55, 83, 93, 128 James, M. 261 John IV, Duke of Brabant 42 John of Paris 54, 104 John of Salisbury 54, 104 Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor 282 journeymen: abolition of all restrictions on hiring 281; allowance per village 146; boarding for 199 – 200; distinction between apprentices and 204 – 205; incorporation 154 – 155; master status and 15, 179; meals 241; power relations 73, 84 – 85, 88, 94; protest movements 99; standardized master trials 136 – 137; status within guild 4, 46, 53; terms 192 – 193; ‘wander systems’ 157; work in guild context 130; workshop size regulation 236 – 241 Jurdjevic, M. 290 Kaplan, S. 94 Kittell, E. 208 Kortrijk 89 Languedoc 47 Lantschner, P. 29 Laslett, P. 4 Latour, B. 18, 288 Le Chapelier Law 281 Lecuppre-Desjardin, E. 74 Leuven: entrance fees 138, 142; establishment of guilds 127; hallmarks 152; majority voting 89; minimum wages for fullers 44; municipal elections 94; office holding 96 – 97; political participation 92; poor boxes 258; poor relief and mutual aid 253; power relations 42; standardized master trials 133 Liège 8, 34, 39, 42, 52, 91 Lier 52, 206, 244 Lille 7, 47 lineages 37–42, 45, 52, 73, 77, 82–87, 92, 105, 138, 242, 285

Index  311 Lis, C. 126, 181, 236 – 237 Livy (Titus Livius Patavinus) 52 Locke, J. 54 London 33, 189 Long, P. 161, 291 Louis VI, King of France 40 Lutheranism 100 Luzern 48 Lynch, K. 3 – 4, 232 Lyons 205 MacKenney, R. 44 Maifreda, G. 292 Mainz 33 majority voting 90 – 92, 106 Mantua 32 manual workers 50 – 53 Marsiglio of Padua 54, 56, 81, 91, 196, 212 Mary of Burgundy 80 Mary of Hungary 92 ‘masters of the livery’ 94 master status: apprenticeship terms 123 – 124, 132 – 138, 154 – 160, 202 – 205; boarding of apprentices 199 – 200; concentration trends and subcontracting, 181 – 186; apprenticeship contracts 200 – 202; decline of birth and inheritance 194 – 198; entrance fees 138 – 148; equality among 233 – 237; hereditary succession 96, 102, 190 – 194; oaths of allegiance 36; product standards 148 – 152, 186 – 190; quality marks 187 – 190; sons 197 – 198; urban body politic and 285 – 286; use of hallmarks 148 – 152 Masure, H. 244 Mauss, M. 190 Maximilian of Austria 80 meals 240 – 241 Mechelen 53, 90, 98, 126–127, 132 – 133, 138, 192, 206 Merchant Guild of Tiel 29 merchant guilds 29, 47, 88 – 89 Milan 93, 127 minimum wages 44 misericordia 256 Moeller, B. 100 Mons 93, 127 mutual association 46 – 47, 56 ‘Nahrung’ 233 – 238 Najemy, J. M. 74

Namur 39, 192 Nederman, C. J. 91 Netherlands 7, 94 Nieuwpoort 127 – 128 Oexle, O. G. 12, 246 Ogilvie, S. 13 – 14, 123, 137 oligarchisation 92 – 98, 106 Olson, M. 3, 54 Ostend 282 Ostrom, E. 3, 54 Oudenaerde 89, 192 Ozment, S. 100 Paris 44, 94, 189, 205 patriarchal ideology 205 – 211 patrician families 73 – 74, 77 patron saints 251 Peace of Cadzand 80, 101, 103 Petty, W. 296 Philip August, King of France 33 Philip II, King of Spain 100 Philip of Alsace, Count of Flanders 78 Philip of Saint Pol 42 Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy 77 Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy 78, 154, 257 Pirenne, H. 29, 40, 43, 92, 126 Plato 51, 297 political emancipation 44 – 45 poor boxes 258 – 260 poor relief 232, 252 – 260 post-Tridentine religious brotherhoods 230 – 231, 244, 250, 284 Prak, M. 187, 283 product standards 148 – 152, 186 – 190 Putnam, R. 2, 3 – 4 quality marks 187 – 190 Queller, K. 208 Quesnay, F. 289 Rancière, J. 2 Reformation 4, 17, 99, 208, 249, 252, 263 ‘regime of the XXXIX’ 82 Reith, R. 135, 202 religion: artisanal labor and 292; civic ceremonies 56, 106, 161, 229 – 232; civic community and transformation of 246 – 255; disappearance of communal and Christian practices 241; guilds and Calvinist Republics

312 Index 8, 16 – 18, 98 – 104; guild-tradition 46 – 47; meaning of intrinsic value and 152; subordination of women and 208; urban body politic and 284 – 285 revolt: civic emancipation and 36 – 39; driving forces for 44, 54 – 55; guild recognition and 131; power relations and traditions of 39 – 43; recent overview of 53 – 54 Roovere, A. de 52 Roper, L. 208, 211 Rosser, G. 241, 244 Rouen 92 Rousseau, J-J. 54 Rule of Saint Augustine 89 Sahlins, M. 12 Saint Omer 7, 29, 32, 39, 47 scabini Flandriae 34 Scheldt 47, 234, 252 Schilling, H. 99, 101 Schmalkaldic War 93 Schulz, K. 46 Sewell, W. 5, 12, 31 Sienna 45 Smith, A. 287, 289 – 290, 298 Smith, P. 152, 161, 291, 292 solidarity 238 – 242 Soly, H. 126, 181, 236 – 237 Sombart, W. 233 Spain 33, 76 – 77 Spanish Fury of 4 November 1576, 144 Stabel, P. 126, 190, 208, 236 state formation 76 – 81, 93, 158 – 159, 295 – 296 Statute of Artificers 125 Strasburg 76 Stuart, J. 289 subcontracting 181 – 186 Switzerland 2 taxes 238 – 239 Terpstra, N. 230 territorial logic 293 – 298 textile guilds 88 – 89 Thierry of Alsace 40 Thøfner, M. 91 Thompson, E. P. 233 Thrupp, S. 7 Tournai 32, 93 tramping system 37–42, 45, 73, 82, 84–85, 155, 157, 203, 209–210, 256

Trexler, R. 211, 262 Turgot, A-R-J. 289 Turin 294 Turnhout 206 Ulm 48 umbrella guilds 45 – 46, 77, 97 unanimity voting 89 – 91, 106 urban patriciate 39, 44, 73–74, 77 Valenciennes 29, 32, 47 Van Boendale, Jan 9 Van Bruaene, A-L. 102 Van Der Heijden, M. 245 Van Dijck, M. 284, 294 Van Hembyze, J. 101 – 102 Van Honacker, K. 92 Van Leeuwen, M. 259 Venice 30, 50, 52, 93, 104, 127, 154 Verleysen, F. 240, 241, 244, 263 Vivès, J. L. 232 voting 90 – 92, 97, 105 – 106 ‘wander systems’ 37–42, 45, 73, 82, 84–85, 155, 157, 203, 209–210, 256 Weber, M. 1, 12, 17 – 18, 99, 232, 261, 263 Westrozebeke 78 widows 206 – 207, 209, 256, 259 Willems, R. 243 William of Ockham 54, 106 William V, Prince of Orange 283 Winchester 33 Winter, A. 156 Withington, P. 283 women: corporative ideal and the status of 205 – 209; exclusion from body politic 52 – 53, 73, 104, 196; nonmasters employing 185; preparatory work 148 wool 40 – 41, 43 workshops 236 – 238 Worms 32 Wyffels, C. 44 ‘yeomen’ 94 York 33 Ypres 6, 34, 43 – 44, 47, 126, 281 Žižek, S. 2 Zurich 48 – 49 Zwingli, U. 100