The Historic Fencing Guilds

[Mike Cartier]

Thanks for posting Hannes, very interesting stuff.

[Keith P. Myers]

Hey Jeanry!

here is a description of a 16th Century Fechschule in which a hatter plays a siginficant part:

---Now I remember! I think Kevin Mauer found this and translated it. So let's give credit where credit is due. Kudos to Kevin for translating this and putting it out there!

[Jean Chandler]

Hannes, excellent post, very interesting. I'll have a few things to add to that.

Keith, good point, my apologies to Kevin, I knew I had originally found that quote on a HEMA site but I couldn't remember which one. The original text is here:

http://archive.org/stream/reisenundgefa ... g_djvu.txt

By the way Keith to use the quote tags, put an 'open bracket' [ and the word quote before some text, closed with a 'closed bracket' ] and then when the part you are quoting is finished, put another bracket [ a slash / and the word quote again, and closed bracket ]. Or you can just highlight the text you want to quote and hit the quote button above.

J

[Jean Chandler]

To add a little more context to Hannes superb and really interesting post..


Craft Guilds
It's important to keep in mind, a craft Guild is not exactly like a modern union, because it's members are actually all small-business men. The direct members of the craft Guild are all Guild-Masters, who have the right to be shop owners. This is why for example the craft Guilds spend as much time effort, and litigation to ensure the quality of their product or service as they do ensuring pay (proffits) and benefits. If they don't remain competetive, particularly in the export markets, the Guild will decline. There was a hierarchy of craft Guilds in each town, based on the most important industries economically. In Bruges for example I think the weavers and the dyers were the most important. Masters from the biggest Guilds and from the luxury Guilds (goldsmiths and so on) could be very rich and very powerful, often on the city council at least in the German towns. The rank and file of the craft Guilds were made up by apprentices and journeymen who were not directly part of the Guild, but were sponsored by a particular Master who had full Guild membership. More on journeymen in a minute.

Merchants Guilds
There are also Merchants Guilds, whose members have the right to trade. In the German-speaking parts of Central Europe, there was a clear distinction between Merchants Guilds and craft Guilds. The Merchants would buy raw materials (like say, wool or iron ore) and sell them to the craft Guilds, who wouild process them into finished products, and then the Merchants would buy the finished goods back and re -sell them, sometimes locally, often in some distant market very far away. Bruges for example had strong direct trade relations with England, Scotland, Scandinavia, Prussia, France, and as far away as Spain and Italy.

Merchants Guilds were usually made up of Patricians and were often very exclusive. For example in the Artus Court in Danzig, artisans (craft Guild members) were denied entrance into the building.

But there is a very important distinction between Western and Central Europe on this. In England and France, the craft and Merchant Guilds appear to have been mixed. This is the basis of the so called "Livery Companies" in England for example. This put the political and sometimes military struggle one saw in the German speaking towns between the merchants and the artisans way on the back-burner. It made the artisans much weaker politically. I'm not sure what the situation was in the Low Countries. I know in Liège they had a craft Guild administration until Charles the Bold managed to capture the town and put most of the burghers to the sword in 1468. I'm not sure if the larger towns like Ghent and Bruges had an English / French model of Guilds or a German.

Journeymen
The Journeymen were technically part of the Guilds, but only indirectly through the patronage of the Master they were working for. So to protect their rights the Journeymen had their own 'benevolent' organizations. These seem to have taken much more active social role in the sense of the 'True' Guilds Hanne mentions. The Catholic Church refers to these types of organizations, which still exist in some places, "Sodalities" here in New Orleans they are referred to as 'Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs'. Their purpose seems to combine charity, as party organizers during major annual events (usually religious feast-days and saints-days like Carnival and Corpus Christi), and as a means of boosting the prestige and political power of the sponsoring organization.

These type of groups seem to have sprung up in large numbers in the 15th Century. Town records from Frankfurt am Main document the typical pattern of the formation of these groups in the Central European towns: The banner-bearers benevolent association was founded in 1440, that of the shoemakers and tailors in 1453, that of the painters in 1455, the butcher-boys in 1455, the cotton weavers in 1460, and many others were founded about the same date. The journeymen often had direct conflict with the Guilds, and sometimes these came to blows. To ensure their rights were respected both the Guilds and the Journeymans associations used to display their arms and abilities, apparently engaging in the sword dances and similar antics, as well as marching with bared swords for example in the Corpus Christi parade in Krakow.

Mostly the activites of these groups involved sometimes comical celebrations and charity. For example on Carnival day the companions of the shoemakers Guild in Nuremberg held a 'bath-walk.' Meeting at the Guild-inn they marched in white bath cloaks and hats, accompanies by fife and drum, through the city to the public baths and back to their inn, where they regaled themselves. Costumes were carefully designed to uphold the glory of the association. The coopers Guild danced their 'hoop dance' dressed in red cotton stockings, fine white shirts, and green Hungarian caps with bands on the side. In Hamburg the brewers celebrated every two years what they called the 'Hoge', which lasted full eight days, and consisted of public processions, dancing, and sports. On New Years Day the bakers of Friburg went in procession through the town carrying an enormous cake (bresel). A beautifully dressed Christmas tree was shaken by the oldest member for the poor, who gathered up the cakes and fruits that fell from it. Wine was distributed to everyone, and the day was closed with dancing.

There were often labor tension between the Guilds and the journeymen and even strikes. In most cases they would be settled amicably by arbitrators, for example when the shoemakers of Emmerich went on strike in 1469, the city authorities mediated a settlement, and the two groups (journeymen and masters) had drinks: “after much discussion, through mutual concessions peace was reestablished, much to the joy of masters and workers, who drank together and were as good friends as ever." A strike of journeymen of the tailor’s guild in 1503 in Wesel am Rhine over better food, pay and conditions was arbitrated by the Burgomeister. His noted that 'the journeymen of the tailors are more restless and more inclined to disturbance than others, but the masters are also to blame because they overpower the journeymen with work and do not give them three good meals in a day.' He also threatened fines to the Guild masters if they slapped or pulled the hair of journeymen who had refused to work on Sunday or on a Holy Day.

But it wasn’t always that easy. An unresolved dispute between the journeymen and masters of the tinsmiths Guild in Nuremberg in 1475 after a wage cut resulted in the eventual decline of the tinsmiths industry in that town. A group of journeymen tailors on strike in Metz in 1505 were blacklisted and banished from the trade. 19 towns were on the look-out for an agitator named "Henry Ruffs of Worms" who was stirring up journeymen in several towns. A lot of the labor trouble was about food. A coordinated strike by the powerful association of watermen in several cities of the Rhine in 1469 left us a rather amusing complaint from ships masters made to the Margrave of Baden: "…although receiving a florin a day, they are not contented at their meals with a soup, a good vegetable, together with meat, bread and cheese, but demand also a roast and dessert. This seems unreasonable, we cannot afford to give all this." Whether this represents the actual situation or just poor-mouthing by the Guild masters is hard to say.

Labor disputes and clashes between urban clubs could get nasty. Journeymen like all free men carried arms, and there is evidence that they knew how to use them. Both the shoemakers journeymen in Frankfurt am Main and the smiths journeymen in Nuremberg danced the ‘sword dance’ during carnival. The journeymen of the shoemakers Guild in Liepzig was offended by some members of the University, and challenged the doctors and masters to “show the reason why they carried arms and to defend the honor of the profession.” It is unclear if the scholars took up the challenge. We also have a Frankfurt city council regulation in 1511, stating "on account of the riots, hereafter no master or journeyman belonging
to the shoemakers' guild shall carry a sword or dagger longer than that which was designated on the Roemer*."
*The Roemer is the town-hall in Frankfurt.

This is all stuff I dug up doing my Baltic book, I have sources if anyone wants them. Most of it is from a book called History of the German People at the close of the Middle Ages, by Johannes Janssen, (1896) and from another more modern study of Guilds called “Craft guilds in the pre-modern economy" Epstein Stephan. R. (2008)

J

[Jean Chandler]

Oh one other important thing I wanted to mention about the Merchant Guilds and the Patricians. Apparently in the town militia, which like Hanne said was mostly made up of the craft Guilds, they also had a small cavalry force usually which was made up of the Patricians. These guys were the "Konstafler" / Constafler, who were a type of urban knight. Apparently they were pretty tough and played such a useful role in the militia, that even in Guild controlled towns they understood that they needed them. For example, in Strasbourg the craft Guilds took over in 1419 and expelled the Patricians from the city. But they realized in subsequent military actions that they really needed to have the cavalry arm of the town militia, so by the mid 15th Century they had given back 5 (out of 15) seats on the highest circle of the City Council to the Patricians, mainly because of the role they played in the town army.

Grossburgher level citizenship, that usually required for membership in the town council, usually required you to maintain a horse, full harness, lance and a small retinue. Regular burgher citizenship usually required maintenance of a half-armor corselet, a gun or a crossbow, and a sidearm such as a sword, axe or other hand-weapon.

The fact that Patricians were often knights could have relevance to HEMA in that, if what Matt Galas said about the Ghent fencing Guild is correct, i.e. that membership was restricted to Patricians, it's quite likely that these men (at least the ones in Ghent) were Knights. So for those who have been searching for a link between knighthood and the KDF, this may be one.

J

[Payson]

Thanks for that advice about quoting Jean, I didn't know how to do that either. I don't want to derail this thread but I want to introduce myself, which I have been meaning to do before I chime in here too often. I hope you will all indulge me as I feel like it relates to the thread and what I would like to say about it. I am an American, a cathedral stone carver and, like the majority of people here, a staunch, lifelong, history nerd. I have a personal history of sword fighting, going back to the 80's of which I won't detail because of some of the infamous characters involved and will just leave it, tantalizingly at that. I am, in the last few years, just getting back into sword stuff, and negotiating my way up the steep learning curve of trying to learn how to use computers and the ins and outs of internet forum etiquette.

What I want to say about Historic Fencing Guilds and this very discussion, is that I think it is important for a couple of reasons. I have seen people organize and have also participated in a variety of forms of expression of our shared interest in historic fighting techniques. I really support the idea of all of the various approaches existing and bringing what they can to the bigger picture of informing us about what it was like for our predecessors to train and fight with weapons. But, in the last few years, as I have started to benefit by the satisfaction of my curiosity with all the amazing work you all have been doing to discover, transcribe, translate, interpret and share the secrets of the manuscripts and treatises, I am convinced that the HEMA/WMA approach is the most rewarding and fulfilling way to learn how to fight with medieval weaponry. But it is this connection with the working people of the past, who were the craft and fencing guild members, that is the most relevant and exciting aspect of HEMA to be looking at. There is clearly already a model for understanding aristocratic training: employing fencing Masters, commissioning books or at least buying them, participating in judicial combat, hosting grand exclusive tournaments, etc. I would even go so far as to say that there seems to be a commonly held bias towards the fighting arts as practiced by the aristocrats and perception that it was only them who had access to formal fighting training. But the thing is, I have yet to meet a real knight or aristocrat who is involved in what we do now. (That being said, of course we have professional and semi professional soldiers involved and I am not qualified to speak for or about them.) So, as far as I see it, this investigation of the way that fighting training was transmitted from, by and to the people like us in the past is really important. Trying to discover the intangible cultural heritage surrounding our historic fighting systems and relating that to how we participate in them now is worth the effort. If we try to understand the solutions that they came up with for the same problems we face now that will tie us in even closer to the reality of their experience and boost our confidence that we are not just making it all up.

I am not an academic but I am a craftsman. I have personal, experiential insight into the traditional training systems used in Europe to transmit craft skills. In my opinion, this 'pedagogy' if it is appropriate to call it that, definitely informed the nature of the training in the historic fencing guilds and clubs. I think we can use it now to try to understand more about what they were doing. One characteristic of this type of training is that it is mostly orally transmitted and therefore probably hard to find in the historical record. But examples like the rules of social conduct as posted by others here, really start to flesh out the context of this training. I like to see what we do in light of all this information, seeking the similarities of approach and solutions to problems. And like Jean and others (myself included) are trying to promote with the HEMA Journeymen, we can use some of these historic models to improve our training systems now.

[Dan Sellars]

Jean, I am not sure if this has been covered but from your recent posts a lot of what you are discussing seems to be a mid-C15th phenomena. Would this be correct? Is it just the examples you had to hand? Or or was there some aspect of the socio-political system in the C15th?

[Jean Chandler]

Jean, I am not sure if this has been covered but from your recent posts a lot of what you are discussing seems to be a mid-C15th phenomena. Would this be correct? Is it just the examples you had to hand? Or or was there some aspect of the socio-political system in the C15th?

You mean in the C16th ?

My personal area of study is mostly in the 15th C so that would explain the bias you noted, it's the strongest ground I have to stand on in terms of knowing what I'm talking about so I tend to stay close . Most of the above is actually cribbed directly from the research I did for my book on the 15th C Baltic.

But yes apparently, though it did decline very gradually, in some areas more than others, this (Guild system) seems to have lasted in Central Europe until the 1790's, and then continued on in various forms until the 1920's, when it largely disappeared in most parts of Germany* though it continued in Switzerland and maybe some other places. It seems to have re-emerged after WW II and now is obviously seeing a resurgence. Outside of Central Europe it's different; Guilds in England and France had a different structure, they were part of the State and were not as strong after the Medieval period. French craft Guilds have been revived in a partial way under a government controlled training program for certain industries (the Compagnon de tour de France system), and I think the English Guilds are maybe coming back too. I'm not sure about Spain.

Guilds are also seeing a resurgence of interest in Academia recently, the best single relatively current source I've found on them so far is this multidisciplinary study published in 2010, which starts in the C15th but focuses really more on the Early Modern period (mainly 16th-17thC) simply because that is where we have the most surviving records. You learn many interesting things there including a fairly consistent female guild membership at around 10-15% in many industries right up to the end of the 18th Century. Women also did the journeymen Walz. They also show maps of where journeymen came from for specific industries in certain towns like Augsburg, which is really interesting, and go into depth about the relationship between the craft Guilds and emergent technologies for example.



There are numerous others as well, Guilds seem to be a hot topic lately, there are even some interesting new political developments related to this that Payson could probably elaborate on for us.

J

* I think the Guild thing may have hung on in some of the old Hanse towns like Lubeck, Bremen and Hamburg but I'm not certain about that yet

[Dan Sellars]

These type of groups seem to have sprung up in large numbers in the 15th Century. Town records from Frankfurt am Main document the typical pattern of the formation of these groups in the Central European towns: The banner-bearers benevolent association was founded in 1440, that of the shoemakers and tailors in 1453, that of the painters in 1455, the
butcher-boys in 1455, the cotton weavers in 1460, and many others were founded about the same date. The journeymen often had direct conflict with the Guilds, and sometimes these came to blows. To ensure their rights were respected both the Guilds and the Journeymans associations used to display their arms and abilities, apparently engaging in the sword dances and similar antics, as well as marching with bared swords for example in the Corpus Christi parade in Krakow.

Nope I meant C15th, all looks 15th century to me? Although you do mention some later stuff after. Or have I missed a joke?

What I am more interested in is that in the quote above we are talking about the 'founding' of guilds and they are in the C15th, what about before this? Is there some reason that they were being founded at this time and not before?

I had always assumed that 'guild culture' existed much before this but he burgher guild/fraternal organization seems to be something that developed later right at the end of the medieval period. So are we not really looking at 'medieval' society here? more somthing that developed in the transition to early modern?

[Jean Chandler]

Nope I meant C15th, all looks 15th century to me? Although you do mention some later stuff after. Or have I missed a joke?

No I thought you were referring to whether it was still relevant after the 15th C

What I am more interested in is that in the quote above we are talking about the 'founding' of guilds and they are in the C15th, what about before this? Is there some reason that they were being founded at this time and not before?

That is not a record of the founding of the Guilds, but of "benevolent associations" associated with the journeymen. I should have probably been clearer in the description.

I had always assumed that 'guild culture' existed much before this but he burgher guild/fraternal organization seems to be something that developed later right at the end of the medieval period. So are we not really looking at 'medieval' society here? more somthing that developed in the transition to early modern?

I got into that earlier in this thread, the craft Guilds go back to at least the 11th Century in surviving records, Merchant Guilds apparently to the 8th Century. Though I think the Central European Guilds arguably reached a certain level of maturity as a social form in the late 14th to early 15th Century, since that is when Guild administrations got political control of a lot of the larger towns in the German-speaking parts of Europe (and those under German Town Law). You could also make the case for the 13th Century as that is when a lot of the export industries (like weaving) kind of took-off and became really important in the European economy which made the Guilds important.

J