THE CRAFT GUILDS OF FRANCE.
194
The craft
erudite a writer, yet I venture to think that in this case Louandre is mistaken.
were dedicated to particular saints ; e.g., the cordwainers of all kinds to St Crispin, the
guilds
but the fraternities appear
carpenters to St Joseph, the goldsmiths to St Eloi, and so on
to have been generally dedicated to the patron saints of the churches or chapels in which their
;
At Eouen
altars
were
Saints
Simon and Jude
raised.
^
in
1610 the masons had a fraternity under the patronage of
am aware, were never even traditionally connected
who, so far as I
;
That the fellow-crafts were not admitted seems very probable from
with the building trades.
the fact that, as early as November 1394, the fellow-craft furriers {rjargons jxilcticrs) were
permitted Ijy royal ordinance to form their own fraternity.^ But although the craft and the
may usually be described as two names for one body, this was not always the
There were sometimes several fraternities in one craft; at other times several crafts
In Montpellier the glassmakers united with the mercers,
united to form one fraternity.*
fraternity
case.
because
in
was only one resident master, who did not
the first-mentioned craft there
form a
The reason
is so quaintly put in the old Southern idiom, tliat I
Attendut que en I'offiei de vcyrids non y avia mays una persona
tempted
*
et per se non 2^odia
We hear of an early fraternity of Stonemasons in 1365,
Jar caritat."
the statutes of which have been preserved {Confrerie de peyriers de Montpelier).^
One of the
suffice to
am
fraternity.
to reproduce
it
—
"
earliest decrees against the fraternities, whether of citizens (and at that time we
may take it
that citizens were always tradesmen), or of nobles, or others, has more than
antiquity to
recommend
it,
inasmuch
as
celebrated
"
No
it
own
part in the history of our
was promulgated by the father of one who played a great
country, viz., Simon, Count de Montfort, whose son was the
Simon de Montfort, Earl
of Leicester.
It is dated a.d. 1212,
and runs
as follows
:
—
baron, bourgeois, or peasant shall dare in
any way to pledge obedience by way of oath
any conjuration whatsoever, even under pretext of fraternity or other good
the which is often mendacious (mensonger), unless it be with the consent and
pleasure
or good faith in
thing,
of the said lord {seigneur)
and
any are convicted of having so taken oath against him,
they shaU be held, body and chattels, at his pleasure. But if it be not against the said lord,
then the members of the fraternity {eonjurateurs) shall only pay, if barons, 10 livres, if
knights, 100 sols,
;
if citizens,
60
if
sols,
and
if
peasants, 20 sols."
^
Of the 100 crafts registered by Boileau only a very few make any mention of a
chapel^
from which we might infer an existing fraternity, but this is accounted for
by the fact that
the two corporations were, as a rule, kept distinct.
It can hardly be doubted that the
fraternities had already become general, and that
they had probably existed long before any
definite code of rules
The
was drawn up.
earliest craft fraternities (not guilds)
respecting
which we have documentary evidence
are those of the Hanse, 1170, the cloth-workers of Paris, 1188, the
barber-surgeons, 1270,
and the notaries, 1300.^
In 1308 the number of
Philippe
'
le Bel,
who
these
interdicted
fraternities
them
;
and
Ouin-Lacroix, Histoire des Anciennes Corporations,
this
p.
was so great as to provoke the fear of
was more especially the case in the south
238.
-
Lcvasseur, Histoire des Classes Ouvrieres en France, p. 497.
3
•
Eenouvier
"
*
^
Ad. Kicard, Des Maltres de Pierre, etc., de Montpelier,
Ouiu-Lacroi.x, Histoire des Anciennes Corporations, p. 423.
et
Louandre, Introduction to Monteil, Histoire de I'lndustrie Fran^aise,
/j/j/,^ p,
p. 65.
'
p. 54.
470.
Ibid., p. 20.
Ibid., p. 468.