What was the fraternal society of craftsmen or merchants in the middle ages called?

Answer 1

i would guess the freemasons?

Answer 2

Guilds were groups of individuals with common goals.

The term guild had many synonyms in the Middle Ages.
Such as: association, brotherhood, college, company, confraternity, corporation, craft, fellowship, fraternity, livery, society, amongst others.

The term guild became the universal reference for these groups of merchants, artisans, and other individuals from the ordinary (non-priestly and non-aristocratic) classes of society which were not part of the established religious, military, or governmental hierarchies.

The noun form of geld meant an association of persons contributing money for some common purpose. The root also meant ‘to sacrifice, worship.’

I hope it helps!

Cheers,
Claire

Answer 3

In general terms organizations of craftsmen were called guilds. The most famous medieval organization of merchants was the Hanseatic League which was based in Northern Europe, mainly in Germany and Scandanavia

Answer 4

There was no single fraternity of craftsmen.
In fact, each guild guarded it's secrets jealously. For instance, the Coopers measurement for a foot, was different from the Blacksmith's foot, and different from a Wheelwrights foot...
You get the idea.
There was no single guild, there were MANY of them.

Answer 5

The first 5 posters all made the same basic and correct point.

In English, we use the word "Guild" to refer to these organizations. The word seems to have considerable - and surprising - uniformity - in French, it's "Guilde," Dutch - "Gilde," but the Germans say, "Zünft." If you want other language translations, visit AltaVista Babelfish.

These were incredibly powerful organizations. They began during the early medieval period as a kind of school, and self-policing community group to serve the interests of their members. Guilds arose largely - at first - out of the building of cathedrals, castles, fortifications, and the occasional major structure of a rich king, bishop, or other regional noble. Most people associate today's Masonic lodges with these guilds, but despite a very small link between the ancient masons' guilds and modern Masonic organizations there is really nothing whatsoever to connect them.

The early guilds of course included masons - stoneworkers and bricklayers. But there were also the guilds of stonecutters and carvers, who made the statues and carefully-shaped fancy features. The glassmakers had a guild. The woodcarvers had a guild. The carters had a guild. So did the rope-makers, the tanners, the makers of bells and other foundry metalworks, the felt-makers, the wool-weavers, and the goldsmiths. Virtually every specialized craft had a guild. (One of the more interesting of these is the guild of men who minted coins for England in the Tower of London through the late 1600's - the Guild of Moniers.)

The guilds throughout their history served as a place to meet, to learn, and to help the members. They provided for burial, helped the families of the sick and lost, shared food in times of famine, and many other mutually-supporting features. They made new arrivals in the community, rare but still sometimes welcomed, prove their knowledge of crafts, and if by good luck found a newcomer with valuable extra skills, spread the knowledge. They chased away the cheats, the liars, the thieves and the fakes. They guarded their knowledge and their privileges, and over time, became extremely conservative closed societies into which neither new names nor new ideas were easily admitted.

As remarked already, guilds began as a kind of school and a group devoted to protecting the interests of the members. This is worth a little more explanation.

Kids today who gripe about being forced to go to school would have been awfully popular in 900 or 1000 CE. There just were not any schools. Kids who agitated to learn new things, or question the way life was organized, were not just put in their place, but sometimes brutally oppressed. Young people - or the parents of young people with an eye on the future - who wanted to learn had no place to go. And the culture of Europe at the time was not very encouraging when it came to learning. Reading was reserved for the rich and powerful - and reading rarely included priests (at that time there was only one Christian church in Western Europe).

People were told what to think. People rarely traveled more than 5 or 10 miles from their place of birth in their entire lives. Strangers were regarded with fear and hostility. Power belonged to the few wealthy people who owned steel swords, horses and armor. The average person very often did not even have any clothing - so the powerful were able to make everyone else do what they wished and no questions asked.

The guilds were a system of preserving very specialized knowledge. During the early medieval era, sons followed fathers into a craft, be it stonecutting, horse grooming, or ploughing fields with their own physical power. (Girls were not much valued, but what learning they achieved was at their mothers' hands.)

When cathedrals began to rise into the skies, people were required to learn specialized skills - and then to pass that knowledge along. At first, the guilds were places to teach the uninformed peasant forced to leave his fields how to cut and dress a piece of stone. Soon it was a place where the members traded information about things they learned. Later it was where the sons learned what their fathers had learned.

At the same time, the guilds gave these specialized workers a form of power. They could demand that they be given better tools, more pay, a day off on their patron saint's day, an extra ration of beer when the weather was hot - or they would refuse to work. They could protect their members from unreasonable and arbitrary use of the power of the rich and well-armed.

At the height of their power, guilds controlled everything in their members' lives. These were mini-governments, and despotic. When kids today complain about "peer pressure," they should be told about the horrible ways guilds forced their members to conform in dress, speech, manner and even obedience to those who help higher places in the guilds. The Richard Wagner opera, "The Master Singers of Nuremberg," sometimes known simply as "Die Meistersinger," describes much of this in great detail. And while a fictional tale, it is based on reality.

Today we forget that the medieval world, although a very rigidly-structured society, with power and wealth at the top and weakness and misery at the bottom, was also very much of a semi-socialist world. Everyone in the community was required to help with the needs of others, and it was a formal duty of the wealthy to provide for the poor and helpless. They performed their duties, of course, about as well as the power structure of the old USSR provided for its people. That is to say, certain minimum benefits made their way down, but the guys at the top were - well, the guys at the top.

At first the guilds fit in to this idea of society. As centuries passed, the guilds began to assert power and influence quite unrelated to the social heirarchy.

Eventually, many monopoly companies or organizations emerged from the guilds. These controlled membership, access to trade and profits, and many other aspects of life. Holland became a modern nation through this process. England built its empire using such organizations.

These sweeping statements are, of course, gross over-simplifications. but they help tie together the very long history of guilds from the medieval to modern times.

Today the Royal Society of Chemists in England is the direct descendant of a guild of the men who made gunpowder, formulated "physicks" or medicines, and developed the pharmaceutical arts. Coin collectors prize the unusual gold and silver Spanish money shipped from Iberia to the Spanish Netherlands province of Brabant, where the Guild of Goldsmiths re-stamped each coin with their symbol, the fabled "Golden Fleece." And if you should visit a certain house in Colmar, Germany, you will have to bend low in the entranceway, passing beneath a timber into which is carved the date, "752" and the name of a very early member of a carpenter's guild who built that house.

Then go to Strasbourg, France, and visit the great cathedral there. Out at the front entrance are beautiful, weathered statues. In the base of one you can read the words, "Johannes me fecit" - "John made me." (It was more than 20 years ago when I saw this statue, and perhaps the name was not "Johannes," but the name IS there.) After visiting the cathedral (check out its marvelous giant clock!), you can have lunch in the former headquarters of an old Strasbourg guild - the "Maison des Tanneurs," or "House of the Tanners."

The guilds were the schools, the laboratories, and later the very powerful and protective societies for people who started with nothing - and finished with everything!

Answer 6

A guild.

Answer 7

I think it was the Lollipop guild?

Answer 8

a guild

Answer 9

Freemasons I think...