rio wroteFair enough but this doesn't counter the underlying point. You're the history nerd so correct me if I'm wrong, but surely those guilds DID depend on demand for goods they produced, without which they would have been powerless in the first place? Where did this demand come from? Becauseit seems to me it could well have been directly dependent on the conspicuous consumption of the ruling class and hence in turn indirectly dependent on all the things that entails. That commercial forces outstripped and overpowered the feudal ruling doesn't change this.
Of course they depended on the demand for goods the guilds could produce. However, the case in those days was that of a nascent specialisation among human communities. Demand was primarily a question of what was needed in a community of a certain size and type. A rural community of a few dozen people had a smith who could make and repair basic farming tools. In a city of a few thousand, the amount (=> more than one smith) and diversity of activities (=> further specialisation) was much greater, of course. Out of these two evolving drives the guilds were born: to agree upon fair prices, to preserve and enrich knowledge of the trade, etc. So you see, demand was not really instigated by the ruling class, much more by a social evolution from basic self-sufficient agriculture to a specialisation in one type of economic activity to the exclusion of others - because things became so complex no one could learn or do it all by himself any longer.As far as specialised guilds for products only noblemen could afford went: Of course, you had jewelers and such. But they were such a niche business for most of the Middle Ages that they hardly left a cultural footprint. Guilds were defined by their economic prosperity, certainly, but also by their pure manpower. Again, the agreements between guildmembers were the first and foremost purpose of guilds.
Not your sort of thing, I'm sure, but his description of the rise of the Medici in Florence is quite interesting and basically revolving around exactly what you're talking about. Big business depended on state power for its rise because without war and territorial expansion it had nothing to invest in. Then, according to Arrighi the florentine upper guilds were essentially bought off by the merchant ruling class (who'd made their money financing warfare) through their own conspicuous consumption of luxury goods and in the process breaking and impoverishing the Florentine working class entirely. Kind of divide and rule- this being the working class that had actually seized power for a short period in 1378. (another example of non-quiescent underlings, perhaps).
I'm not sure what the full cadre of this part about the Medici is, but you're citing a situation from a wholly different Medieval world than that of the age of the cathedrals in Northern Europe. Northern Italy basically didn't have any noblemen; it just had a large middle class, with a few exceptionally powerful families whose titles were identical or equivalent to nobility, but defined by wealth rather than birth. This situation is much closer to ours than it was to that of late feudal Northern Europe. So uh, we were already diverging from the whole cathedral thing, now you've dragged this in as well :wink:
I guess the point I'm making is the probably fairly uncontroversial one that business- and hence the guilds also- were part of a chain of power relationships that did involve the state. State power and commercial power were not two distinct spheres, and still aren't.
Ultimately, the guilds could cooperate or waylay the state according to their own interests. I'd say they were distinct enough to not accuse them of being a tool used by, or in league with, the nobility to oppress the peasantry.
