The Guilds

Anthony Esolen has an interesting article on the guilds called "Leo's Guilds a Far Cry from Today's Unions" on the Crisis Magazine website. He writes: "Let us turn at last to the guilds. These were associations of craftsmen in the Middle Ages, centered in towns. They trained boys in manual labor that required much skill: there were guilds for shoemakers, carpenters, weavers, blacksmiths, silversmiths, milliners, masons, glazers, and so forth. The university, in fact, began as a student and faculty union, a guild for scholars...." READ WHOLE ARTICLE. See also two articles on the Guilds by Russell Sparkes on our Economy site.