Editing Guild (section)

=== Organization ===
In [[Florence, Italy]], there were seven to twelve "greater guilds" and fourteen "lesser guilds". The most important of the greater guilds was that for judges and notaries, who handled the legal business of all the other guilds and often served as an arbitrator of disputes.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Hibbert|first=Christopher|title=Florence: Biography of a City|publisher=The Folio Society|year=1993|pages=27}}</ref> Other greater guilds include the wool, silk, and the money changers' guilds. They prided themselves on a reputation for very high-quality work, which was rewarded with premium prices. The guilds fined members who deviated from standards. Other greater guilds included those of doctors, druggists, and furriers. Among the lesser guilds, were those for bakers, saddle makers, ironworkers and other artisans. They had a sizable membership, but lacked the political and social standing necessary to influence city affairs.<ref>{{cite book |first=Frank N. |last=Magill |title=Great Events from History: Ancient and Medieval Series: 951–1500 |publisher=Salem |volume=3 |year=1972 |pages=1303–7 }}</ref>
[[File:Windsorguildhall.jpg|thumb|left|One of the legacies of the guilds: the elevated [[Windsor Guildhall]] originated as a meeting place for guilds, as well as a magistrates' seat and [[town hall]].]]

The guild was made up by experienced and confirmed experts in their field of handicraft. They were called [[master craftsman|master craftsmen]]. Before a new employee could rise to the level of mastery, he had to go through a schooling period during which he was first called an [[apprenticeship]]. After this period he could rise to the level of [[journeyman]]. Apprentices would typically not learn more than the most basic techniques until they were trusted by their peers to keep the guild's or company's secrets.

Like ''journey'', the distance that could be travelled in a day, the title 'journeyman' derives from the French words for 'day' (''jour'' and ''journée'') from which came the middle English word ''journei''. Journeymen were able to work for other masters, unlike apprentices, and generally paid by the day and were thus day labourers. After being employed by a master for several years, and after producing a qualifying piece of work, the apprentice was granted the rank of journeyman and was given documents (letters or certificates from his master and/or the guild itself) which certified him as a journeyman and entitled him to travel to other towns and countries to learn the art from other masters. These journeys could span large parts of Europe and were an unofficial way of communicating new methods and techniques, though by no means all journeymen made such travels — they were most common in Germany and Italy, and in other countries journeymen from small cities would often visit the capital.<ref name=Ogilvie11>{{harvnb|Ogilvie|2011}}</ref>

[[File:Jan de Bray 002.jpg|right|upright=1.05|thumb|''[[Haarlem Guild of St. Luke|The Haarlem Painter's Guild]]'' in 1675, by [[Jan de Bray]]]]
After this journey and several years of experience, a journeyman could be received as master craftsman, though in some guilds this step could be made straight from apprentice. This would typically require the approval of all masters of a guild, a donation of money and other goods (often omitted for sons of existing members), and the production of a so-called "[[masterpiece]]", which would illustrate the abilities of the aspiring master craftsman; this was often retained by the guild.<ref>{{harvnb|Prak|2006}}</ref>

The medieval guild was established by charters or letters patent or similar authority by the city or the ruler and normally held a monopoly on trade in its craft within the city in which it operated: handicraft workers were forbidden by law to run any business if they were not members of a guild, and only masters were allowed to be members of a guild. Before these privileges were legislated, these groups of handicraft workers were simply called 'handicraft associations'.

The town authorities might be represented in the guild meetings and thus had a means of controlling the handicraft activities. This was important since towns very often depended on a good reputation for export of a narrow range of products, on which not only the guild's, but the town's, reputation depended. Controls on the association of physical locations to well-known exported products, e.g. wine from the [[Champagne, France|Champagne]] and [[Bordeaux]] regions of [[France]], tin-glazed earthenwares from certain cities in [[Holland]], [[lace]] from [[Chantilly, Oise|Chantilly]], etc., helped to establish a town's place in global commerce — this led to modern [[trademark]]s.

In many German and Italian cities, the more powerful guilds often had considerable political influence, and sometimes attempted to control the city authorities. In the 14th century, this led to numerous bloody uprisings, during which the guilds dissolved town councils and detained [[patricianship|patricians]] in an attempt to increase their influence. In fourteenth-century north-east Germany, people of [[Wends|Wend]]ish, i.e. [[Slavic peoples|Slavic]], origin were not allowed to join some guilds.<ref>{{cite web|title=The Situation with the Sorbs in the Past and Present|url=http://www.ifl-leipzig.com/fileadmin/daten/downloads/DOWNLOADCENTER/Publikationen/internationale%20Zusammenfassungen%20Europa%20Regional/2002/Heft2/en.pdf|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110713003632/http://www.ifl-leipzig.com/fileadmin/daten/downloads/DOWNLOADCENTER/Publikationen/internationale%20Zusammenfassungen%20Europa%20Regional/2002/Heft2/en.pdf|archive-date=2011-07-13}}</ref> According to Wilhelm Raabe, ''"down into the eighteenth century no German guild accepted a Wend."''<ref>Raabe, p. 189.</ref>

==== Russian Empire ====
{{Main article|Merchant guild (Russian Empire)}}
During the [[Kievan Rus']], merchants were referred to one of three names based on the scale of their operation: the international or foreign trading ''gosti'' (literally, ''guests''), the local merchant ''kuptsy'', and the small commodity dealing ''torgovtsy''. By the end of the 16th century, the ''{{Interlanguage link|Gosti (merchant class)|lt=gosti|ru|Гость_(купечество)}}'' were integrated into the Muscovite hierarchy as heads of large corporations with certain obligations owed to and privileges extracted from the tsar with regional and local trade operating outside the capital conducted by the ''gostinnaya sotnya'' (lit. ''guests' hundred'') and the ''sukonnaya sotnya'' (''mercer's hundred'') respectively.

From the reforms of [[Peter the Great]] at the beginning of the 18th century until the [[Decree on the Abolition of Estates and Civil Ranks|Decree on the Abolition of Estates]], these divisions were organized hierarchically into three classes registered with the state for a fee and enjoining privileges to trade in certain areas and goods. Membership was exclusive to men and was not automatically hereditarily conferred; relatives were afforded special recognition to conduct business on the behalf of the guild member until their death with adult male children having to earn their own membership. The Manifesto of March 17, 1775 further defined capital requirements for each rank.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Baron |first=Samuel Haskell |url=https://archive.org/details/muscoviterussiac0000baro/mode/2up |title=Muscovite Russia : collected essays |date=1980 |publisher=London : Variorum Reprints |others=Internet Archive |isbn=978-0-86078-063-2 |pages=VI}}</ref>