Confraternities As Such, and As a Template for Guilds in the Low Countries During the Medieval and the Early Modern Period

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Chapter 2 Confraternities as Such, and as a Template for Guilds in the Low Countries during the Medieval and the Early Modern Period

Paul Trio

1 Confraternity or Guild or … ?

Recent research into the nature of a Bruges corporation which united, among others, the Bruges producers and merchants of manuscripts, printed books, illuminations and engravings revealed that later researchers were confused by the profusion of names for this organisation in contemporaneous sources between 1454 and the middle of the 16th century, a confusion that prevented them from establishing the precise nature of the corporation. Guild (gilde) and confraternity (broederschap) were found, as well as company (gezelschap) and trade (nering). The researchers’ conclusion that it was some kind of a trade guild (neringgilde), that is a guild consisting mainly of a certain type of craftsmen but also strongly confraternal in character, illustrates the often hybrid character of corporations in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times.1 Other researchers have also noticed the diversity of names during that period.2 However, the fact that the same type of institution was often referred to by various names does not mean that the names were mostly given at random. Corporations, moreover, tended to evolve over time, so a different name might well indicate a change. Even so, the linguistic confusion that would seem to have existed at the time has caused problems for many historians. What is more, it also often causes those same historians to use less precise terminology when discussing corporations. A very recent—and otherwise

1 Paul Trio, “Colard Mansion and the Bruges Guild of Book Producers and Merchants (1457/58– 1484),” in Colart Mansion. Incunabula, Prints and Manuscripts in Medieval Bruges, (eds.) Eve- lien Hauwaert et al. (Amsterdam: 2018), 43–47. 2 Catherine Vincent, “Fraternités laïques et monastères bénédictins au xiie siècle: quelques questions à partir d’une fraternitas de l’abbaye de Saint-Vincent du Mans,” in Les mouvanc- es laïques des ordres religieux. Actes du Troisième Colloque International du C.E.R.C.O.R. en collaboration avec le Centre International d’Études Romanes. Tournus, 17–20 juin 1992 (Saint- Etienne: 1996), 27.

24 Trio excellent—book on the medieval history of Bruges is affected by this flaw.3 One should, however, not blame its authors for this fact, for even specialists with regard to confraternities or guilds have not always paid enough attention to this problem. That is precisely why the need to examine the terminology used in the sources is greater than ever when one studies corporations. There is an equally great need for present-day historians to better elucidate their jargon concerning corporations, and to apply it adequately and consequently. This terminological confusion is also present in some other recent studies on the Low Countries.4

2 Adequate Professional Jargon and Simplified Classification of Corporations

Anyone visiting a sizeable town in the late-15th-century Southern—and to some extent also Northern—Low Countries, would have come into contact with all kinds of corporations: confraternities, guilds of clerics, merchants, craftsmen, rhetoricians, archers … and this list does not even include all types of confraternities and guilds, or certain other kinds of companies and associa- tions. The terminology that will be used to refer to those organisations and, by doing so, characterise them, will hereafter be clarified. Indeed, the risk of confusion is great without the consistent and logical use of more or less well- defined concepts that are as much as possible in keeping with medieval reality and, at the same time, scientifically workable. All too often in the past writers and scholars have failed to use such a strict terminological system with regard to corporations, one that precisely defines what each term means; the result- ing confusion was intensified by the various languages used in the sources and studies. Unfortunately, even more recent publications still often contain a not very precise or scientifically sound terminology with regard to corporations

3 Andrew Brown and Jan Dumolyn (eds.), Medieval Bruges, c.850–1550 (Cambridge: 2018), pas- sim. In this book, some of the authors use the terms “fraternity,” “confraternity,” “guild,” and “company” interchangeably for one and the same type of corporation. 4 The research of Ellen Decraene of the University of Antwerp with regard to the presence of women in confraternities in the town of Aalst deals exclusively with the 17th and 18th centuries, a time when confraternities were changing form. See Ellen Decraene, “Sisters of Early Modern Confraternities in a Small Town in the Southern Netherlands,” Urban History 40 (2012): 247–270; Idem for Maarten van Dijck, “Bonding or Bridging Social Capital? The Evolution of Brabantine Fraternities during the Late Medieval and the Early Modern Period,” in Faith’s Boundaries. Laity and Clergy in Early Modern Confraternities, (eds.) Nicholas Terp stra, Adriano Prosperi, and Stefania Pastori (Turnhout: 2012), 153–186.