Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution

Russia) were a continuation of the Roman cities. They were a continuation of the barbarian village community, influenced to a certain extent by the traditions of the Roman towns. ^ M. Kovalevsky, Modern Customs and Ancient Laws of Russia (Ilchester Lectures, London, 1891, lecture 4). " A considerable amount of research had to be done before this character of the so-called udyelnyi period was properly established by the works of Byelaeff (Tales from Russian History)^ Kostomaroif (The Beginnings of Autocracy in Russia), and especially Professor Sergievich {The Vyeche and the Prince). The English reader may find some information about this period in the just-named work of

time in most cities of Western and Southern Europe, the tendency was to take for defensor a bishop whom the city had elected itself; and so many bishops took the lead in protecting the " immunities " of the towns and in defending their liberties, that numbers of them were considered, after their death, as saints and special patrons of different cities. St. Uthelred of Winchester, St. Ulrik of Augsburg, St. Wolfgang of Ratisbon, St. Heribert of Cologne, St. Adalbert of Prague, and so on, as well as many abbots and monks, became so many cities' saints for having acted in defence of popu- lar rights.^ And under the new defensors, whether laic or clerical, the citizens conquered full self-jurisdiction and self-admiiftstration for their folkmotes.^

The whole process of liberation progressed by a series of imperceptible acts of devotion to the com- mon cause, accomplished by men who came out of the masses — by unknown heroes whose very names have not been preserved by history. The wonderful move- ment of the God's peace {treuga Dei) by which the popular masses endeavoured to put a limit to the endless family feuds of the noble families, was born in the young towns, the bishops and the citizens trying to extend to the nobles the peace they had established

M. Kovalevsky, in Eambaud's History of Russia, and, in a short summary, in the article " Russia " of the last edition of Chambers^ s Encydopcedia. 1 Ferrari, Histoire des rivolutions d'Jtalie, i. 257 ; Kallsen, Die deutschen Stddte im MitUlalter, Bd. I. (Halle, 1891). 2 See the excellent remarks of Mr. G. L. Gomme as regards the folkmote of London (7%« Literature of Local Institutions, London, 1886, p. 76). It must, however, be remarked that in royal cities the folkmote never attained the independence which it assumed else- where. It is even certain that Moscow and Paris were chosen by the kings and the Church as the cradles of the future royal authority in the State, because they did not possess the tradition of folkmotes accustomed to act as sovereign in all matters.

within their town walls. ^ Already at that period, the commercial cities of Italy, and especially Amalfi (which had its elected consuls since 844, and frequently changed its doges in the tenth century) ^ worked out the customary maritime and commercial law which later on became a model for all Europe ; Ravenna elaborated its craft organization, and Milan, which had made its first revolution in 980, became a great centre of commerce, its trades enjoying a full independence since the eleventh century.^ So also Brugge and Ghent ; so also several cities of France in which the Mahl or forum had become a quite independent institution.* And already during that period began the work of artistic decoration of the fowns by works of architecture, which we still admire and which loudly testify of the intellectual movement of the times. " The basilicoe were then renewed in almost all the universe," Raoul Glaber wrote in his chronicle, and some of the finest monuments of mediaeval archi- tecture date from that period : the wonderful old church of Bremen was built in the ninth century, Saint Marc of Venice was finished in 107 1, and the beautiful dome of Pisa in 1063. In fact, the intel-

1 A. Luchaire, Les Communes frangaises ; also Kluckohn, Ge- schichte des Gotiesfrieden, 1857. L. Sdmichon {La paix et la trhve de Dieu, 2 vols., Paris, 1869) has tried to represent the communal movement as issued from that institution. In reality, the treuga Dei, like the league started under Louis le Gros for the defence against both the robberies of the nobles and the Norman invasions, was a thoroughly popular movement. The only historian who mentions this last league — that is, Vitalis — describes it as a "popular com- munity " (" Considerations sur I'histoire de France," in vol. iv. of Aug. Thierry's (Euvres, Paxis, 1868, p. 191 and note).

lectual movement which has been described as the Twelfth Century Renaissance ^ and the Twelfth Cen- tury Rationalism — the precursor of the Reform ^ — date from that period, when most cities were still simple agglomerations of small village communities enclosed by walls. ^ However, another element, besides the village- community principle, was required to give to these growing centres of liberty and enlightenment the unity of thought and action, and the powers of initiative, which made their force in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. With the growing diversity of occupations, crafts and arts, and with the growing commerce in distant lands, some new form of union was required, and this necessary new element was supplied by the guilds. Volumes and volumes have been written about these unions which, under the name of guilds, brotherhoods, friendships and dru- zhestva, minne, artels in Russia, esnaifs in Servia and Turkey, amkari in Georgia, and so on, took such a formidable development in mediaeval times and played such an important part in the emancipation of the cities. But it took historians more than sixty years before the universality of this institution and its true characters were understood. Only now, when hun- dreds of guild statutes have been published and studied, and their relationship to the Roman collegics, and the earlier unions in Greece and in India,^ is known, can

2 N. Kostomaroff, " The Rationalists of the Twelfth Century," in his Monographies and Researches (Russian). ^ Very interesting facts relative to the universality of guilds will be found in "Two Thousand Years of Guild Life," by Rev. J. M. we maintain with full confidence that these brother- hoods were but a further development of the same principles which we saw at work in the gens and the village community. Nothing illustrates better these mediaeval brother- hoods than those temporary guilds which were formed on board ships. When a ship of the Hansa had accomplished her first half-day passage after having left the port, the captain {Schiffer) gathered all crew and passengers on the deck, and held the following language, as reported by a contemporary : —

" ' As >ye are now at the mercy of God and the waves,' he said, ' each one must be equal to each other. And as we are surrounded ^y storms, high waves, pirates and other dangers, we must keep a strict order that we may bring our voyage to a good end. That is why we shall pronounce the prayer for a good wind and good success, and, according to marine law, we shall name the occupiers of the judges' seats {Schoffen- stellen).' Thereupon the crew elected a Vogt and four scabini, to act as their judges. At the end of the voyage the Vogt and the scabini abdicated their functions and addressed the crew as follows : — ' What has happened on board ship, we must pardon to each other and consider as dead (todt und ab sein lassen). What we have judged right, was for the sake of justice. This is why we beg you all, in the name of honest justice, to forget all the animosity one may nourish against another, and to swear on bread and salt that he will not think of it in a bad spirit. If any one, however, considers himself wronged, he must appeal to the land Vogt and ask justice from him before sunset.' On landing, the Stock with the fred- fines was handed over to the Vogt of the sea-port for distri- bution among the poor." i

Lambert, Hull, 1891. On the Georgian amkari, see S. Eghiazarov, Gorodskiye Tsekhi (" Organization of Transcaucasian Amkari "), in Memoirs of the Caucasian Geographical Society, xiv. 2, 1891. ^ J. D. Wunderer's " Reisebericht" in Fichard's Frankfurter Archiv, ii. 245 ; quoted by Janssen, Geschichte des deutschen Volkes, i. 355. else, depicts the spirit of the mediaeval guilds. Like organizations came into existence wherever a group of men — fishermen, hunters, travelling merchants, builders, or settled craftsmen — came together for a common pursuit. Thus, there was on board ship the naval authority of the captain ; but, for the very success of the common enterprise, all men on board, rich and poor, masters and crew, captain and sailors, agreed to be equals in their mutual relations, to be simply men, bound to aid each other and to settle their possible disputes before judges elected by all of them. So also when a number of craftsmen — masons, carpenters, stone-cutters, etc. — came together for building, say, a cathedral, they all belonged to a city which had its political organization, and each of them belonged moreover to his own craft ; but they were united besides by their common enterprise, which they knew better than any one else, and they joined into a body united by closer, although temporary, bonds ; they founded the guild for the building of the cathedral.^ We may see the same till now in the Kabylian fof :^ the Kabyles have their village community ; but this union is not sufficient for all political, commercial, and personal needs of union, and the closer brotherhood of the fof is constituted.

As to the social characters of the mediaeval guild, any guild-statute may illustrate them. Taking, for instance, the skraa of some early Danish guild, we read in it, first, a statement of the general brotherly feelings which must reign in the guild ; next come the regula- tions relative to self-jurisdiction in cases of quarrels arising between two brothers, or a brother and a stranger ; and then, the social duties of the brethren are enumerated. If a brother's house is burned, or he has lost his ship, or has suffered on a pilgrim's voyage, all the brethren must come to his aid. If a brother falls dangerously ill, two brethren must keep watch by his bed till he is out of danger, and if he dies, the brethren must bury him — a great affair in those times of pestilences — and follow him to the church and the grave. After his death they must provide for his children, if necessary ; very often the widow becomes a sister to the guild. ^

These two leading features appeared in every brotherhood formed for any possible purpose. In each case the members treated each other as, and named each other, brother and sister ; ^ all were equals before the guild. They owned some "chattel" (cattle, land, buildings, places of worship, or " stock ") in common. All brothers took the oath of abandoning all feuds of old ; and, without imposing upon each other the obligation of never quarrelling again, they agreed that no quarrel should degenerate into a feud, or into a law-suit before another court than the tribunal of the brothers themselves. And if a brother was involved in a quarrel with a stranger to the guild, they agreed to support him for bad and for good ; that is, whether he was unjustly accused of aggression, or really was the aggressor, they had to support him, and to bring

1 Kofod Ancher, Om gamk Danske Gilder og deres Undergang, Copenhagen, 1785. Statutes of a Knu guild. 2 Upon the position of women in guilds, see Miss Toulmin Smith's introductory remarks to the English Guilds of her father. One of the Cambridge statutes (p. 281) of the year 1503 is quite positive in the following sentence : " Thys statute is made by the comyne assent of all the bretherne and sisterne of alhallowe yelde." things to a peaceful end. So long as his was not a secret aggression — in which case he would have been treated as an outlaw — the brotherhood stood by him.^ If the relatives of the wronged man wanted to revenge the offence at once by a new aggression, the brother- hood supplied him with a horse to run away, or with a boat, a pair of oars, a knife and a steel for striking light ; if he remained in town, twelve brothers accom- panied him to protect him ; and in the meantime they arranged the composition. They went to court to support by oath the truthfulness of his statements, and if he was found guilty they did not let him go to full ruin and become a slave through not paying the due compensation : they all paid it, just as the gens did in olden times. Only when a brother had broken the faith towards his guild-brethren, or other people, he was excluded from the brotherhood " with a Nothing's name " {tka seal han maeles of brodrescap met nidings nafn).^

Such were the leading ideas of those brotherhoods which gradually covered the whole of mediaeval life. In fact, we know of guilds among all possible profes- sions : guilds of serfs,^ guilds of freemen, and guilds of both serfs and freemen ; guilds called into life for the special purpose of hunting, fishing, or a trading 1 In mediaeval times, only secret aggression was treated as a murder. Blood-revenge in broad daylight was justice ; and slaying in a quarrel was not murder, once the aggressor showed his willingness to repent and to repair the wrong he had done. Deep traces of this distinction still exist in modern criminal law, especially in Russia.

2 Kofod Ancher, /. c. This old booklet contains much that has been lost sight of by later explorers. 3 They played an important part in the revolts of the serfs, and were therefore prohibited several times in succession in the second half of the ninth century. Of course, the king's prohibitions remained a dead letter. expedition, arid dissolved when the special purpose had been achieved ; and guilds lasting for centuries in a given craft or trade. And, in proportion as life took an always greater variety of pursuits, the variety in the guilds grew in proportion. So we see not only merchants, craftsmen, hunters, and peasants united in guilds ; we also see guilds of priests, painters, teachers of primary schools and universities, guilds for performing the passion play, for building a church, for developing the " mystery " of a given school of art or craft, or for a special recreation — even guilds among beggars, executioners, and lost women, all organized on the same double principle of self-jurisdiction and mutual support.^ For Russia we have positive evidence showing that the very " making of Russia " was as much the work of its hunters', fishermen's, and traders' artels as of the budding village communities, and up to the present day the country is covered with artels?' These few remarks show how incorrect was the view taken by some early explorers of the guilds when they wanted to see the essence of the institution in its

^ The mediaeval Italian painters were also organized in guilds, which became at a later epoch Academies of art. If the Italian art of those times is impressed with so much individuality that we dis- tinguish, even now, between the different Schools of Padua, Bassano, Treviso, Verona, and so on, although all these cities were under the sway of Venice, this was due — J. Paul Richter remarks — to the fact that the painters of each city belonged to a separate guild, friendly with the guilds of other towns, but leading a separate existence. The oldest guild-statute known is that of Verona, dating from 1303, but evidently copied from some much older statute. " Fraternal assist- ance in necessity of whatever kind," " hospitality tawards strangers, when passing through the town, as thus information may be obtained about matters which one may like to learn," and " obliga- tion of offering comfort in case of debility " are among the obligations of the members {Nineteenth Century, Nov. 1890, and Aug. 1892).

* The chief works on the artels are named in the article " Russia " of the Encyclopmdia Britannica, 9th edition, p. 84. yearly festival. In reality, the day of the common meal wais always the day, or the morrow of the day, of election of aldermen, of discussion of alterations in the statutes, and very often the day of judgment of quarrels that had risen among the brethren,^ or of renewed allegiance to the guild. The common meal, like the festival at the old tribal folkmote' — the mahl or malum — or the Buryate aba, or the parish feast and the harvest supper, was simply an affirmation of brother- hood. It symbolized the times when everything was kept in common by the clan. This day, at least, all belonged to all ; all sate at the same table and partook of the same meal. Even at a much later time the inmate of the almshouse of a London guild sat this day by the side of the rich alderman. As to the distinction which several explorers have tried to establish between the old Saxon " frith guild " and the so-called " social " or " religious " guilds — all were frith guilds in the sense above mentioned,^ and all were

1 See, for instance, the texts of the Cambridge guilds given by Toulmin Smith (English Guilds, London, 1870, pp. 274-276), from which it appears that the " generall and principall day " was the " elecciomi day ; " or, Ch. M. Clode's The Early History of the Guild of the Merchant Taylors, London, 1888, i. 45; and so on. For the renewal of allegiance, see the Jdmsviking saga, mentioned in Pappen- heim's Altddnische Schutzgilden, Breslau, 1885, p. 67. It appears very probable that when the guilds began to be prosecuted, many of them inscribed in their statutes the meal day only, or their pious duties, and only alluded to the judicial function of the guild in vague words ; but this function did not disappear till a very much later time. The question, "Who will be my judge?" has no meaning now, since the State has appropriated for its bureaucracy the organi- zation of justice ; but it was of primordial importance in mediaeval times, the more so as self -jurisdiction meant self-administration. It must also be remarked that the translation of the Saxon and Danish " guild-bretheren," or "brodrse," by the 'L'Han convivii must also have contributed to the above confusion.

2 See the excellent remarks upon the frith guild by J. R. Green and Mrs. Green in The Conquest of England, Ijindon, 1883, pp. 229-230. religious in the sense in which a village community or a city placed under the protection of a special saint is social and religious. If the institution of the guild has taken such an immense extension in Asia, Africa, and Europe, if it has lived thousands of years, reappear- ing again and again when similar conditions called it into existence, it is because it was much more than an eating association, or an association for going to church on a certain day, or a burial club. It answered to a deeply inrooted want of human nature ; and it embodied all the attributes which the State appro- priated later on for its bureaucracy and police, and much more than that. It was an association for mutual support in all circumstances and in all accidents of life, " by deed and advise," and it was an organization for maintaining justice — with this difference from the State, that on all these occasions a humane, a brotherly element was introduced instead of the formal element which is the essential characteristic of State interference. Even when appearing before the guild tribunal, the guild-brother answered before men who knew him well and had stood by him before in their daily work, at the common meal, in the performance of their brotherly duties : men who were his equals and brethren indeed, not theorists of law nor defenders of some one else's interests.^

It is evident that an institution so well suited to serve the need of union, without depriving the individual of his initiative, could but spread, grow, and fortify. The difficulty was only to find such form as would permit to federate the unions of the guilds without interfering with the unions of the village com- munities, and to federate all these into one harmonious whole. And when this form of combination had been found, and a series of favourable circumstances per- mitted the cities to affirm their independence, they did so with a unity of thought which can but excite our admiration, even in our century of railways, telegraphs, and printing. Hundreds of charters in which the cities inscribed their liberation have reached us, and through all of them — notwithstanding the infinite variety of details, which depended upon the more or less greater fulness of emancipation — the same leading ideas run. The city organized itself as a federation of both small village communities and guilds,

" All those who belong to the friendship of the town " — so runs a charter given in 11 88 to the burghesses of Aire by Philip, Count of Flanders — "have promised and confirmed by faith and oath that they will aid each other as brethren, in whatever is useful and honest. That if one commits against another an offence in words or in deeds, the one who has suffered therefrom will not take revenge, either himself or his people ... he will lodge a complaint and the offender will make good for his offence, according to what will be pro- nounced by twelve elected judges acting as arbiters. And if the offender or the offended, after having been warned thrice, does not submit to the decision of the arbiters, he will be excluded from the friendship as a wicked man and a perjuror.^

" Each one of the men of the commune will be faithful to his con-juror, and will give him aid and advice, according to what justice will dictate him" — the Amiens and Abbeville charters say. "All will aid each other, according to their powers, within the boundaries of the Commune, and will not suffer that any one takes anything from any one of them, or makes one pay contributions " — do we read in the charters of Soissons, Compi^gne, Senlis, and many others of the same type.^ And so on with countless variations on the same theme.

1 Recueil des ordonnances des rots de France, t. xii. 562 ; quoted by Aug. Thierry in Considerations sur I'histoire de France, p. 196, ed. 12 mo. " The Commune," Guilbert de Nogent wrote, " is an oath of mutual aid (mutui adjutorii conjuratid) ... A new and detest- able word. Through it the serfs {capite sensi) are freed from all serfdom; through it, they can only be condemned to a legally determined fine for breaches of the law; through it, they cease to be liable to payments which the serfs always used to pay." i

The same wave of emancipation ran, in the twelfth century, through all parts of the continent, involving both rich cities and the poorest towns. And if we may say that, as a rule, the Italian cities were the first to free themselves, we can assign no centre from which the movement would have spread. Very often a small burg in central Europe took the lead for its region, and big agglomerations accepted the little town's charter as a model for their own. Thus, the charter of a small town, Lorris, was adopted by eighty- three towns in south-west France, and that of Beaumont became the model for over five hundred towns and cities in Belgium and France. Special deputies were dispatched by the cities to their neighbours to obtain a copy from their charter, and the constitution was framed " upon that model. However, they did not / simply copy each other : they framed their own / charters in accordance with the concessions they had f obtained from their lords ; and the result was that, as remarked by an historian, the charters of the mediaeval communes offer the same variety as the Gothic archi- tecture of their churches and cathedrals. The same leading ideas in all of them — the cathedral symbolizing the union of parish and guild in the city, — and the same infinitely rich variety of detail.

Self-jurisdiction was the essential point, and self- jurisdiction meant self-administration. But the com- ^ Guilbert de Nogent, De vita sua, quoted by Luchaire, /. c, p. 14. mune was not simply an " autonomous " part of the State — such ambiguous words had not yet been in- vented by that time — it was a State in itself. It had the right of war and peace, of federation and alliance with its neighbours. It was sovereign in its own affairs, and mixed with no others. The supreme political power could be vested entirely in a democratic forum, as was the case in Pskov, whose vyeche sent and received ambassadors, concluded treaties, accepted and sent away princes, or went on without them for dozens of years ; or it was vested in, or usurped by, an aristocracy of merchants or even nobles, as was the case in hundreds of Italian and middle European cities. The principle, nevertheless, remained the same : the city was a State and — what was perhaps still more remarkable — when the power in the city was usurped by an aristocracy of merchants or even nobles, the inner life of the city and the democratism of its daily life did not disappear : they depended but little upon what may be called the political form of the State.

The secret of this seeming anomaly lies in the fact that a mediaeval city was not a centralized State. During the first centuries of its existence, the city hardly could be named a State as regards its interior organization, because the middle ages knew no more of the present centralization of functions than of the present territorial centralization. Each group had its share of sovereignty. The city was usually divided into four quarters, or into five to seven sections radiating from a centre, each quarter or section roughly corresponding to a certain trade or profession which prevailed in it, but nevertheless containing inhabitants of different social positions and occupations — nobles, merchants, artisans, or even half-serfs ; and each

section or quarter constituted a quite independent agglomeration. In Venice, each island was an in- dependent political community. It had its own or- ganized trades, its own commerce in salt, its own jurisdiction and administration, its own forum ; and the nomination of a doge by the city changed nothing in the inner independence of the units.^ In Cologne, we see the inhabitants divided into Geburschaften and Heimsckaften {vicinice), i. e. neighbour guilds, which dated from the Franconian period. Each of them had its judge {Burrichter) and the usual twelve elected sentence-finders {Schoffen), its Vogt, and its greve or commander of the local militia. ^ The story of early London before the Conquest — Mn Green says — is that "of a number of little groups scattered here and there over the area within the walls, each growing up with its own life and institutions, guilds, sokes, religious houses and the like, and only slowly drawing together into a municipal union." ^ And if we refer to the annals of the Russian cities, Novgorod and Pskov, both of which are relatively rich in local details, we find the section {konets) consisting of independent streets {ulitsa), each of which, though chiefly peopled with artisans of a certain craft, had also merchants and landowners among its inhabitants, and was a separate community. It had the communal responsibility of all members in case of crime, its own jurisdiction and administration by street aldermen (ulichanskiye starosty), its owjn seal and, in case of need, its own

1 Lebret, Histoire de Venise, i. 393 ; also Marin, quoted by Leo and Botta in Histoire de ritalie, French edition, 1844, t. i. 500. 2 Dr. W. Arnold, Verfassungsgeschichte der deutschen Freistddte, 1854, Bd. ii. 227 seq.; Ennen, Geschichie der Stadt Koeln, Bd. i. 228-229 \ also the documents pubhshed by Ennen and Eckert. forum ; its own militia, as ^.Iso its self-elected priests and its own collective life and collective enterprise.^ The mediseval city thus appears as a double federa- tion : of all householders united into small territorial unions — the street, the parish, the section — and of individuals united by oath into guilds according to their professions ; the former being a produce of the village- community origin of the city, while the second is a subsequent growth called to life by new conditions.

To guarantee liberty, self-administration, and peace was the chief aim of the mediaeval city ; and labour, as we shall presently see when speaking of the craft guilds, was its chief foundation. But " production " did not absorb the whole attention of the mediaeval economist. With his practical mind, he understood that " con- sumption " must be guaranteed in order to obtain production ; and therefore, to provide for " the common first food and lodging of poor and rich alike " {gemeine notdurft vnd gemach armer vnd richer'^') was. the fundamental principle in each city. The purchase of food supplies and other first necessaries (coal, wood, etc.) before they had reached the market, or altogether in especially favourable conditions from which others would be excluded — the preempcio, in a word — was entirely prohibited. Everything had to go to the market and be offered there for every one's purchase, till the ringing of the bell had closed the market. Then only could the retailer buy the re- mainder, and even then his profit should be an " honest

2 W. Gramich, Verfassungs- und Verwaltungsgeschichte der Stadt Wiirzburg im 13. bis zum 15. Jahrhundert, Wiirzburg, 1882, p. profit" only.^ Moreover, .when corn was bought by a baker wholesale after the close of the market, every citizen had the right to claim part of the corn (about half-a-quarter) for his own use, at wholesale price, if he did so before the final conclusion of the bargain ; and reciprocally, every baker could claim the same if the citizen purchased corn for re-selling it. In the first case, the corn had only to be brought to the town mill to be ground in its proper turn for a settled price, and the bread could be baked in the four banal, or communal oven.^ In short, if a scarcity visited the city, all had to suffer from it more or less ; but apart from the calamities, so long as the free cities existed no one could die in their midst from starvation, as is unhappily too often the case in our own times.