Wage Labor and Guilds in Medieval Europe

by Steven A. Epstein

Relying on a broad range of printed and secondary sources, Wage Labor and Guilds charts the history of guilds from their antecedents in the Roman Empire to their 'crisis' in the fourteenth century. . . . As a much-needed synthesis, [the book] will serve students well.-- Speculum

"A thoughtful and wide-ranging contribution to the social and economic history of the High Medieval urban milieu.-- Journal of Interdisciplinary History

"Interesting and comprehensive. . . . A major accomplishment.-- Journal of Economic History

"Epstein takes a fresh look at the organization of labor in medieval towns and emphasizes the predominance of a wage system within them. He offers illuminating comment on a wide range of subjects--on guilds and guild organization, on women and Jews in the work force, on the value given labor, and on the sources of disaffection. His book presents a feast of themes in medieval social history.--David Herlihy, Brown University

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Economics, Labor

Paperback

First published March 1, 1991

About the author

Steven Epstein teaches history at the University of Kansas. He was educated at Swarthmore College, St. John’s College (Cambridge University), and Harvard College, where he developed his interests in medieval social and economic history. He is the author of Speaking of Slavery: Color, Ethnicity, and Human Bondage in Italy (2000), Genoa and the Genoese 958—1528 (1996).

See also: Stephan R. Epstein.

Reviews

[Faranae · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting material, but extremely dry even for academic material.

[Donald Linnemeyer · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fascinating study about medieval guilds, their history, practice, and connection to politics and the economy. Epstein does a great job of summarizing the sources available to medieval historians. Mostly documents from notaries, from guild laws to work contracts to wills.

Epstein's main point was to trace the development of wage labor as a replacement for slavery, which was widespread in the Roman world. Epstein does this fairly well, but he does leave quite a few questions open, and he seems fairly biased toward a more Marxist reading, seeing wage laborers as a generally oppressed class, in spite of an apparent lack of conclusive evidence.

This is a fairly small part of the book, though. What was most interesting for me were the detailed looks at actual guild laws and practices. Documents aren't plentiful enough to give us all the facts, but there's quite a lot of detail in what we do have. Here are just a few bits:

- The typical model we think of for a guild, the idea that your status in a guild was based primarily on experience and skill wasn't necessarily true. People were divided into the ranks of apprentice, journeyman, and master. But the rank of master was actually that of an employer of journeymen, making it a fairly protected, political role. While guilds were worker-run, they were not necessarily employee-run. This seems to have some pretty big consequences for distributist arguments.

- While guilds did tend to set prices, and this did limit competition between masters, it didn't eliminate progress, or competition altogether. Rather, it eliminated PRICE competition, which shifted the competition over to quality and efficiency in production.

- Not all guilds regulated the quality of goods, but many did, especially those that could cause public problems, like the butcher industry. There were actually medieval food laws, comparable to what we have today.