Corporation (feudal Europe)

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In feudal Europe, a corporation (from the Latin corpus, corporis a body)^[1] was an aggregation of business interests into a single legal body, entity or compact, usually with an explicit license from city, church, or national leaders. These functioned as effective monopolies for a particular good or labor. Most notably, merchants, bankers, notaries, blacksmiths, shoemakers. These corporations experienced their greatest development between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and declined and then disappeared between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In Italy, these corporations were mainly called Arts or Crafts Corporations, in Germanic-speaking countries Guilds.

The term "corporation" was never used outside of Italy (Corporazioni delle arti e dei mestieri). In other countries, they were called métiers ("craft bodies") in France, guilds in England, Zünfte in Germany, gremios in Castile, gremis in Catalonia and València, grémios in Portugal, συντεχνία in Greece, and with others denominations.

In Italy they had different names from region to region: Arts and Craft Corporations in Tuscany, fraglie in the Venetian hinterland, scole in Venice, paratici in various cities of Lombardy,gremi in Sardinia, society of arts in Bologna, colleges in Perugia. Often the official name was universitates or collegia in Latin. As late as the 18th century in England it was used to refer to such ventures as the East India Company or the Hudson's Bay Company: commercial organizations that operated under royal patent to have exclusive rights to a particular area of trade.

The first of the Corporations was the Calimala corporation, or Merchants' Guild, which was formed in 1150. The name Calimala most likely derives from the Greek "kalòs mallòs", or "beautiful wool", with evident reference to the fact that the art of merchants brought together many wool traders. At the time, Via Calimala was full of shops dedicated to this trade and the headquarters of the corporation was located there.

The seven corporations that were formed in Florence and took the name of Major Arts, were established between the second half of the 12th century and the first half of the 13th century, progressively detaching themselves from the "original" corporation of Calimala. In the year 1266, the main headquarters of the Major Arts Corporations was still Calimala and in that year it was decided that these societies should be organized in an even more stable way, each with its own banner, under which to gather the people in arms if necessary. The members of these corporations found themselves managing and administering large interests and managed to create commercial and financial relationships in many parts of the world; their economic primacy led them by the end of the thirteenth century to the leadership of the Florentine Republic.

In some cities of the Holy Roman Empire, artisans organized into corporations came to seize power in the Zunftrevolution In these free cities of the Empire the "government of the arts" were established for a period, which guaranteed the corporations a dominant position in the city council. In Zurich the corporate constitution (Zunftverfassung) was established in 1336 and lasted until 1798. Other Swiss cities with a corporate regime were Basel, Schaffhausen and St. Gallen. In Cologne and Aachen the corporations acted politically within larger organizations called Gaffeln. In 1396 the 22 Gaffeln signed the "Letter of Alliance", which introduced a constitutional system to Cologne through which the Gaffeln took over the political management of the city, removing it from the control of patrician families, which in Cologne was called Richerzeche. In 1450 the inhabitants of Aachen did the same and promulgated the so-called Aachener Gaffelbrief. n Flanders, in Ghent, Bruges and Liège, the corporations managed to obtain only a few seats in the city's cpirt, alongside those occupied by the old patricians. However, between the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Modern Age, the majority of corporate republics (Zunftrepubliken) disappeared under the pressure of territorial princes, and the political power of the corporations was suppressed or reduced to commercial matters. By 1550 the power of the corporations (Zunftherrschaft) was canceled in all the cities of the Empire by Charles V. Subsequently, until the end of the Holy Roman Empire the cities would be governed by the city's patriciate.

With the advent of Absolutism, the corporations lost any political role, but maintained and enforced their economic role. They became instruments of the monarchies dirigist policies in exchange for the monopoly of their trade.

Within the corporations, the role of master became almost hereditary, while workers were gradually left outside the trade corporations. In the corporations, the traditional hierarchy between major and minor arts was in some cases transformed into a relationship of trade between individual corporations, more similar as today, thus, for example, dyers and weavers business corporations came to depend on fabric businessmen.

In the second half of the eighteenth century, the Enlightenment promoted the idea of the free market and consequently the enlightened sovereigns abolished the corporation guilds. The Grand Duchy of Tuscany in 1770, the Duchy of Milan in 1787. In France they were suppressed by the Revolution in 1791 with the Le Chapelier law. In London livery companies were not abolished, but were reduced to a ceremonial role only.

Regardless of geographical diversity and political involvement, the primary task of each corporation was the defense of the monopoly of the exercise of its trade and those who practiced it even though they were not members were considered by the corporation to be workers who constituted a potential danger. towards members. It is therefore possible to identify traits common to all corporations, regarding their line of conduct and the objectives pursued.

The protection of the quality of manufactured goods, especially with regard to corporations dedicated to commercial activities; the internal regulations imposed strict control on the use of raw materials, work tools, processing techniques in a primitive form of property rights enforcement, i.e. those products that did not comply with the quality standards set by the associations.

The principle of equality between members, which although only formally respected, was aimed at preventing actions of unfair competition between members of the corporation; in reality the carrying out of the activities was bound by a hierarchical order, which distinguished the members into masters, apprentices and simple workers, creating a notable economic disparity among the members.

The training of new freshmen, through a period of apprenticeship (the current internship) had a variable duration from city to city; the apprentice entered as a child into the master's workshop who undertook to teach him all the secrets of the trade.

The exercise of jurisdiction over its members, whereby the corporations claimed exclusive jurisdiction in matters within their jurisdiction, such as lawsuits between members and infringements committed against the regulations.

Each corporation had its own statute and was structured according to representative bodies:

The Corporal: it was the plenary assembly of members which initially met at close intervals and elected representatives called, depending on the case, consuls, priors, rectors, captains, etc.; the consuls remained in office only for short periods and had the task of managing all the corporation's activities, including external public relations.

The Council: was a smaller consultative body with the task of ratifying or rejecting the decisions of the Corporal and gradually replaced the Corporal, which was convened less and less frequently.

The bureaucratic apparatus: generally composed of a notary with the functions of secretary and protocol officer and a treasurer.

The effects of a corporation were similar to a monopoly. On the one hand, the ability to have sole access to markets meant that the business was encouraged (e.g., the ability to be an exclusive trader provided an incentive to the East India Company to accept financial risks in exploration) and the negative effects of competition were avoided (to take the same example, exclusive patents cut down on merchants sponsoring piracy). Innovation was stifled, however, and prices were unregulated. (In the case of patent corporations, the town or monarch was ostensibly able to regulate prices by revoking the patent, but this rarely occurred.)

• Guild
• Guilds of Florence
• Guilds of Brussels
• Bourgeois of Brussels
• Bourgeois of Paris
• East India Company
• Corporatism