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Ruthless Rules of Medieval Parisian Guilds... That Ruled Paris · Chapter by Chapter — The Lost Library

• 0:00
  So imagine studying your craft for like 12 straight years.
• 0:04
  Yeah, that is a massive chunk of your.
• 0:06
  Life, right? And you're working these
• 0:08
  grueling 14 hour days entirely unpaid, just sweeping floors and
• 0:14
  doing manual labor sounds. Awful.
• 0:16
  It gets worse because at the end of that excruciating decade,
• 0:20
  your degree isn't in, you know, medicine or law.
• 0:23
  It's in Stringing coral beads. Oh wow, stringing beads.
• 0:28
  So welcome to our deep dive into the ruthless, highly regulated,
• 0:32
  and honestly deeply bizarre world of 13th century Parisian
• 0:36
  trade guilds. I mean that 12 year
• 0:38
  apprenticeship, that was a harsh reality for a medieval bead
• 0:41
  maker. It's hard to even wrap your head
• 0:43
  around. It really is, because when we
• 0:45
  strip away all those romanticized Hollywood versions
• 0:48
  of the Middle Ages, you know, the Knights, the castles, those
• 0:51
  sweeping royal dramas. Right, the stuff we always see
• 0:53
  in movies. Exactly.
• 0:54
  When you take that away, we are left with the actual day-to-day
• 0:58
  survival of the urban working class.
• 1:00
  Which is what we're talking about today.
• 1:01
  Right. If you were dropped into the mud
• 1:04
  and noise of Paris in the year 1260, your entire existence was
• 1:08
  dictated by what you did for a living.
• 1:11
  And more importantly, the strict bureaucratic organization that
• 1:14
  actually allowed you to do it. Yes, the guilds.
• 1:17
  So for this deep dive, we are unpacking a single incredibly
• 1:21
  revealing historical document that outlines that exact
• 1:25
  bureaucracy. It's such a fascinating source.
• 1:27
  It really is. It's a bulletin analyzing the
• 1:30
  levers. Mata or the Book of Trades.
• 1:32
  Yeah, compiled around 1260 by Etienne Bolo.
• 1:35
  And below was the Prevo of Paris, which, if I'm
• 1:38
  understanding this right, effectively made him the Royal
• 1:41
  Provost, Chief Magistrate and like police Commissioner, all
• 1:44
  rolled into one. Yeah, he had an immense amount
• 1:47
  of power. King Louis the 9th basically
• 1:48
  appointed him to clean up urban corruption.
• 1:50
  And Below's solution to that corruption was to document the
• 1:53
  laws, the customs, and the highly specific rules for 101
• 1:57
  distinct craft guilds operating in the city.
• 2:00
  Right. And by forcing these unwritten,
• 2:03
  you know, traditional customs on the parchment, Pollo
• 2:06
  inadvertently created this perfect cross section of
• 2:09
  medieval economic life. Like a time capsule.
• 2:13
  Exactly, and the document reveals that the medieval Guild
• 2:16
  functioned essentially as a Fortress A.
• 2:18
  Fortress, Yeah. It was an institution built to
• 2:21
  shield workers from predatory feudal Lords who basically just
• 2:25
  wanted to tax them into oblivion, and at the same time
• 2:29
  it blocked foreign merchants from coming in and stealing
• 2:31
  local market share. But you know the mechanics of a
• 2:35
  fortress are two sided. How do you mean?
• 2:37
  Well, the thick walls definitely keep invaders out, but they are
• 2:40
  just as effective at trapping the inhabitants inside.
• 2:43
  Oh, absolutely. The protection of the Guild came
• 2:45
  at the cost of your individual freedom.
• 2:48
  To get the benefits of the fortress, you really had to play
• 2:50
  by rules that micromanaged your entire life.
• 2:53
  Right down to the smallest detail.
• 2:54
  Yes, starting from the very moment you tried to get inside
• 2:57
  the walls as an apprentice. Right, because entering a Guild,
• 3:00
  it was a highly formalized process.
• 3:02
  You couldn't just ask for it for a job.
• 3:04
  No, no, a young worker couldn't simply walk into a shop and
• 3:08
  offer to sweep up in exchange for learning a trade.
• 3:10
  That just wasn't done. So how did it work?
• 3:13
  The initiation required a sworn mutual vow before the Juraise.
• 3:17
  And those are the Guild officers.
• 3:19
  Yeah, the elected officers are guards of the Guild.
• 3:21
  They essentially function as an internal police force.
• 3:23
  See, given how intensely bureaucratic these guilds were,
• 3:27
  I'm honestly surprised this initiation relied on an oral
• 3:29
  contract. Really.
• 3:31
  Yeah, I mean, you would expect an organization obsessed with
• 3:34
  rules to demand a heavy paper trail for a decade long labor
• 3:38
  agreement. Well, the barrier there was
• 3:40
  purely economic. Drawing up a formal written
• 3:43
  document on parchment was it was prohibitively expensive for a
• 3:48
  standard tradesman. Oh, that makes sense.
• 3:50
  Parchment wasn't cheap. Exactly.
• 3:52
  So they relied on a solemn vow in front of prominent witnesses
• 3:55
  instead. And the juries were there to
• 3:57
  oversee it. Right.
• 3:58
  The officers were there to vet the transaction, ensuring the
• 4:01
  master was financially solvent and, you know, actually possess
• 4:05
  the skill to teach. While also binding The
• 4:07
  Apprentice to strict obedience. Very strict obedience.
• 4:11
  And the guilds also ruthlessly capped how many apprentices a
• 4:14
  master could take on at one time.
• 4:16
  Yes, that was a huge deal. Looking at the source, it was
• 4:20
  almost universally limited to just one or two students per
• 4:23
  master. That's right.
• 4:24
  The altruistic justification written in the rule book, which
• 4:27
  is kind of funny, is that a master shouldn't have more
• 4:30
  students than he can effectively supervise.
• 4:33
  Right to ensure where the quality of the craft remains
• 4:36
  high. But that wasn't the real reason
• 4:38
  was. It not at all.
• 4:40
  The underlying economic reality was entirely about artificial
• 4:44
  scarcity. OK, break that down for me.
• 4:46
  Well, the masters were deliberately restricting the
• 4:48
  labor pool. Think about it, if every master
• 4:52
  trained 10 apprentices, the market would be flooded with
• 4:55
  skilled workers a decade later. Which would drive down prices.
• 4:59
  Exactly. It would create fierce
• 5:01
  competition. By capping the intake, they
• 5:03
  guaranteed that the supply of masters would never outpace the
• 5:06
  demand for their goods. That is incredibly calculated.
• 5:09
  It was a total monopoly, though there was one major loophole and
• 5:12
  it was biological. Oh the Suns.
• 5:14
  Yep. A master's own sons usually
• 5:17
  bypass these quotas entirely. Which basically planted the
• 5:20
  early seeds for inherited family monopolies.
• 5:23
  Exactly. Families could dominate a trade
• 5:25
  for generations. Which brings me back to that 12
• 5:28
  year apprenticeship for coral bead makers.
• 5:30
  Oh yeah. The bead makers.
• 5:32
  When you look at the duration of these contracts across different
• 5:35
  trades, the logic just breaks down completely.
• 5:38
  It makes no sense. Right rope makers required four
• 5:42
  years of training. Brass wire drawers required 6,
• 5:46
  but stringing and shaping coral beads took 12 years. 12 years to
• 5:51
  learn how to string a bead. That is clearly not about the
• 5:53
  technical learning curve. No, not at all.
• 5:55
  It looks much more like a legalized system for free child
• 5:58
  labor. That's exactly what it was.
• 6:00
  It operates on the same economic logic as like modern medical
• 6:04
  residencies, where you perform grueling, highly profitable work
• 6:08
  for practically nothing, just to pay the toll for entry into a
• 6:11
  closed profession. That's a really good comparison
• 6:14
  because the profit margin for the master heavily dictated
• 6:17
  those timelines. How so?
• 6:19
  Well, the first year or two of an apprenticeship, the child was
• 6:21
  largely a liability. Right, they don't know what
• 6:23
  they're doing. Exactly.
• 6:25
  The master had to feed them, clothe them, provide lodging.
• 6:28
  Meanwhile, The Apprentice produced very little of value
• 6:33
  and probably ruined expensive materials.
• 6:36
  Just making mistakes. Yeah, but in years 6-7 or ten,
• 6:40
  that apprentice was a highly skilled worker producing
• 6:43
  sellable goods. And still receiving 0 wages.
• 6:46
  Zero. So the master recouped his
• 6:48
  initial investment tenfold in those later years.
• 6:51
  Wow, could The Apprentice get out of it early?
• 6:54
  If an apprentice wanted to shorten that time, the only way
• 6:57
  out was to pay the master a massive lump sum fee.
• 7:01
  Basically buying out their own indentured servitude.
• 7:03
  Exactly, and the domestic reality of that servitude was
• 7:06
  pretty grim. Yeah, the texts politely
• 7:09
  referred to the apprentices, quote UN quote folly and
• 7:12
  jollity. Folly and jollity.
• 7:13
  Which is basically a medieval bureaucratic slang for running
• 7:16
  away. It's a very nice way of saying
• 7:18
  they fled for their lives. The source highlights that
• 7:21
  runaways were a systemic issue to the point where guilds had
• 7:25
  universal laws stating that if an apprentice fled, no other
• 7:29
  master in the city was allowed to offer them harbor or
• 7:31
  employment. Right, the penalty for escaping
• 7:34
  were super rigid. What happened if they got
• 7:36
  caught? Well, after three failed escape
• 7:39
  attempts, the contract was permanently voided and The
• 7:42
  Apprentice was blacklisted from the trade entirely.
• 7:45
  Wow, three strikes and you're out.
• 7:47
  Yep, and while masters were legally obligated to treat their
• 7:51
  apprentices well, the power dynamic behind closed doors was
• 7:54
  absolute. Yeah, the source outlines A
• 7:56
  decree from a bit later in 1399 that paints A vivid and honestly
• 8:01
  horrifying picture of that power dynamic.
• 8:03
  Oh, the Goldsmith case. Yes, the court had to intervene
• 8:06
  because a Goldsmith master disciplined his apprentice by
• 8:09
  striking him in the head with a heavy iron bunch of keys.
• 8:11
  Just brutal. It left the kid with a literal
• 8:14
  hole in his skull. Yeah, and we see another court
• 8:17
  order where a master was instructed not to let his wife
• 8:19
  beat The Apprentice. Wait, really?
• 8:21
  Yeah, the magistrate explicitly stated that if the boy
• 8:25
  misbehaved, the master should do the beating himself.
• 8:28
  That is so messed up. It really is these court records
• 8:31
  from the Chatelet, which was the royal headquarters courthouse
• 8:35
  and main prison of Paris. They really remind us that
• 8:38
  apprentices were legally classified closer to property
• 8:41
  than to employees. But surviving that decade of
• 8:44
  unpaid labor and physical discipline didn't even earn an
• 8:47
  apprentice the right to open their own shop.
• 8:49
  No, no, not at all. The Guild system was designed to
• 8:52
  prevent instant competition, so graduates were forced into this
• 8:56
  medieval purgatory. The gig economy.
• 8:58
  Right. They entered a highly controlled
• 9:00
  gig economy as a valet, which translates to a hired man or day
• 9:05
  laborer. Yeah, a valet had the technical
• 9:07
  skills of a master, but they lacked the capital to buy their
• 9:11
  own tools and material. And they lacked the legal
• 9:13
  permission from the Guild to open a storefront.
• 9:16
  Crucially, yes. So they were permanent wage
• 9:18
  laborers, and their daily routine was deeply, deeply
• 9:21
  regimented. The mechanics of how they
• 9:23
  actually found work are fascinating to me.
• 9:26
  It's so strange, right? It really is because it wasn't a
• 9:30
  free market where you just knocked on workshop doors asking
• 9:32
  for a job. Nope.
• 9:34
  At dawn, all unemployed valets were required to gather in a
• 9:37
  specific designated public square in Paris.
• 9:41
  Just waiting there. Yeah, they had to stand there in
• 9:43
  the cold, waiting for a specific church bell to ring.
• 9:47
  And until that bell tolled, it was highly illegal for any
• 9:50
  master to hire them. The centralization there served
• 9:53
  2 purposes. OK, what were they?
• 9:55
  First, it allowed the Guild officers to monitor exactly who
• 9:59
  was working and who wasn't. Keeping an eye on everyone,
• 10:01
  yeah. And second, it prevented secret
• 10:05
  under the table wage negotiations.
• 10:07
  That makes sense. Once a valet was hired from that
• 10:09
  square, their work day was entirely dictated by the Sun.
• 10:12
  Right, because of the light. Exactly, artificial light like
• 10:16
  tallow candles was terrible for detailed work, and high quality
• 10:20
  beeswax candles were far too expensive for a workshop to burn
• 10:23
  profitably. So they just worked while the
• 10:25
  sun was out. Yes, which meant a valet worked
• 10:27
  a grueling 14 hour shift during the peak of summer, which
• 10:31
  dropped to around 8 hours in the depths of winter.
• 10:34
  The guilds also enforced fierce local protectionism in that
• 10:37
  square. Oh, absolutely.
• 10:39
  Like a master was absolutely forbidden from hiring a foreign
• 10:42
  worker. And just to clarify, in 13th
• 10:45
  century terms, foreign just meant anyone from outside the
• 10:49
  city limits of Paris. Right, just some guy from the
• 10:52
  next town over. So you couldn't hire them if
• 10:54
  there was a local Guild member standing in the square looking
• 10:57
  for a job. The logic there was tied
• 11:00
  directly to the guild's internal economy.
• 11:02
  Keeping the money inside. Exactly.
• 11:05
  If a master hired a cheaper outsider while a local valet
• 11:08
  starved, that unemployed local would eventually become a
• 11:12
  financial burden on the guild's own charity systems.
• 11:15
  Oh, I see. The rule ensured the wealth of
• 11:17
  the city stayed within the walls of the metaphorical fortress.
• 11:21
  Now you would assume that a crowd of day laborers standing
• 11:24
  in a dirt square at dawn would look like, you know, a rough,
• 11:26
  soot covered bunch. You'd think so.
• 11:28
  But the source points out that presentation was heavily
• 11:31
  regulated, especially in the luxury trades.
• 11:33
  This is one of my favorite details.
• 11:35
  It's wild the Sword Cutlers Guild actually mandated that a
• 11:39
  master who could only hire a valet who personally owned five
• 11:43
  complete sets of closing. Five complete sets.
• 11:46
  For a medieval gig worker, owning 5 suits of clothes seems
• 11:50
  like an astronomical barrier to entry.
• 11:52
  It was an enormous financial hurdle, yeah, but it was driven
• 11:56
  by the psychology of high end retail.
• 11:58
  High end retail in 1260. Pretty much, the sword cutlers
• 12:02
  weren't selling to peasants, they were selling the counts
• 12:06
  barons wealthy nights. The big spenders.
• 12:09
  Right when the nobility walked into a workshop to Commission a
• 12:12
  weapon, the physical appearance of the laborers was part of the
• 12:15
  shop's branding. So a valet and rags would
• 12:18
  devalue the perceived quality of the swords?
• 12:21
  Exactly. That dynamic really highlights
• 12:23
  the massive gap between the workers and the owners.
• 12:26
  It does. I mean the valets are investing
• 12:28
  in luxury wardrobes just to get hired while the masters reap all
• 12:31
  the profits. It's definitely a stark
• 12:32
  contrast. It's not surprising that we the
• 12:35
  rumblings of organized labor disputes starting here.
• 12:37
  The division between wealthy masters and permanent wage
• 12:40
  laborers inevitably led to early class struggles.
• 12:44
  I can imagine. The historical records show
• 12:46
  intense friction, like in the Flemish cloth town of Ebra,
• 12:51
  which operated under a similar Guild structure.
• 12:53
  What happened there? Workers rioted and actually
• 12:56
  murdered the mayor over a local ordinance that attempted to add
• 13:00
  an extra hour to their working day.
• 13:02
  Oh, they murdered the mayor. Yes, and the Parisian masters
• 13:06
  were acutely aware of this threat.
• 13:07
  They didn't want to be next. Nope.
• 13:09
  They were terrified of valets forming their own covert unions
• 13:13
  to demand higher pay, so they leverage their alliance with the
• 13:17
  royal authorities to punish any labor rebellion severely.
• 13:21
  So reaching the rank of Master really seems like the ultimate
• 13:23
  goal to escape that daily grind. You'd think so, yeah.
• 13:26
  But looking at the rules laid out by Etienne Boil, becoming
• 13:29
  the boss also meant stepping into a micromanaged nightmare.
• 13:32
  It was not easy. First you needed immense skill
• 13:36
  and capital, and for about 25 of the Parisian guilds you also had
• 13:40
  to purchase the literal right to trade directly from the king.
• 13:44
  Yeah, many of the most lucrative trades were considered royal
• 13:46
  feasts. Meaning the king owned them.
• 13:49
  Essentially, yes. The king owned the on those
• 13:51
  industries and lease the operating rights to individual
• 13:55
  masters. So you pay the king.
• 13:56
  Open your shop. And then you were placed under
• 13:59
  the microsphapic surveillance of the jurais.
• 14:01
  And the Jurais inspecting your shop, they are your direct
• 14:04
  competitors. That's the crazy part.
• 14:06
  It is. They are the other masters in
• 14:08
  your neighborhood elected to police the trade.
• 14:10
  It is basically weaponized consumer protection enforced by
• 14:14
  the guys running the shop next door.
• 14:17
  They enforce extreme quality control, but the motivation
• 14:21
  wasn't just like civic duty. What was it then?
• 14:24
  It was collective self preservation.
• 14:26
  Oh, to protect the guild's reputation.
• 14:28
  Exactly. In an era before mass
• 14:30
  communication, a buyer relied on the reputation of the city,
• 14:34
  right? If one Parisian blacksmith sold
• 14:37
  a shoddy horseshoe that caused a Knight's horse to pull a blame,
• 14:41
  that knight didn't just blame the individual Smith.
• 14:44
  He blamed all of them. He blamed the entire Parisian
• 14:47
  blacksmith Guild. A single bad product tarnished
• 14:51
  the fortress for everyone. And that collective anxiety
• 14:54
  explains why they explicitly ban night work for almost everyone.
• 14:58
  Yeah, Weavers, locksmiths, Jewelers.
• 15:01
  The rule wasn't about work life balance at all.
• 15:04
  No, not even a little bit. It was an acknowledgement that
• 15:06
  working by the dim light of a fire meant you couldn't see the
• 15:10
  fine details. And poor lighting leads to
• 15:13
  mistakes. Right.
• 15:14
  Only a handful of specific trades, like Miller's grinding
• 15:18
  grain or Brewer's tending vats, were allowed to operate after
• 15:21
  sunset. Because you don't need great
• 15:23
  light for that. Exactly.
• 15:24
  The anti fraud regulations detailed in the Livre des
• 15:27
  Métiers are incredibly granular. Too.
• 15:29
  They are so specific. They tell us exactly what kind
• 15:32
  of scams tradesmen were attempting, like they strictly
• 15:35
  forbade rope makers from secretly weaving cheap hemp into
• 15:38
  expensive flax ropes to pad their margins.
• 15:40
  And they banned cutlers from putting silver trimmings on bone
• 15:43
  knife handles. Yes, because they knew the only
• 15:47
  reason to dress up a cheap piece of cow bone with expensive
• 15:50
  silver was to pass it off to an ignorant buyer as genuine
• 15:53
  imported ivory. It's all about the scam, and the
• 15:56
  penalties for getting caught were brutal.
• 15:59
  If a tailor cut a client's valuable silk poorly and ruin
• 16:03
  the garment, the officers would come inspect the damage.
• 16:06
  And it wasn't just an apology. No, the tailor had to pay full
• 16:10
  restitution to the client, a hefty fine to the king, and
• 16:14
  another fine to the guilt. Just massive financial hits.
• 16:17
  And to prevent theft, tailors were actually forced to cut
• 16:20
  their cloth at St. level windows directly in the public eye.
• 16:23
  Wait, really? Just so people could watch them.
• 16:26
  Yes, so pedestrians could literally wash their hands and
• 16:29
  ensure they weren't skimming extra fabric for themselves.
• 16:32
  That is incredible. And beyond the constant threat
• 16:35
  of fines and inspections, masters also carried a massive
• 16:38
  burden of medieval taxation. The tax structure was dizzying.
• 16:42
  It was Masters paid the Haban, which was a fixed franchise fee,
• 16:46
  for the right to operate. Basically a license fee, yeah.
• 16:50
  And that tolu, which was a variable sales tax levied on
• 16:53
  every cartload or beast of burden carrying goods into their
• 16:56
  shop. And sometimes those taxes were
• 16:58
  paid in kind, right, directly to the Crown.
• 17:00
  Oh right, the wooden casks. Yeah, the wooden utensil makers
• 17:03
  were required to manufacture and deliver 7 custom made wooden
• 17:08
  casks every single year just to maintain the King's royal wine
• 17:12
  Cellars. 7 casks a year. But the source notes that giving
• 17:16
  away those casks actually bought them an exemption from the
• 17:19
  single most dreaded duty in all of Dead Evil Paris.
• 17:22
  The get. Yes, the Night Watch.
• 17:25
  In a pre police era, the burden of civic security fell entirely
• 17:29
  on the working bourgeois. They were the police.
• 17:32
  Basically every three weeks a guild's turn would come up in
• 17:35
  the rotation. And they had to patrol.
• 17:37
  The Masters had to physically report to the Chatelet Fortress
• 17:40
  at nightfall, arm themselves, and patrol the dark, incredibly
• 17:43
  dangerous streets of Paris until sunrise.
• 17:45
  Unless, of course, you belong to a luxury Guild.
• 17:48
  Right, there were exceptions. The gold Smiths, the armorers,
• 17:51
  the tradesmen who made fancy plumed hats for the nobility,
• 17:55
  they usually negotiated exemptions from the king.
• 17:58
  Naturally. That left the physical danger of
• 18:01
  the night watch squarely on the shoulders of the everyday middle
• 18:05
  class tradesmen. The regular guys.
• 18:07
  Exactly, and this leads to my favorite detail in the entire
• 18:11
  source. Let me guess, the old clothes
• 18:14
  dealers? Yes, the formal complaint lodged
• 18:17
  by the old clothes dealers regarding their watch duties.
• 18:21
  It is such a great story. It's hilarious, and the
• 18:24
  complaint perfectly illustrates the friction between the working
• 18:27
  class and the strict royal administration running the
• 18:30
  Chatelet. So what happened?
• 18:31
  The old clothes dealers were furious because the royal guards
• 18:34
  were being absolute sticklers about attendance.
• 18:37
  No sick days allowed. Practically, if a master was
• 18:40
  bedridden with an illness or traveling out of town for a
• 18:43
  market, the guards refused to accept a sick note delivered by
• 18:47
  a neighbor. So who had to deliver it?
• 18:49
  They forced the sick master's wife to walk to the fortress in
• 18:52
  person in the middle of the night to deliver the excuse.
• 18:56
  And the written complaint argues forcefully that it is a grievous
• 19:00
  wrong to force these women. And the text literally reads
• 19:03
  whether they are fair or ugly, young or old, feeble or fat.
• 19:08
  To navigate the dangerous, unlit streets of Paris at midnight
• 19:12
  just to hand a piece of parchment to a royal guard.
• 19:15
  It's a striking reminder, you know, that behind all the
• 19:17
  economic theory and royal decrees, these were real
• 19:20
  families trying to navigate a rigid, unyielding system that
• 19:24
  didn't really care about their personal safety.
• 19:26
  Absolutely. Now, up to this point, analyzing
• 19:29
  The Apprentice limits the gig economy, waiting squares, the
• 19:32
  constant surveillance, the taxes.
• 19:35
  It sounds pretty bleak. It sounds like an exhausting,
• 19:37
  ruthless business. It does.
• 19:39
  But the source reveals A deeply human side to this organization
• 19:43
  that prevented the whole heavy structure from collapsing.
• 19:45
  Yes, beside the economic Guild existed the contrary.
• 19:48
  The contrary. Which translates to the
• 19:50
  Brotherhood or Sisterhood. It was the religious and
• 19:53
  benevolent arm of the tribe. So they weren't just about
• 19:55
  business. Right.
• 19:57
  While the Guild managed the cold economics, the contrary managed
• 20:00
  the spiritual and physical well-being of the members.
• 20:03
  Kind of like a Community Center. Exactly, they centered their
• 20:06
  community around a specific local Chapel and a patron St.
• 20:10
  like St. Aloha for the Goldsmiths.
• 20:12
  And the confrary operated as an incredibly robust social safety
• 20:17
  net. A.
• 20:17
  Very necessary one. Funded entirely by the
• 20:20
  initiation fees of new masters, voluntary legacies and wills,
• 20:24
  and, crucially, a percentage of those fines collected for shoddy
• 20:28
  work. Oh, that's interesting.
• 20:30
  The fines funded the charity. Yeah, and the mechanisms of that
• 20:33
  charity were highly specific. Like what?
• 20:36
  Well, the wool merchants took a tiny fraction of a penny from
• 20:39
  every single transaction they made and diverted it into a
• 20:42
  collective fund specifically used by grain for the city's
• 20:46
  poorest residents during winter. Wow, so actual community
• 20:49
  outreach. Yeah, and the Cooks Guild set
• 20:51
  aside a full third of all the fines they collected to support
• 20:54
  the poor old men of the trade who could no longer physically
• 20:57
  stand by a hot fire and had fallen into poverty.
• 21:00
  Taking care of their own. Exactly.
• 21:02
  And the Goldsmiths used their massive conferry treasury to
• 21:06
  host a sprawling Easter dinner for the city's poor at the Hotel
• 21:10
  Due, which was the local hospital.
• 21:12
  That's really amazing. They basically taxed themselves
• 21:14
  to ensure that an artisan who broke his arm or grew too blind
• 21:18
  to work wouldn't simply starve in the street.
• 21:20
  You know, when we synthesize all of these elements, the
• 21:23
  apprenticeship, the valet system, the taxation and the
• 21:26
  charity, the overarching historical take away becomes
• 21:30
  really clear. Which is.
• 21:32
  The 13th century Gills successfully engineered a
• 21:35
  comprehensive social safety net and consumer protection
• 21:38
  framework centuries before modern governments even
• 21:41
  attempted. It that's a huge achievement.
• 21:43
  It is they guaranteed baseline survival for their members.
• 21:46
  But, and this is a big but, that guaranteed survival required a
• 21:50
  total sacrifice of innovation. Completely.
• 21:52
  The Guild system was built on the routine transmission of
• 21:55
  methods. If you were a Shoemaker, you
• 21:58
  made a shoe exactly the way the jurais taught you to make it.
• 22:00
  No deviations allowed. 0 You couldn't invent a faster process
• 22:05
  or use a cheapo material because your product wouldn't pass
• 22:09
  inspection. And you couldn't lower your
• 22:11
  prices to undercut arrival because the prices were strictly
• 22:13
  fixed. The fortress crushed
• 22:16
  out-of-the-box thinking because any deviation from the rules
• 22:19
  threatened the delicate balance of their local monopoly.
• 22:22
  So the medieval worker willingly traded dynamic economic freedom
• 22:27
  for absolute rigid security. Which leaves us with a
• 22:31
  fascinating paradox to consider. Of a good paradox.
• 22:34
  Think about your own profession today.
• 22:36
  If you had the opportunity to sign a contract that offered
• 22:39
  absolute job security, guaranteed the high quality of
• 22:42
  everything your industry produced, and provided an
• 22:45
  ironclad social safety net if you ever got sick or grueled.
• 22:48
  Sounds pretty good so far. Right.
• 22:50
  But the catch was that you could never innovate, you could never
• 22:53
  change your prices, and you could never step one inch
• 22:55
  outside your highly regulated lane.
• 22:58
  There's the catch. Would you take that deal, or is
• 23:01
  the chaos and anxiety of our modern free market worth the
• 23:04
  freedom it provides? It's a tough call.
• 23:06
  It really is. So the next time you walk past a
• 23:09
  local business or negotiate a salary, imagine the ringing of
• 23:13
  that medieval church bell at dawn and ask yourself, would you
• 23:16
  want to be inside the fortress?