ABSTRACT
To most of us today the term 'guild' suggests either a professional organization (the Writers' Guild, for example), or the craft-guilds of medieval Europe. But guild in the Germanic languages (more often, in this context, spelled 'gild') originally meant 'fraternities of young warriors practising the cult of heroes' (Le Bras 1940-1, 316n.), and then any group bound together by ties of rite and friendship, offering mutual support to its members upon payment of their entry fee (geld). In its first known use, some time before AD 450, the word gilda signified a sacrificial meal. This was accompanied by religious libation and the cult of the dead. The sacred banquet, signifying social solidarity, was, and remained throughout medieval times, 'an essential mark of all guilds' (Coornaert 1947, 31; Wilda 1831, 29ff.), which were sometimes actually known as convivia.
