ABSTRACT
According to a widely held myth, guilds and guild or communal values were peculiarly medieval phenomena, which have since been progressively replaced by less compact forms of association and less affective beliefs about human society. In fact, however, guilds not only survived well beyond the Middle Ages, but in some regions multiplied in number and extended their powers. While in England and Holland they declined from the mid-seventeenth century, in France and Germany the early modern period was the classic era of the craft-guild; in Bodin and Althusius, two of the founders of modern political thought, guilds were given a clearly defined position in social and political philosophy.
