ABSTRACT

The values of guild and civil society flowed like red and white corpuscles in the bloodstream of medieval and Renaissance political thought. Their diffusion coincided with the development of self-governing towns, parliaments and the 'common law' tradition; it is related to the whole question of the distinctive development of European political culture. In our pursuit of guild ideas, we must now turn to the early communes of 1050—1250. What kind of communities did their members perceive them to be? How did they regard and define the new bonds of civic association? What were their procedural (constitutional) values? Was the civic ethos of this period a Roman, Germanic or Christian product? These enquiries lead to our main point: how were the values of guild and civil society reflected in the communes? It may be argued, inter alia, that in their economic protectionism and in the kind of community their members perceived them to be, towns and guilds were groups of a markedly similar type.