ABSTRACT
The second chapter begins with an examination of the statutes of the guild. It is, however, primarily dedicated to the analysis of the Arte and its different structures within the city’s organised economic system. This theme within the field of labour history remains a classic subject of Italian medieval history. This chapter is intended to explain the transformations of the guild in the context of the evolution of the social structure, in the contemporaneous political, institutional, and cultural changes of medieval Italy. Relations with other members of the guild, women, and rag-sellers, as well as with wandering vendors and tailors, will also be discussed in this chapter. These relationships were made even more difficult by other factors of growing importance in the fifteenth century. One such factor was the significant and progressive narrowing of the possibility of rising from the lower levels within the guild, as internal guild hierarchies were soon set.
