ABSTRACT
The purpose of trade guilds was to set and maintain standards of work and the prices charged for the same. Guilds also held monopolies in their particular fields of competence. Although the guild system operated throughout western Europe, it was particularly strong in Florence, where membership of one of the seven greater or fourteen lesser guilds was an essential prerequisite for participation in government, and guilds acted as major cultural patrons. Corporate patronage was also undertaken by confraternities, brotherhoods which partly developed out of the flagellant movement of the thirteenth century and which undertook a range of pious activities. The close association between sickness and poverty makes it appropriate to group together hospitals and almshouses, which were founded with pious intentions throughout this period. The book of statutes which determined the organisation of the scuola was called the Mariegola.
