Guilds and Commerce

Control of economic life in the Middle Ages was exercised by specially organized groups known as guilds. The essential purpose of guilds was to create monopolies. They tried to exclude from the local market so far as possible, both the outside trader and the independent trader inside who was not a member of the guild. Their social attitude was to some extent influenced by the church, but their aim was to use the town market …

…cut off light and air for passers-by and even endangered horsemen's heads. The most important contribution of the medieval townsmen or bourgeois to civilization was to re-introduce the civic spirit of classical times. In the communes that won liberties from kings, bishops and nobles, in the guilds that exercised privileges and protected their members, and in the town corporations through which they governed themselves, they learned the effectiveness of dealing with problems by acting together.