ed their own
presidents, and celebrated in common their sacrifices, festivals, and
banquets. We have, therefore, good reason for agreeing in the opinion of
the celebrated historian, who considers that in the establishment of a
corporation "the guild should be to a certain degree the motive power, and
the Roman college, with its organization, the material which should be
used to bring it into existence."

[Illustration: Fig. 202.--Craftsmen in the Fourteenth Century--Fac-simile
of a Miniature of a Manuscript in the Library of Brussels.]

It is certain, however, that during several centuries corporations were
either dissolved or hidden from public notice, for they almost entirely
disappeared from the historic records during the partial return to
barbarism, when the production of objects of daily necessity and the
preparation of food were entrusted to slaves under the eye of their
master. Not till the twelfth century did they again begin to flourish,
and, as might be supposed, it was Italy which gave the signal for the
resuscitation of the institutions whose birthplace had been Rome, and
which barbarism had allowed to fall into decay. Brotherhoods of artisans
were also founded at an early period in the north of Gaul, whence they
rapidly spread beyond the Rhine. Under the Emperor Henry I., that is,
during the tenth century, the ordinary condition of artisans in Germany
was still serfdom; but two centuries later the greater number of trades in
most of the large towns of the empire had congregated together in colleges
or bodies under the name of unions (_Einnungen_ or _Innungen_) (Fig. 202),
as, for example, at Gozlar, at Wuerzburg, at Brunswick, &c. These colleges,
however, were not established without much difficulty and without the
energetic resistance of the ruling powers, inasmuch as they often raised
their pretensions so high as to wish to substitute their authority for the
senatorial law, and thus to grasp the government of the cities. The
thirteenth century witnessed obstinate and sanguinary feuds between these
two parties, each of which was alternately victorious. Whichever had the
upper hand took advantage of the opportunity to carry out the most cruel
reprisals against its defeated opponents. The Emperors Frederick II. and
Henry VII. tried to put an end to these strifes by abolishing the
corporations of workmen, but these powerful associations fearlessly
opposed the imperial authority. In France the organization of