FOUR MASTERS
See
Annals of the Four Masters
FRATERNITIES AND GUILDS
Fraternities and guilds were essentially urban phenom-
ena, reflecting the strong tendency for medieval towns-
people to form themselves into religious and social
associations in order to defend and to promote common
interests within a competitive and densely populated
environment. Lay fraternities (sometimes called con-
fraternities) were designed for men and women whose
married state made it impossible for them to be mem-
bers of the (male) First Order or (female) Second Order
of the Franciscan movement. Guilds, on the other hand,
were more purely secular organizations to start with.
Merchants, many of them itinerant, were among the
first to form such associations, but in the course of time
craftworkers followed suit. After the initial outbreak of
the Black Death in 1348, guilds acquired a more pro-
nounced religious identity. They adopted a patron saint
and held a procession on the appropriate feast day.
Many guilds established a chantry chapel in a local
church and supported the regular singing of masses by
one or more priests. In addition, some late medieval
guilds were more or less purely religious associations,
with the result that fraternities and guilds overlapped
institutionally to some degree.
The oldest guild in Ireland was Dublin’s Guild
Merchant. The city’s landmark charter of urban liber-
ties, granted in 1192, may have been requested by this
guild, whose remarkable membership roll containing
about 8,400 names extends from approximately
1190
to 1265. To start with, it was a general guild with a
wide range of resident and nonresident members, who
paid an entry fee that was eventually standardized at
nine shillings. Altogether at least fourteen Irish
towns—mainly the largest ones—came to have a guild
merchant. The chief concern of these organizations
was the installation of a local trading monopoly, to the
disadvantage of all “foreign” (external) merchants.
Craft guilds were exclusive organizations representing
specialized groups. Almost all the surviving evidence
dates from the fifteenth century or later, although some
craft guilds may have originated earlier. They estab-
lished and maintained standards of workmanship,
requiring new recruits to execute a “masterpiece.”
Such guilds were usually governed by one or two
masters assisted by two wardens. These officials were
entitled to investigate offences committed by guild
members, to examine apprentices and to arrest those
who ran away, and often to regulate prices and wages.
Craft guilds also fulfilled charitable and social func-
tions, lending practical assistance to members in times
of personal difficulty, providing funeral expenses and
support for widows, and funding elementary schools.
The religious guilds of Dublin and its hinterland were
organized along similar lines, their primary function
being to maintain a chantry.
In Ireland fraternities of laymen and laywomen
took the form of the Franciscan Third Order Secular,
starting in the middle of the thirteenth century in
places that already had a First Order friary. An early
example was instituted at Kilkenny in 1347 for the
purpose of repairing the friars’ church and building
a steeple. Members lived in their own homes but were
bound by vows with regard to religious instruction
and practice, sexual abstinence, fasting, personal
dress, and the performance of charitable works. A
wife had to have her husband’s consent before join-
ing. It is possible that the number of lay fraternities
in Ireland, as elsewhere, increased after 1348 as the
plague pandemic was countered by more outward
expressions of personal devotion.
H.B. C
LARKEReferences and Further Reading
Clark, Mary, and Raymond Refaussé, ed.
Directory of Historic
Dublin Guilds. Dublin: Dublin Public Libraries, 1993.
Connolly, Philomena, and Geoffrey Martin, ed.
The Dublin
Guild Merchant Roll, c. 1190
−
1265
. Dublin: Dublin Corpo-
ration, 1992.
Gross, Charles.
The Gild Merchant: a Contribution to British
Municipal History
. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1890.
Ronan, M. V. “Religious Customs of Dublin Medieval Gilds.”
Irish Ecclesiastical Record
5th series, 26 (1925): 225
−
247,
364
−
385.
Webb, J. J.
The Guilds of Dublin
. Dublin: Sign of the Three
Candles, 1929.
See also
Black Death; Parish Churches, Cathedrals;
Religious Orders; Urban Administration
FRENCH LITERATURE, INFLUENCE OF
The Anglo-Norman invasion and the twelfth-century
humanist revival marked a turning point in Ireland’s
literary relations with continental Europe in the late
medieval period. Anglo-Norman French in Ireland is
attested by verse texts, legal and administrative
records, and loan words absorbed into Gaelic. Some
compositions in Irish indicate what could be called
French influence, but much of the material involved is
common to
latinitas
(“Latinity,” Western European
culture of the period in various languages). Direct
transmission from medieval French sources probably
occurred, but mediation
via
Latin or Middle English
versions is also attested. Brian Ua Corcráin, author of
the neo-Arthurian tale
Eachtra Mhacaomh an IolairFOUR MASTERS