Secular Brotherhoods: The Germanic and Anglo-Saxon Guilds 55terrestrial reproduction of a transcendent model. The same was true in
the traditional civilizations of ancient peoples.
Each of the brotherhoods to which Abbot Aymon refers was not yet
strictly composed of artisans of one trade who had banded together to
perform their profession. Instead, for work that was not planned in
advance, brotherhoods were formed spontaneously on the construction
sites themselves and were concerned with numerous activities. In their
composition they were often temporary or itinerant associations. Special-
ization and regionalization took place as the populace became fixed in
cities and as the cities organized around their growing populations.
As we consider their formation, some important questions arise
regarding these brotherhoods: Where did their peerless artisans and
artists come from, especially in the specialized trades of construction,
sculpture, decoration, and glasswork? Where and from whom had they
received their training that allowed them to achieve such heights in their
work? It is obvious that the majority and the most skilled could only
originally have been members of monastic associations. Who else
indeed would have been able to pass on the torch that only those asso-
ciated with monasteries had taken pains to keep alight?
The secularization of monastic associations had actually been
underway for a long time in preparation for their transformation into
independent brotherhoods when the social setting was ready to permit
their existence. By virtue of the fact that the monastic schools had given
people an education and training from which it had derived enormous
profit, the monks gradually lost their monopoly on knowledge and art.
These fields had become popularized; the lay master builders, who had
learned their secrets and traditions from ecclesiastics, grew greater in
number until they were soon the majority. According to Springer, out of
210 artists' names found in the period spanning the ninth to the twelfth
century, there are 64 monks or clerics and 146 laypeople. To be more
precise, there were 20 ecclesiastical architects, 19 ecclesiastical sculp-
tors, and 26 ecclesiastical artists as opposed to 55 lay architects, 61 lay
sculptors, and 32 lay painters.^1
The fact remains, however, that quite often the entrepreneurs, direc-
tors of construction, and teaching masters were monks whose intellectual
and religious influence incontestably dominated the master builders.