Builders Corporations in Italy, Germany, and Switzerland 169Muratori places the origin of the Italian mastery associations on
this side of the year 1100. During the first years of the twelfth century,
one was mentioned as already being established in Brescia. It is diffi-
cult, though, to precisely date the appearance of these mastery associ-
ations. They were not all in existence at the same time and did not all
share the same circumstances. In several regions where Roman influ-
ences survived, there was probably a continuity in which the collegia
gradually transformed into scholoe, or scuole, and mastery associa-
tions. This is precisely what occurred in Ravenna, the capital of the
Exarchat.
It was possible for mastery associations to attain power by peace-
ful means on a gradual basis, as was the case in Pistoie, Florence, and
Pisa. In some areas, however, they prevailed through violence, as in
Milan (1198) and Bologna (1228). Subsequent battles for influence
took place between social classes or between noble families whose
members sought to gain government positions as either consuls or
potentates. In 1165, Emperor Frederic I Barbarossa, when entrusting
the earldom of Verona to the count of Saint Boniface, also gave him full
jurisdiction over all crafts and trades. Similarly, these professions were
subject to the commands of the consuls and nobility in the statutes of
Parma.^1 In the flourishing cities of Genoa and Venice, the form of
power remained aristocratic and its authority remained in the hands of
the patricians.^2
We should note that this same Frederic Barbarossa, the emperor of
Germany who was long at war with the Lombard cities, was finally
defeated after many expeditions. Though generally speaking, the
emperors, in their political claims to Italy, were in opposition to the
sovereignty of the communes, their choice to side either with mastery
associations against the nobility or the nobility against mastery associ-
ations depended on the circumstances.
The mastery associations were often divided into two categories:
mastery associations of the higher arts and mastery associations of the
lower arts. Their numbers expanded proportionately with the increased
success of industry, leisure, and the multiplication of wants, and at the
same time middle arts made their appearance. The mastery associa-
tions of the masons (magistri lapidum, magistri muri, muratores) were