Where (not) to find guild statutes. On the preservation of craft organizations' documents in town books
Abstract
The author presents guild statutes as a basic source of information on the history of professional organizations - guilds. In the past, these documents codified not only the rights of craftsmen's associations within the local economy but also the rules of the organization's internal functioning.
The study of Prague's guilds has shown that the creation of every guild organization involved the publication of guild statutes, although in most cases the original documents have not survived and we must therefore work with copies. Many such copies from the Late Middle Ages and early modern era can be found in town books, where the heads of the guilds placed them in case the originals were destroyed.
In towns with an advanced administrative system, however, we also see the creation of specialized town books for recording the rights accorded to the guilds. The existence of these so-called books of guild statutes can be documented with certainty for both Vienna and the towns of Prague.
At the end, the author presents other options for seeking out guild statutes.