Apprenticeship

Reyerson, Kathryn L.

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-38942-4_5

Kathryn L. Reyerson³

Part of the book series: The New Middle Ages ((TNMA))

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Abstract

Apprenticeship offered another impetus for the creation of new networks. An apprentice left her home and joined another household where she was trained in a trade. The family of the apprentice was closely involved in the apprenticing of their family member. The master’s home represented a surrogate family, with the creation in some cases of a kind of artificial kinship. The apprentice’s horizons and connections were thereby broadened. Again, immigration played a significant role in the introduction of foreign apprentices and workers who forged new networks in their adopted town.

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Notes

1.
See my article “The Adolescent Apprentice/ Worker in Medieval Montpellier.” The Journal of Family History: The Evolution of Adolescence in Europe, ed. Barbara A. Hanawalt 17 (1992): 353–70. On changers, see Business, Banking and Finance, Chap. 4.
2.
Lucie Laumonier, “Getting Things Done and Keeping Them in the Family. Crafts and Parenthood in Montpellier (14e–15th c.),” Trades, guilds, and Specialists: Getting Things Done in the Middle Ages and Renaissance (Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies volume forthcoming). See also the reflections of G. Francine Michaud, “Famille, femmes et travail: patronnes et salariées à Marseille aux XIIIe et XIVe siècles,” Ad libros ! Mélanges d’études médiévales offerts à Denise Angers et Joseph-Claude Poulin, ed. Martin Gravel, Jean-François Cotter, and Sébastien Rossignol (Montréal: Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2010), 243–263, and “From Apprentices to Wage-Earners: Child Labour before and after the Black Death,” in Medieval Childhood, ed. Joel Rosenthal, Donington (Lincolnshire, U.K.: Shaun Tyas/Paul Watkins Publishing, 2007), 75–92.
3.
Gervase Rosser, “Big Brotherhood: Guilds in Urban Politics in Late Medieval England,” in Guilds and Association in Europe, 900–1900, ed. I. A. Gadd and P. Wallis (London: Centre for Metropolitan History, 2006), 32.
4.
Caroline Barron, “The London Middle English Guild Certificates of 1388–9, An Historical Introduction,” Nottingham Medieval Studies 39 (1995): 116.
5.
For a discussion of Montpellier trades and their activities, see “Population Attraction and Mobility,” and Business, Banking and Finance, passim.
6.
Dion, Histoire de la vigne et du vin.
7.
See my articles “Medieval Silks in Montpellier: The Silk Market ca. 1250–ca.1350,” Journal of European Economic History, 11 (1982): 117–140, and “Le rôle de Montpellier dans le commerce des draps de laine avant 1350,” Annales du Midi, 94 (1982): 17–40.
8.
See “Population Attraction and Mobility,” 257, n. 2 and “The Adolescent Apprentice/Worker in Medieval Montpellier.”
9.
A. D. Hérault, II E 95/377, B. Egidii, ff. 11v, 37r, 227v, 262r, and II E 95/375, P. de Pena, f. 122r. For Saint-Flour: II E 95/377, B. Egidii, f. 250v.
10.
See “Population Attraction and Mobility,” 272–3.
11.
For a synopsis of foreign-exchange contracts, see “Commerce and Society in Montpellier,” II: 269–78.
12.
See the discussion of changers in Business, Banking and Finance, Chap. 4.
13.
See “Population Attraction and Mobility,” 272–273. The apprenticeship contracts come from the notarial fonds, A. D. Hérault, II E 95/368–377 and A. M. Montpellier, BB 1–3.
14.
See “The Adolescent Apprentice/Worker,” 356.
15.
Gouron, La réglementation des métiers, passim.
16.
See James A. Murray, Bruges, Cradle of Capitalism, 1280–1390 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), especially Chap. 8 on women. See further discussion in the treatment of women and finance in Chap. 6.
17.
See Business, Banking and Finance, Chap. 4.
18.
A. D. Hérault, II E 95/372, J. Holanie et al, f. 36r.
19.
“Women in Business,” 133–134.
20.
For an in-depth discussion of changers in Montpellier, see Business, Banking and Finance, Chap. 4.
21.
A. M. Montpellier, BB 3, Johannes Laurentii, f. 13rff. “Item volo et jubeo quod omnia deposita, res, et pecunie quecumque que et quas apparverit me habere in deposito prout inveneretur scriptum in capsia mea restituatur illi vel illis de quibus invenietur scriptum in dicta capsia mea debere restitu et ea volo restitui noticia et dispositione domini P. Seguerii et Raymunde filie mee predictiorum gadiatores et exequtores meos huius mei testamenti qua ad pia legata supradicta facio et instituo dominum P. Seguerii legum doctorem et Raymundam Grossi burgensem generes meos et gardianum fratrum minorum conventus Montispessulani qui pro tempore fuerit et priorem ecclesie Beate Marie de Tabulis.” I am grateful to Daniel Lord Smail for an understanding of capsia.
22.
Hutton, Women and Economic Activities in Late Medieval Ghent, 65, finds clear evidence in Ghent of “marriage as an economic partnership.”
23.
See Chap. 4, “Deposit Banking and the Recovery of Debts,” and Chap. 5, “Foreign Exchange,” of Business, Banking and Finance for general background.
24.
On the trades and guilds of Montpellier, see Gouron, La réglementation des métiers.
25.
On the culinary feasts of the town consuls, see Lucie Galano, “À table! Festivités et banquets au consulat de Montpellier à la fin du Moyen Âge,” Bulletin historique de la ville de Montpellier 36 (November 2014), 60–72.
26.
René de Lespinasse and François Bonnardot, Les métiers et corporations de la Ville de Paris : XIIIe siècle, Le Livre des Métiers d’Etienne Boileau (Paris, Imprimerie Nationale, 1879). On Paris, see the recent work of Sharon Farmer, The Silk Industries od Medieval Paris: Artisanal Migration, Technological Innovation, and Gendered Experiences in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016); Tanya Stabler Miller, The Beguines of Medieval Paris. Gender, Patronage, and Spiritual Authority (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014); and Janice Marie Archer, Working Women in Thirteenth-Century Paris. (Ph.D. Diss. University of Arizona, 1995).
27.
On women’s work, see David Herlihy, Opera muliebria. Women and Work in Medieval Europe (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1990), 142–150, on Paris. See also Joseph and Frances Gies, Women in the Middle Ages (New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 1978), 178–179.
28.
On the guild organization of Languedoc, Gouron, La réglementation des métiers en Languedoc, remains invaluable. Compare Béghin-Le Gourriérec on the later Middle Ages, “Le rôle économique des femmes.”
29.
Contrast the findings of Hutton, Women and Economic Activities in Late Medieval Ghent, 113, where she finds some occupations, barbers and spice merchants, accommodating women in guilds.
30.
Smail, Consumption of Justice, provides many examples of disputes in medieval Marseille.
31.
Jacques Fabre de Morlhon, Le Montpellier des Guilhem et des rois d’Aragon (Albi: Ateliers Professionnels de l’Orphelinat Saint-Jean, 1967), 59.
32.
See also Gouron, La réglementation des métiers, and Reyerson, The Art of the Deal, Chap. 2.
33.
Ghislaine Fabre and Thierry Lochard, Montpellier: la ville médiévale (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1992), 132.
34.
On the fiscal inventories of Montpellier (compoix), see Lucie Laumonier, “Exemptions et dégrèvements: les Montpelliérains face à la fiscalité (fin XIVe et XVe siècles),” Bulletin historique de la ville de Montpellier 35 (2013): 34–47, and “Les compoix montpelliérains: approche qualitative des archives fiscales médiévales,” Memini. Travaux et documents 14 (2010): 97–122. See also Anne-Catherine Marin-Rambier, “Montpellier à la fin du Moyen Âge d’après les compoix (1380–1450),” (Thesis, École Nationale des Chartes: 1980).
35.
Lauro Martines, Power and Imagination. City-States in Renaissance Italy (New York: Vintage Books-Random House, 1979), 74.
36.
Included in the 208 contracts were some few acquittals for previous apprenticeship and work arrangements.
37.
On apprenticeship in Montpellier, see “The Adolescent Apprentice/Worker in Medieval Montpellier.” See also Laumonier, “Getting Things Done and Keeping Them in the Family. Crafts and Parenthood in Montpellier (14e–15th c.).”
38.
For a brother apprenticing his sister, see A. D. Hérault, II E 95/ 368, J. Holanie, f. 32v.
39.
For the example of the apprenticeship of a son of a first marriage by the wife of a merchant and a cousin, see A. D. Hérault, II E 95/368, J. Holanie, f. 127v.
40.
Françoise Michaud-Fréjaville, “Contrats d’apprentissage en Orléanais, les enfants au travail, (1380–1450),” L’Enfant au Moyen-Âge: literature et civilization (Aix-en-Provence: Université de Provence, 1980), 61–71, remarked on the high percentage in the Orléanais (about 50 % for males) of orphans appearing in apprenticeship contracts.
41.
Susan Duxbury, “The Medieval Artisan Household in Montpellier. An Economic Unit as Viewed through Apprentice and Work Contracts.” (Master’s Plan B paper, University of Minnesota, 1986).
42.
At times, at age 14, the lack of curator was mentioned, as in the case of a boy and his widowed mother, who apprenticed him to a goldsmith. See A. D. Hérault, II E 95/371, J. Holanie, f. 105v. For the presence of a tutor, see II E 95/371, J. Holanie, f. 55v. For an uncle who was curator of a boy, see II E 95/371, J. Holanie, f. 63r. On guardianship in Montpellier, see Gaillard, La tutelle maternelle, and de Charrin, Les testaments dans la région de Montpellier au moyen âge.
43.
A. D. Hérault, II E 95/368, J. Holanie, f. 136r. Winer, Women, Wealth, and Community in Perpignan, 65–66, found widowed Christian mothers appearing in about half of the apprenticeship contracts for their children. In contrast to Christian practice, Jewish legal traditions in Perpignan encouraged panels of guardians. See 115.
44.
A. D. Hérault, II E 95/377, B. Egidii, f. 227v.
45.
A. D. Hérault, II E 95/377, B. Egidii, f. 262r.
46.
A D II E 95/371, J. Holanie, f. 50r.
47.
Duxbury, “The Medieval Artisan Household,” 18.
48.
See Gouron, La réglementation des métiers, 275. See also the edition of the consuetudines (customs) of Montpellier in Teulet, Layettes du Trésor des Chartes, I: 277, art. 65.
49.
Sixteen premature cancellations of contracts can be identified out of a total of 154 work and apprenticeship contracts written by the notary Johannes Holanie (in five surviving registers) or approximately 10 % of Holanie’s contracts. All of the premature cancellations concerned males, suggesting that medieval adolescence may have been more turbulent for young men than for young women, as it was in the early modern era. Early cancellations could be indicative of conflict between master and apprentice, but contractual practice allowed for some flexibility in annulation of a contract. See Natalie Zemon Davis, “The Reasons of Misrule: Youth Groups and Charivaris in Sixteenth-Century France,” Society and Culture in Early Modern France: Eight Essays (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1975) 97–123, and Stephen R. Smith, “The London Apprentices as Seventeenth-Century Adolescents,” Past and Present 61 (1973): 149–161.
50.
Diane Owen Hughes, “Urban Growth and Family Structure in Medieval Genoa,” Past and Present 66 (1975): 23.
51.
Lucie Laumonier, Solitudes et solidarités en ville and “Vivre seul à Montpellier à la fin du Moyen Âge,” (Diss. Université de Sherbrooke (QC) and Université de Montpellier, 2013).
52.
Bender, “Negotiating Marriage,” found the artisan groups of late medieval Florence, visible in the catasto evidence of the 1420s, departed from the Mediterranean marriage model in later marriages for women and less age separation between the spouses.
53.
For the temptations offered by city life, see The Chronicle of Richard of Devizes of the Time of King Richard the First, ed. John T. Appleby (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1963), or Les poésies des Goliards, ed. Olga Dobiache-Rojdestvensky (Paris: Les Editions Rieder, 1931). See also my article “Urban Sensations: The Medieval City Imagined,” A Cultural History of the Senses, ed. Richard Newhauser (Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2014), 45–65.
54.
See, for example, A. D. Hérault, II E 95/371, J. Holanie, f. 103v. The age data for Montpellier are much less full than those of Françoise Michaud-Fréjaville, “Bons et loyaux services: Les contrats d’apprentissage en Orléanais (1380–1480),” Les Entrées dans la vie, initiations et apprentissage (Nancy: Presses Universitaires de Nancy, 1982), 183–208, and “Contrats d’apprentissage en Orléanais, les enfants au travail,” L’Enfant au Moyen-Age: littérature et civilisation (Aix-en-Provence: Université de Provence, 1980), 61–71. Michaud-Fréjaville found contracts involving individuals from three years to 24 years, with most in the range of age seven to 20. For boys, she was certain of their minority at age 13 and their majority at age 16; for girls, majority came at 12. Compare Steven A. Epstein, “Labour in Thirteenth-Century Genoa,” Mediterranean Historical Review 3 (1988): 128, who suggested that 17 or 18 was a more common age for swearing oaths. The youngest apprentices appeared to be between ten and 12 in Genoa. See also Steven A. Epstein, Wage, Labor and Guilds in Medieval Europe (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1991).
55.
A. D. Hérault, II E 95/371, J. Holanie, f. 103v. Michaud-Fréjaville, “Bons et loyaux services,” 190, 193, found that only one-fourth of the contracts were without mention of age. She also found evidence that “14 years is not the normal age of entry into the world of work; is in not even the average age (15½ years).”
56.
Gouron, La réglementation des métiers, 268–269, spoke of the ages of 14 to 25 as those of pubescent minority.
57.
See A. D. Hérault, II E 95/371, J. Holanie, f.50r and 103v for examples. See also Michaud-Fréjaville, “ Bons et loyaux services,”191, and Philippe Didier, “Le contrat d’apprentissage en Bourgogne aux XIVe et XVe siècles,” Revue historique de droit français et étranger 54 (1976): 38.
58.
See “The Adolescent Apprentice/Worker,”120–121.
59.
For a female apprentice who would have finished at a later age, see A. D. Hérault, II E 95/377, B. Egidii, f. 262r: a girl of Pompignan near Nîmes, over 12, engaged for ten years to bakers, and II E 95/372, J. Holanie et al, f. 101r: the son of a mercer, over 14, engaged for 12 years to a silversmith. For the youngest, see, for example, A. M. Montpellier, II 1, B. Grimaudi, 36r, for a male of Arles who engaged himself at 15 to a Montpellier changer for two years.
60.
See “Population Attraction and Mobility,” 272, n. 77.
61.
“Population Attraction and Mobility,” 266–270.
62.
A. D. Hérault, II E 95/368, J. Holanie, f. 135v.
63.
Laumonier, “Getting Things Done and Keeping Them in the Family.”
64.
A. M. Montpellier, Grand Chartrier, C II: “la quarta dels escolas de la Carita.” See Gouron, La réglementation des métiers, 99 and table, 108, for membership numbers in various guilds.
65.
Germain, Histoire de la commune de Montpellier, III: 469–71. Gouron, La réglementation des métiers, stated that there were over 100 members of this trade.
66.
The statues of the mercers are found in A. M. Montpellier, Grand Chartrier, Louvet no. 1117. The dyers’ statutes can be found in Germain, Histoire du commerce de Montpellier, II: 179–182.
67.
Premodern cities devoured their inhabitants. See the classic study by Gideon Sjoberg, The Preindustrial City. Past and Present (New York: The Free Press, 1960), 84. See also Keith Lilley, Urban Life in the Middle Ages, 1000–1450 (London: Palgrave, 2002).
68.
A. D. Hérault, II E 95/369, J. Holanie, ff. 37r–ff. 38r.
69.
A. D. Hérault, II E 95/368, J. Holanie, f. 56v.
70.
See Sharon Farmer, “Medieval Paris and the Mediterranean: The Evidence from the Silk Industry,” French Historical Studies 37/3 (Summer, 2014): 383–419.
71.
A. D. Hérault, II E 95/ 369, J. Holanie, f. 13v for mercery.
72.
A. D. Hérault, II E 95/368, J. Holanie, f. 32v.
73.
A. D. Hérault, II E 95/368, J. Holanie, f. 138v. The mother was Beatrix, wife of Raymundus de Elquerio; the mercer was Petrus de Chatnaco of Montpellier.
74.
A. D. Hérault, II E 95/377, B. Edigii, f. 227r.
75.
A. D. Hérault, II E 95/368, J. Holanie, f. 50r; II E 95/368, J. Holanie, f. 136r; II E 95/368, J. Holanie, f. 56v.
76.
A. M. Montpellier, BB 1, J. Grimaudi, f. 80v; AD Hérault, II E 95/370 – baker?, J. Holanie, f. 25v; II E 95/377, B. Egidii, f. 262r; II E 95/368, J. Holanie, f. 32v. A secondhand clothes dealer and his wife apprenticed the daughter of a shoemaker for two years to learn his trade of secondhand clothes marketing. When spouses undertook apprenticeship jointly, there were times when there was a coincidence of occupation between husband and wife. At other times, the occupations were diverse, but presumably still housed in the artisan household. The occupational networks would have broadened when husband and wife were not in the same trade.
77.
A. D. Hérault, II E 95/368, J. Holanie, ff. 56v, 131v, 135v.
78.
A. D. Hérault, II E 95/368, J. Holanie, f. 135v. The term for gilder is deaurator; an alternative translation is goldsmith.
79.
A. D. Hérault, II E 95/ 368, J. Holanie, f. 131v.
80.
A. D. Hérault, II E 95 /368, J. Holanie, f. 50r, for basket weaving; II E 95/ 377, B. Egidii, f. 28r, for painting; II E 95/ 368, J. Holanie, f. 30r, for old clothes: II E (5/ 369, J. Holanie, f. 38r, for silver polishing.
81.
See William N. Bonds, “Genoese Noblewomen and Gold Thread Manufacturing,” Medievalia et Humanistica, fasc. 19 (1966): 79–81.
82.
See Farmer, The Silk Industries of Medieval Paris, and Miller, The Beguines of Medieval Paris, Chap. 3.
83.
See “Le rôle de Montpellier dans le commerce des draps de laine avant 1350.”
84.
Additional skills taught to girls in formal apprenticeship included basket weaving, painting, the marketing of old clothes, and the polishing of silver cups.
See A. D. Hérault, II E 95 /368, J. Holanie, f. 50r, for basket weaving; II E 95/ 377, B. Egidii, f. 28r, for painting; II E 95/ 368, J. Holanie, f. 30r, for old clothes: II E (5/ 369, J. Holanie, f. 38r, for silver polishing.
85.
A. D. Hérault, II E 95/375, P. de Pena, f. 122r; II E 95/368, J. Holanie, f. 50r; II E 95/377, B. Egidii, f. 227r; II E 95/377, B. Egidii, f. 227v; II E 95/371, J. Holanie, f. 38v; II E 95/368, J. Holanie, f. 136r; II E 95/368, J. Holanie, f. 56v.
86.
A. D. Hérault, II E 95/369, J. Holanie, f. 46r (or 57r because of dual numbering by archivists).
87.
For example, A. D. Hérault, II E 95/377, B. Egidii, f. 227v.
88.
A. D. Hérault, II E 95/368, J. Holanie, f. 37r.
89.
A very useful study of the artisan household as workshop remains Martha C. Howell, Women, Production, and Patriarchy in Late Medieval Cities (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986).
90.
See the case study of Bernarda de Cabanis in the next chapter.
91.
A. D. Hérault, II E 95/368, J. Holanie, f. 131v.
92.
A. D. Hérault, II E 95/368, J. Holanie, f. 50r; II E 95/368, J. Holanie, f. 136r; II E 95/368, J. Holanie, f. 56v.
93.
A. D. Hérault, II E 95/368, J. Holanie, f. 146r: a woman takes a male apprentice.
94.
Hutton, Women and Economic Activities in Late Medieval Ghent, 65.
95.
A. M. Montpellier, BB 1, J. Grimaudi, f. 80v; AD Hérault, II E 95/370, J. Holanie, f. 25v; II E 95/377, B. Egidii, f. 262r; II E 95/368, J. Holanie, f. 32v.
96.
Laumonier, “Getting Things Done and Keeping Them in the Family.”
97.
A. D. Hérault, II E 95/377, B. Egidii, f. 305r.
98.
A. D. Hérault, II E 95/371, J. Holanie, f. 50r.
99.
Susan Mosher Stuard, “Single by Law and Custom,” Singlewomen in the European Past, 106–26.
100.
For a discussion of women in service, see Bennett and Froide, “A Singular Past,” 1–37. See also Epstein, Wage Labor and Guilds in Medieval Europe, 224. Epstein sees poor women from the countryside around Genoa hired as domestic servants for less cost but less status for owners than exotic domestic slaves.
101.
A. D. Hérault, II E 95/368, J. Holanie, f. 90v.
102.
Laumonier, Solitudes et solidarities, Chap. 4, 227–233. See also her talk, “Living Alone in Late Medieval Montpellier,” Center for Medieval Studies, 12 February 2015. See also her article “En prévision des vieux jours. Les personnes âgées à Montpellier à la fin du Moyen Âge,” Médiévales 68 (2015): 119–145.
103.
See Laumonier, Solitudes et solidarities, Chap. 4, Sect. 1. See also Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, “The ‘Cruel Mother’,” 120.

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Department of History, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Kathryn L. Reyerson

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Reyerson, K.L. (2016). Apprenticeship. In: Women's Networks in Medieval France. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-38942-4_5

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-38942-4_5
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