Caste and Race in India c10.110

c10.110

In the cities of Europe guilds were ranked according to the recognized importance of their trades. The principle on which the occupations were rated was evidently not the vital importance of the needs which were supplied by them. "The status of a profession seems to have depended on whether it was more or less honourable, lucrative or ancient. The place of honour was reserved for those crafts in which brainwork took precedence over manual work. They were regarded as more honourable, evidently because in the dualistic conception which governed Christian societies, spirit was placed above matter, the intellectual above the animal part of man." The occupations demanding intellectual work alone came to be designated "liberal" professions, as contrasted with those involving manual labour, these latter being termed "servile". In the university towns the professors occupied the first rank and shared with the nobles the privilege of walking on the wall side of the pavement. The doctors also belonged to this category, though their brethren of lower origins, the surgeon-barbers, were relegated to a lower status on account of their partiality for surgical operations. Though craftsmen usually were rated low, the goldsmiths had secured a high rank. Dealers in articles that were to be brought from distant countries, like spices and furs, were ranked very high. Bankers, moneychangers, and wholesale dealers were distinguished not only because their professions required quickness of perception, complicated calculations, wide range of vision and rare thought, but also because of their show of wealth. "It is easy to see that in the priority accorded to the great industrial and commercial guilds, the second of the principles we have mentioned was at work, namely, that a craft was considered more or less honourable according to the wealth it yielded . . . It was undoubtedly for this reason that the butchers, who had numerous assistants working under their orders and who made considerable profit, sometimes managed in Paris to be included among the 'Six Guilds'." Home crafts suffered from internal competition and thus were ranked rather low. At Florence the baker and bread-makers came last in the list of the twenty-one official guilds.¹