Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice book in great condition. Pages in excellent bright clean unused condition. No notes or highlighting. Some dust marking on the top. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> This book provides a new synthesis offering an interpretation of the uniqueness of Venice and a general revision of accepted views on guilds in the cities of medieval and early modern Europe. It takes as its starting point the author’s detailed research on the guilds of Venice where trade corporations and devotional confraternities played a central part in the everyday life of ordinary people organising their economic activities meeting some of their material and spiritual needs defining their political position – and formed an unusually strong link between state and society between the patrician republic and the commercial economy. In each chapter other cities – such as Florence London Lyon Antwerp and Amsterdam-are used for comparative purposes. The author suggests that guilds helped foster a commercial ethic and in a sense made capitalism a popular phenomenon for all members whether merchants or artisans who took advantage for example of the economic opportunities which holidays and festivals provided. There is a new perspective too on the relationship of guilds and the authorities both secular and religious. In Venice that relationship underwent ignificant change in the sixteenth century which helps to explain the much-debated Hecline of Venice relative to other European ities.