Possibly, though no one would be bold enough to call it certain, the fishermen who were the Niccolotti formed the first and oldest guild in Venice; at all events the others bear a strong resemblance to theirs when we first hear of them.
They grew up in Venice, as they did in Florence and other cities of Italy, close corporations of arts and trades, which were protected by the State, and assured many privileges to those who belonged to them, chief of which was a sort of monopoly of each branch of industry, which enriched the workmen without injuring the State. Under laws by which no new object could be sold except in properly authorised shops, there was no fear of foreign competition nor of home depression. Each guild was a little republic in itself, thriving in the heart of the great maritime Republic, occupied in administering its own affairs, and never making itself a source of anxiety to the government by meddling in politics.
It thus appears that on the whole the people not only entertained a sort of natural devotion and a feeling of gratitude towards the nobility, and lived a life of tranquillity and contentment, with plenty of holidays and public feasts, with ample means of earning a livelihood, and under such provisions of public charity as made anything like pauperism next to impossible; but also that their true strength consisted in the institution of the arts and guilds, which were recognised and protected by the laws. I have already said, in respect of the eleventh century, that each art existed like a small republic in the midst of the great one; and in the fourteenth century more than one hundred of these so-called arts had their individual constitutions. One of these constitutions contained a statute which forbade the members of the arts and guilds from doing anything which might interfere with or oppose the ordinances of the government, and most expressly forbade anything which could be looked upon as conspiracy. Each art had its own ‘gastaldo,’ or judge, and a certain number of elders, who ruled it according to its constitution, and as connecting links between their own tribunal, which might be called a family court, and the central government of the State. There were also three judges called ‘justiciaries,’ who were elected by the Great Council. It was morally impossible for any one to exercise even the simplest and humblest of these arts until he had been admitted by the council of the one in which he wished to work. It would have been as dangerous as to introduce into Venice any sort of merchandise that was already manufactured there, and by that means bring about competition between Venetian and foreign products. So far as the higher arts and trades were concerned, such as, for instance, glass-making, it was strictly forbidden to allow any workman to leave Venice who was in a position to take abroad the secrets of an industry of which it was intended to keep the monopoly at home.