Introduction

Within late medieval towns, guilds played an important role both for craftsmen and in the administration of the town. Guilds provided forms of social security by paying premiums to widows of guild members. In addition, guilds helped guard the city. For instance, guild members often had to stand guard on the city towers. Those city towers were often also named after the respective guild. Sometimes, however, things went wrong, such as with the Utrecht butchers' guild. There, the old meat house was demolished in the early fifteenth century, because the meetings of the butchers (vleeshouwers) often ended with fights at the meat house and in front of the city hall. In its place came the brewers‘ guild Het Gilde was given the same rights and duties as the meat butchers’ guild had. From now on, they had to stand guard on the city tower, which was first known as the vleeshouwerstoren [meat butchers‘ tower], but later as the brouwerstoren [brewers’ tower] (Weerd-west side, foundations visible in the canal).

Physical Description

Paper codex, gothic cursiva.

Excerpts from the Raads Dagelijksch Boek, decisions of the Utrecht city council. The codex contains council decisions from 1361-1454. The text shown here was transcribed around 1470 by city clerk Tijlman Momfelen.