Corporations
Another wrong track taken by many novice genealogists is the confusion of the term “guild” with that of “corporation”. The latter term was used until 1791 to designate institutions responsible for regulating the practice of trades and crafts in most cities. With their own set of regulations and administered by elected “Masters”, the corporations were official bodies under the watchful eye of judicial institutions and the police. The word “corporation” was never used under the Ancien Régime when Jurande, Maîtrise and Confrèrie were the commonly employed terms. If “Companions” of the Tour de France were allowed to join such organisations once they had become masters, having first proven their professional skills and paid substantial fees for the right to set up their own workshops, they no longer had contact with their original guilds which, it should be remembered, only impacted on a few years of their lives. The guilds was sometimes referred to as “counter-corporations” during the Ancien Régime, when guild associations functioned very much as modern-day workers’ unions do.
