Fraternities and guilds were essentially urban phenomena, reflecting the strong tendency for medieval townspeople to form themselves into religious and social associations in order to defend and to promote common interests within a competitive and densely populated environment. Lay fraternities (sometimes called confraternities) were designed for men and women whose married state made it impossible for them to be members of the (male) First Order or (female) Second Order of the Franciscan movement. Guilds, on the other hand, were more purely secular organizations to start with. Merchants, many of them itinerant, were among the first to form such associations, but in the course of time craftworkers followed suit. After the initial outbreak of the Black Death in 1348, guilds acquired a more pronounced religious identity. They adopted a patron saint and held a procession on the appropriate feast day. Many guilds established a chantry chapel in a local church and supported the regular singing of masses by one or more priests. In addition, some late medieval guilds were more or less purely religious associations, with the result that fraternities and guilds overlapped institutionally to some degree.
The oldest guild in Ireland was Dublin’s Guild Merchant. The city’s landmark charter of urban liberties, granted in 1192, may have been requested by this guild, whose remarkable membership roll containing about 8,400 names extends from approximately 1190 to 1265. To start with, it was a general guild with a wide range of resident and nonresident members, who paid an entry fee that was eventually standardized at nine shillings. Altogether at least fourteen Irish towns—mainly the largest ones—came to have a guild merchant. The chief concern of these organizations was the installation of a local trading monopoly, to the disadvantage of all "foreign" (external) merchants. Craft guilds were exclusive organizations representing specialized groups. Almost all the surviving evidence dates from the fifteenth century or later, although some craft guilds may have originated earlier. They established and maintained standards of workmanship, requiring new recruits to execute a "masterpiece." Such guilds were usually governed by one or two masters assisted by two wardens. These officials were entitled to investigate offences committed by guild members, to examine apprentices and to arrest those who ran away, and often to regulate prices and wages. Craft guilds also fulfilled charitable and social functions, lending practical assistance to members in times of personal difficulty, providing funeral expenses and support for widows, and funding elementary schools. The religious guilds of Dublin and its hinterland were organized along similar lines, their primary function being to maintain a chantry.
In Ireland fraternities of laymen and laywomen took the form of the Franciscan Third Order Secular, starting in the middle of the thirteenth century in places that already had a First Order friary. An early example was instituted at Kilkenny in 1347 for the purpose of repairing the friars’ church and building a steeple. Members lived in their own homes but were bound by vows with regard to religious instruction and practice, sexual abstinence, fasting, personal dress, and the performance of charitable works. A wife had to have her husband’s consent before joining. It is possible that the number of lay fraternities in Ireland, as elsewhere, increased after 1348 as the plague pandemic was countered by more outward expressions of personal devotion.
