“Opus mechanicum sive parvum sive magnum”. Arti, mestieri e corporazioni nella Transilvania sassone (XIV-XVI secolo)

From the fourteenth and during the fifteenth century, the political stability of the kingdom of Hungary, the maturation of the institutions of Saxon hospites of Transylvania and the formation of the voivodships of Wallachia and Moldova beyond the Carpathians, favoured the economic growth of the Saxon communities of Transylvania and their coherent integration into the Saint Stephan’s domains and, more generally, in Western and Eastern Europe. The birth and development of the corporations in the Saxon territory were the direct consequence and the complementary testimony of this economic growth. In turn, guild organization proved to be an effective means of ensuring further economic, and therefore political and social, progress of the Saxon cities of Transylvania. In the sixteenth century, following the fall of the kingdom of Hungary and the creation of a formally autonomous Principality that did not suffer any occupation and even managed to maintain a position of substantial balance between the Ottoman Empire and the Habsburgs, Transylvania lived a period of relative tranquillity. In this context, throughout the territory of the ancient kingdom of Saint Stephan, the guild system kept alive in the Terra Saxonum particularly, and, although in strongly crystallized forms, during the century it also extended to smaller urban communities and even to those of village, maintaining a high level of production.