The towns banded together for protection of life and industry, and thus
developed the guild of the Middle Ages. Relieved from the fear of
free-booting barons, no less dangerous than the hordes of organized
robbers, these guilds grew populous and powerful. Licentiousness did
not, however, lessen. Luther thundered against it, before his own revolt
came; and the Reformation demanded marriage as the right and privilege
of a people falsely taught its debasing and unholy nature.

We count the days of chivalry as the paradise of women. Chivalry was for
the few, not the many; for the mass of women was still the utter
degradation of a barbarous past, and the burden of grinding laws
resulting from it. With the Reformation, Germany ceased to be the centre
of European traffic; and Spain, Portugal, Holland, and England took the
lead in quick succession, England retaining it to the present time.
German commerce and trade steadily declined; and as the guilds saw their
importance and profits lessen, they made fresh and more stringent
regulations against all new-comers. Competitors of every order were
refused admission. Heavy taxes on settlement, costly master-examinations,
limitations of every trade to a certain number of masters and journeymen,
forced thousands into dependence from which there was no escape.

Looking at the time as a whole, one sees clearly how old distinctions
had become obliterated. Wealth found new definitions. The Church had
made poverty the highest state, and insisted, as she does in part
to-day, that the suffering and deprivation of one class were ordained of
God to draw out the sympathies of the other. The rich must save their
souls by alms and endowments, and contentment and acquiescence were to
be the virtues of the poor.