Page:Cracow - Lepszy.djvu/65

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THE MUNICIPAL ORGANIZATION
45

Town Council or granted by the king. After the accession of a new sovereign, every craft guild was anxious to have its old privileges recognized, and, if possible, to obtain some new ones. We get a full idea of Cracow workshops—and thus of all German workshops in the late Middle Ages—from a famous MS. in the Jagellonian University Library, called Codex Picturatus, and written by Balthazar Behem, notary of the town. He registered in it all the most important statutes of Cracow town, and an
12. A MERCHANT.
(From the Codex Picturatus of B. Behem.)
illuminator, by his order, adorned the book with highly interesting miniatures illustrating the Cracow craft guilds, partly by realistic pictures of the interior of workshops (illustration 12), partly by allegorical symbols.

To the Corporation also belonged the journeymen, who, in course of time, got an administration of their own. Every guild appears as an independent company of limited authority, originally responsible for all delinquencies committed by its members, and exercising judicial power within its sphere; it watched over the members' morals, their religion, and steadiness and fairness in the