First guilds and their craftsmen in Grodno in the sixteenth and seventeenth century

The paper is concerned with the development of craftsmanship in Grodno in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century. It focuses on the period before the Guilds had been started, on the statute of the first guild in 1570 and on the statutes of the guilds of masons and tanners. The basic sources for the research were the books of Grodno’s municipal council, the castle court and the metrics of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The archives of the Grodno guilds researched here have all been lost, which has greatly limited the research scope. The guilds of Grodno were organized on the ways similar to these in other towns and cities of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The statutes regulated the internal order in the guilds and defined their structure