The decline of a craft: Crossbowmakers in the Holy Roman Empire (16^th century)

The crossbow was an essential weapon in the European urban armament of the Late Middle Ages that became obsolete with the advancement of firearms. This article adresses, with a broad corpus of council deliberations, supplications, burgher and shooting registers the evolution of the craft of the crossbowmakers in the Holy Roman Empire during the 16^th century and beyond, and analyses this as exemplary for the processes of decline and redefinitions of medieval crafts. During the 15^th century, crossbowmakers were military experts who helped to maintain the private and the public arsenals, so that they were considered as strategic employees of cities and princes. The crossbow became obsolete in the wake of the 16^th century, so that the crossbowmakers were confronted to a rapid collapse of the demand. Now that they were mere craftsmen, they became dependent from their remaining clientele, the crossbowmen guilds, an elite sociability that considered them as their employees. Numerous examples of a now precarious craft are listed in this paper, arguing for a simultaneous decline, but nonetheless with a differenciated local treatment so that a hierarchy between good posts and miserable jobs, and strategies of replacements and applications can be sketched. This was the impulse for new strategies from the masters in order to avert their decline. Now being a free unorganised craft, the crossbowmakers tended to form their apprentices and sons to secondary crafts using their technical expertise, for example in the shafting of firearms. Family and professional networks were also used in order to put the job market in the Empire for their profit.