Guilds and Gods

Abstract

Abstract Scholars have often stressed—and rightly so—that all Greco-Roman voluntary associations, including the so-called ‘professional’ ones, were religious. But this can be said of every social group in the ancient world. It does not tell us much about the role of religion to associations formed on the basis of common occupations and expressing their identity through occupational markers. Nilson (1957) famously argued that for ancient private associations religion was merely a pretext for throwing a party. MacMullen joined him in this idea: ‘if piety counted for much, conviviality counted for more’ (MacMullen 1974a: 71–87). Harlan (2013:45), on the other hand, strongly emphasized ‘the importance of honouring gods and goddesses within associations of all types’. In his view ‘all types of associations served a variety of interdependent social, cultic, and funerary functions for their members.…(that) helped to provide members with a sense of belonging and identity’. While no one doubts the importance of sociability and ‘convivialité’ for ancient private associations, or the strength of their members religious convictions and feelings of awe towards the gods and divine powers, scholars since the 1990s have also stressed the utilitarian aspects of occupation based associations in the Roman world from the Late Republic to Late Antiquity. Guild members had material interests to defend and their associations served that purpose. Conversely, public authorities (imperial and local) used guilds to facilitate tax levying and public contracts. Occupational associations connected middling groups to urban institutions and thereby integrated non-elite citizens in urban society. That raises the question of how useful religion was for collegia and in what ways. Based on the ‘Ghent Database of Roman Guilds and Occupation-Based Communities’, this chapter explores religious practices by professional collegia as integrative strategies to express and claim a place in public society, and investigates religious practices as exclusive strategies to strengthen bonds between members and distinguish them from outsiders.