Medieval Economic Thought

Abstract

This book is an introduction to medieval economic thought, mainly from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries, as it emerges from the works of academic theologians and lawyers and other sources - from Italian merchants' writings to vernacular poetry, Parliamentary legislation, and manorial court rolls. It raises a number of questions based on the Aristotelian idea of the mean, the balance and harmony underlying justice, as applied by medieval thinkers to the changing economy. How could private ownership of property be reconciled with God's gift of the earth to all in common? How could charity balance resources between rich and poor? What was money? What were the just price and the just wage? How was a balance to be achieved between lender and borrower and how did the idea of usury change to reflect this? The answers emerge from a wide variety of ecclesiastical and secular sources.

Return to Economic Justice

“…The doctrine covers condemnation of practices that run contrary to doctrine as well as encouragement of practices that foster competition in the market. Opposition to usury, defined as the exchange of money loaned for excessive interest payments, an opposition that is still alive only in the Islamic tradition, used to be a primary expression of the moral wrath of the Church (see, e.g., De Roover 1955, Wood 2002, Zamagni 2012. No space was left open to chance-hence the practice of guilds as administrators of fair prices, quantity, and quality, was wholeheartedly embraced by the Church.…”

The Gospel of Foreign Aid: A Theoretical Note

“…Yet, most of the time, persons who speak of charity and justice assume that everyone understands what the phrase 8 The accurate dates for the beginning and the end of the Middle Ages are subject of discussion. Yet, as Wood (2002) and Haney (1936) point out, the opening and closing dates of such period must be an open interval of time, i.e. form the fifth century to the fifteenth century.…”

Usury in the Inferno : Auditing Dante’s Debt to the Scholastics

“…16 This initial definition must immediately be qualified by noting that the usury prohibition applied only to one kind of loan, the mutuum, where ownership of goods definitively changed hands (what was mine-meum, became yours--tuum). 17 Even with the mutuum, however, numerous "just titles" to interest became established over time which permitted a return on a loan above the principal. These were many and varied, but applied, for example, when the lender had incurred costs (the title: damnum emergens); when he had foregone some clear profit-making venture to make the loan (lucrum cessans); when a borrower was guilty of late repayment (poena detentori); or when the lender somehow shared risk with the borrower.…”