An Essay on Mediaeval Economic Teaching

IM AND SCOPE

th ever-increasing anxiety into the economic teaching which the orthodox economy replaced; and this inquiry has revealed that each system of economic thought that has from time to time been accepted can be properly understood only by a knowledge of the earlier system out of which it grew. A process of historical inquiry of this kind leads one ultimately to the Middle Ages, and it is certainly not too much to say that no

l doctrines, they do not perhaps sufficiently indicate the relation between them, nor do they lay sufficient emphasis upon the fundamental philosophical principles out of which the whole system sprang. One cannot sufficiently acknowledge the debt which English students are under to Sir William Ashley for his examination of medi?val opinion on economic matters; his book is frequently and gratefully cited as an authority in the following pages; but it is undeniable that his treatment of the subject suffers somewhat on account of its being introduced but incidentally into a w

f the subject with which we propose to deal; and with this end in view

EXPLANATION

Med

Catholic Encyclop?dia is: 'a term commonly used to designate that period of European history between the Fall of the Roman Empire and about the middle of the fifteenth century. The precise dates of the beginning, culmination, and end of the Middle Ages are more or less arbitrarily assumed according to the point of view adopted.' The eleventh edition of the Encyclop?dia Britannica contains a similar opinion: 'This name is commonly given to that period of

tory of Politica

the mutual conflicts of its own official members, while the constituent elements of a new order were rising beneath it. The movements of this phase can scarcely be said to find an echo in any contemporary economic literature.'[1] We need not therefore apologise further for including a consideration of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in our investigations as to the economic teaching of the Middle Ages. We are supported in doing so by such excellent authorities as Jourdain,[2] Roscher,[3] and Cossa.[4] Haney, in his History of Economic Thought,[5] says: 'It seems more nearly true to regard the years about 1500 as marking the end of medi?v

1: Op. cit

conomie politique dans les écoles du moyen age, Ac

hte zur National-?ko

ction to the Study o

ote 5:

authors left to some extent obscure. We deliberately refrain nevertheless from doing so, because the whole nature of the sixteenth-century literature was different from that of the fourteenth and fifteenth; the early years of the sixteenth century witnessed the abrogatio

fifteenth century by the writers of the seventeenth' (Economic History, vol. i. pt. ii. p. 387). These later writ

Eco

omic laws in the sense of historical and descriptive laws; and political economy, not yet existing in the form of a science, is not more than a branch of that great tree which is called ethics, or the art of living well.'[1] 'The doctrine of the canon law,' says Sir William Ashley, 'differed from modern economics in being an art rather than a science. It was a body of rules and prescriptions as to conduct, rather than of conclusions as to fact. All art indeed in this sense rests on science; but the science on which the canonist doctrine rested was theology. Theology, or rather that branch

stic prudence (oeconomica) be distinct from both. Riches are related to domestic prudence, not as its last end, but as its instrument. On the other hand, the end of political prudence is a good life in general as regards the conduct of the household. In Ethics i. the philosopher speaks of riches as the end of political prudence, by way of example, and in accordance with the opinion of

cit., vol. i. p

and modern conceptions of economics that the appearance of this one treatise has been said by one high authori

as not alone wasteful, but positively evil; and that man was infinitely more important than wealth. When he exclaims that 'Production is on account of man, not man of production,' Antoninus of Florence sums up in a few words the whole view-point of his age.[1] 'Consumption,' according to Dr. Cunningham, 'was the aspect of human nature which attracted most attention.... Regulating consumption wisely was the chief practical problem in medi?val economics.'[2] The great practical benefits of such a treatment of the problems relating to the acquisition and enjoyment of material wealth must be obvious to every one who is familiar with the condition of the world after a century of classical political economy. 'To subordinate the economic order to the social order, to submit the industrial activity of man to the con

heological Quarterly

tianity and Econom

ories économiques aux xiii^{

, History of Economic Doct

Brants, op.

moral teacher. 'In the thirteenth century, the ecclesiastical organisation gave a unity to the social structure throughout the whole of Western Europe; over the area in which the Pope was recognised as the spiritual and the Emperor as the temporal vicar of God, political and racial differences were relatively unimportant. For economic purposes it is scarcely necessary to distinguish different countries from one another in the thirteenth century, for there were fewer barriers to social intercourse within the limits of Christendom than there are to-day.... Similar ecclesiastical canons, and similar laws prevailed over large areas, where very different admixtures of civil and barbaric laws were in vogue. Christendom, though broken into so many fragments politically, was one organised society for all the purposes of economic life, because there was such free intercommunication between its parts.'[2] 'There were three great threads,' we read later in the same book, 'which ran through the whole social system of Christendom. First of all there was a

English Industry and Co

am, Western Civilisat

3: Ibid.

4: Op. cit

e social theory, it was intense individualism. 'Christianity brought, from the point of view of morals, an altogether new force by the distinctly individual and personal character of its precepts. Duty, vice or virtue, eternal punishment-all are marked with the most individualist imprint that can be imagined. No social or political theory appeared, because it was through the individual that society was to be regenerated.... We can say with truth that there is not any Christian political economy-in the sense in which there is a Christian morality or a Christian dogma-any more th

, op. cit., pp. 34-5

ion, vol.

hing of the Church. Brants says: 'It is not our intention to attribute to the Church all the opinions of this period; certainly the spirit of the Church dominat

tions. Usury was condemned by the decrees of several councils, but the reasons of this prohibition were not given, nor was the question made the subject of any dialectical controversy; commerce was so undeveloped as

the early Middle Ages-without finding a single passage to suggest that any of these authors suspected that the pursuit of riches, which they despised, occupied a sufficiently large place in national as well as in individual life, to offer to the philosopher a subject fruitful

Jourdain, op.

t alive by the preservation of such ancient elementary treatises as those of Marcian Capella; but economics had no share in the heritage of the past. Not only had the writings of the ancients, who dealt to some extent with the theory of wealth, been destroyed, but the very traces of their teaching had been long forgotten. A good example of the state of thought in economic matters is furnished by the treatment which money receives in the Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, which was regarded in the early Middle Ages as a reliable encyclop?dia. 'Money,' according to I

1: Etymol.

ustry, and the extension of commerce, largely under the influence of the Crusades, all created a condition of affairs in which economic questions could no lo

ould be quite impossible to exaggerate the influence which they exercised on the later development of medi?val thought. Albertus Magnus digested, interpreted, and systematised the whole of the works of the Stagyrite; and was so steeped in the lessons of his philosophic master as to be dubbed by some 'the ape of Aristotle.' Aquinas, who was a pupil of Albertus, also studied and commented on Aristotle, whose aid he was always ready to invoke in the solution of all his difficulties. With the single and strange exception of Vincent de Beauvais, Aristotle's teaching on money was

Jourdain, op.

2: Ibid.

influence of Aristotle in this respect has been exag

ealth were paraphrased by a considerable number of commentators. Before that period we can only find moral and religious dissertations on such topics as the proper use of material goods, the dangers of luxury, and undue desire for wealth. This is easily explained when we take into consideration (1) the prevalent influ

it., p. 14; Espina

quinas, who was always admitted to be the ultimate authority. 'During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the general political doctrine of Aquinas was maintained with merely subordinate modifications.'[1] 'The canonist doctrine of the fifteenth century,' according to Sir William Ashley, 'was but a development of the principles to which the Church had already given its sanction in earlier centuries. It was the outcome of these same principles working in a modified environment. But it may more fairly be said to present a system of economic thought, because it was no longer a collection of unrelated opinions, but a connected whole. The tendency towards a separate department of study is shown by the ever-increasing space devoted

Ingram, op.

. cit., vol. i.

e first chapter of Reseller's Geschichte also contains a valuable account of certain typical writers, especially of Langenstein and Henricus de Hoyta. Brants gives a useful bibliographical list of both medi?val and modern authorities in the second chapter of his Théories économiques aux xiii^{e} et xiv^{e} siècles. Those who desire further information about any particular writer of the period will find it in Stintzing, Literaturgeschichte

Tea

der to reconcile the teaching of the Church with the accepted mercantile customs of the time. Endemann, however, in spite of his colossal research and unrivalled acquaintance with original authorities, was essentially hostile to the system which he undertook to explain, and thus lacked the most essential quality of a satisfactory expositor, namely, sympathy with his subject. He does not appear to have realised that development and adaptability to new situations, far from being marks of impracticability, are rather the signs of vitality and of elasticity. This is not the place to discuss how far the doctrine of the late fifteenth differed from that of the early thirteenth century; that is a matter which will appear below when each of the leading principles of scholastic economi

Brants, op.

Ashley, op. c

is fact does not at all prove that the former was the element which modified the latter, rather than the latter the former. In so far as the expansion of commerce and the increasing complexity of intercourse raised questions which seemed to indicate that mercantile convenience conflicted with received teaching, it is probable that the difficulty was not so much caused by a contradiction between the former and the latter, as by the fact that an interpretation of the doctrine as applied to the facts of the new situation was not available before the new situation had actually arisen. This is a phenomenon frequently met with at the present day in legal practice; but no lawyer would dream of asserting that, because there had arisen an unprecedented state of facts, to which the application of the

must react in the sphere of material interests; and the Catholic religion had a profound influence on the economic life of the Middle Ages.... The constant presentations to the general mind and conscience of Christian ideas, the dogmatic bases of which were as yet scarcely assailed by scepticism, must have had a powerful effect in moralising life.'[3] According to Dr. Cunningham: 'The medi?val doctrine of price was not a theory intended to explain the phenomena of society, but it was laid down as the basis of rules which should control the conduct of society and of individuals. At the same time current opinion seems to have been so fully formed in accordance with it that a brief enumeration of the doctrine of a just price will serve to set the practice of the day in clearer light. In regard to other matters, it is difficult to determine how far public opinion was swayed by practical experience, and how far it was really moulded by Christian teaching-this is the case in regard to usury. But there can be little doubt about the doctrine of price-which really underlies a great deal of commercial and gild regulations, and is constantly implied in the early legislation on mercantile affairs.'[4] The same author expresses the same opinion in another work: 'The Christian doctrine of price, and Christian condemnation of gain at the expense of another man, affected all the medi?val organisation of municipal life and regulation of inter-municipal commerce, and introduced marked contrasts to the conditions of business in ancient cities. The Christian appreciation of the duty of work rendered the lot of the medi?val villain a very different thing from that of the slave of the ancient empire. The responsibility of proprietors, like the responsibility of prices, was so far insisted on as to place substantial checks on tyranny of every kind. For these principles were not mere pious opinions, but effective maxims in practical life. Owing to the circumstances in which the vestiges of Roman civilisation were locally maintained, and the foundations of the

st assuming that the canonist teaching had no infl

383-85. Again: 'The later canonist dialectic was

tory of Politica

owth of English Industry an

m, Western Civilisatio

ote 6:

e study of it is not rendered futile or useless because of occasional or even frequent departures from it in real life. Even Endemann says: 'The teaching of the canon law presents a noble edifice not less splendid in its methods than in its results. It embraces the whole material and spiritual natures of human society with such power and completeness that verily no room is left for any other life than that decreed by its dogmas.'[2] 'The aim of the Church,' says Janssen, 'in view of the tremendous agencies through which it worked, in view of the dominion which

o Delisle, L'Administration financière des Templiers, Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 1889, vol. xxxiii. pt. ii., and Ashley, Economic History, vol. i. pt. ii. p. 426. The Summa Pas

nal?konomischen Grunds

, p.

the German People (Eng.

UE OF THE STUD

e is indispensable for a full appreciation of the later. Even if the canonist system were not worth studying for its own sake, it would be deserving of attention on account of the light it throws on the development of later economic doctrine. 'However the canonist theory may contrast with or resemble modern economics, it is too important a part of the history of human thought to be disregarded

. cit., vol. i.

thout regard to ethics is being rapidly abandoned. 'The best usage of the present time,' according to the Catholic Encyclop?dia, 'is to make political economy an ethical science-that is, to make it include a discussion of what ought to be in the economic world as well as what is.'[4] We read in the 1917 edition of Palgrave's Dictionary of Political Economy, that 'The growing importance of distribution as a practical problem has led to an increasing mutual interpenetration of economic and ethical ideas, which in the development of economic doctrine during the last century and a half has taken various forms.' [5] The need for some principle by which just distribution can be attained has been rendered pressing by the terrible effects of a period of unrestricted competition. 'It has been widely maintained that a strictly competitive exchange does not tend to be really fair-some say cannot be really fair-when one of the parties is under pressure of urgent need; and further, that the inequality of opportunity which private property involves cannot be fully justified on the principle of maintaining equal freedom, and leads, in fact, to grave social injustice.'[5] In other words, the present condition of affairs is admitted to be intolerable, and the task before the world is to discover some alternative. The day when economics can be divorced from ethics has passed away; there is a world-wide endeavour to establis

that, because the classical economists assumed self-interest as the sole

d see Marshall's Prefac

, op. cit., vol.

Political Eco

Tit., 'Politi

5: Vol. ii

ote 6:

, pp. 7-8. On the general conflict between the ethical and the non-eth

lly recognised. During the whole Middle Ages, as we have said above, the Canon Law was the test of right and wrong in the domain of economic activity; production, consumption, distribution, and exchange were all regulated by the universal system of law; once before econo

statement that the teachings of socialism are nothing more or less than the teachings of Christianity. This contention is discussed in the following pages, where the conclusion will be reached that, far from being in agreement, socialism and Christian economics contradict each other on many fundamental points

DIVISION OF

However impressed we may be by the opinions of such eminent authorities, we, nevertheless, cannot help feeling that on this point they are under a misconception. There is no doubt that the doctrine of the canonists which impresses the modern mind most deeply is the usury prohibition, partly because it is not generally realised that the usury doctrine would not have forbidden the receipt of any of the commonest kinds of unearned revenue of the present day, and partly because the discussion of usury occupies such a very large part of the writings of the canonists. It may be quite true to

. cit., vol. i.

t der praktische Mittelpunkt der ganzen kanon

d that the teaching on just price is a corollary of the usury teaching. But

he analogy which was drawn between the legitimacy of interest-in the technical sense-and the legitimacy of a vendor's increasing the price of an article by reason of some special inconvenience which he would suffer by parting with it. Both these titles were justified on the same ground, namely, that they were in the nature of compensations, and arose independently of the main contract of loan or sale as the case might be. 'Le vendeur est en présence de l'acheteur. L'objet a pour lui une valeur particulière: c'est un souvenir, par exemple. A-t-il le droit de majorer le prix de vente? de dépasser le juste prix convenu? ... Avec l'unanimité des docteurs on peut trouver légitime la majoration du prix. L'évaluation commune distingue un double élément dans l'objet: sa valeur ordinaire à laquelle répond le juste prix, et cette valeur extraordinaire q

he Church and

stice dans l'Echange,' Semaine

y. Thus 5 is the mean between 6 and 4, since it exceeds the latter, and is exceeded by the former by 1. Accordingly, if at the start both persons have 5, and one of them receives 1 out of the other's belongings, the one that is the receiver will have 6, and the other will be left with 4: and so there will be justice if both are brought back to the mean, I being taken from him that has 6 and given to him that has 4, for then both will have 5, which is the mean.'[1] In the following article the matter of each kind of justice is discussed. We are told that: 'Justice is about certain external operations, namely, distribution and commutation. These consist in the use of certain externals, whether things, persons, or even works: of things as when one man takes from or restores to another that which is his: of persons as when a man does an injury to the very person of anoth

1: ii. i

Aristotle is characteristically reinforced by

that all the transactions which are properly comprised in a discussion of economic theory-sales, loans, etc.-are grouped together as being subject to the same regulative principle. It therefore appears more corre

l goods in individuals. Commutations are but a result of private property; in a state of communism there could be no commutation. This is well pointed out by Gerson[1] and by Nider.[2]

t autem commutatio civilis post peccatum quoni

od rerum dominia sunt distincta, sic quod hoc dicatur meum et illud tuum; quia illud est funda

'Abbé Desbuquois,

ciples and modern unregulated individualism. The next point with which we shall deal is the exchange of property between individuals, which is a necessary corollary of the right of property. We shall show that such exchanges were regulated by well-defined principles of commutative justice, which applied equally in the case of th

ertain duties in respect of its acquisition and its consumption, and certain other duties in respect of its exchange, whether it consisted of goods or of money. The whole fabric of medi?val economics was based on

ethics, and were not detached and treated as making up a distinct body of teaching. Ashley says: 'The reader will guard himself against supposing that any medi?val writer ever detached these ideas from

. cit., vol. i.