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16 AN ESSAY ON MEDIAEVAL ECONOMIC TEACHING
by
GEORGE O'BRIEN, LITT.D., M.R.I.A.
Author of 'The Economic History of Ireland in the Seventeenth Century,'
and 'The Economic History of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century'
1920
TO THE REV. MICHAEL CRONIN, M.A., D.D.
UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN
AUTHOR'S NOTE
I wish to express my gratitude to the Rev. Dr. Cronin for his kindness
in reading the manuscript, and for many valuable suggestions which he
made; also to Father T.A. Finlay, S.J., and Mr. Arthur Cox for having
given me much assistance in the reading and revision of the proofs.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
SECTION 1. AIM AND SCOPE OF THE ESSAY
SECTION 2. EXPLANATION OF THE TITLE
Sec. 1. Mediaeval
Sec. 2. Economic
Sec. 3. Teaching
SECTION 3. VALUE OF THE STUDY OF THE SUBJECT
SECTION 4. DIVISION OF THE SUBJECT
CHAPTER II
PROPERTY
SECTION 1. THE RIGHT TO PRODUCE AND DISPENSE PROPERTY
SECTION 2. DUTIES REGARDING THE ACQUISITION AND USE OF PROPERTY
SECTION 3. PROPERTY IN HUMAN BEINGS
CHAPTER III
DUTIES REGARDING THE EXCHANGE OF PROPERTY
SECTION 1. THE SALE OF GOODS
Sec. 1. The Just Price
Sec. 2. The Just Price when Price fixed by Law
Sec. 3. The Just Price when Price not fixed by Law
Sec. 4. The Just Price of Labour
Sec. 5. Value of the Conception of the Just Price
Sec. 6. Was the Just Price Subjective or Objective?
Sec. 7. The Mediaeval Attitude towards Commerce
Sec. 8. _Cambium_
SECTION 2. THE SALE OF THE USE OF MONEY
Sec. 1. Usury in Greece and Rome
Sec. 2. Usury in the Old Testament
Sec. 3. Usury in the First Twelve Centuries of Christianity
Sec. 4. The Mediaeval Prohibition of Usury
Sec. 5. Extrinsic Titles
Sec. 6. Other Cases in which more than the Loan could be repaid
Sec. 7. The Justice of Unearned Income
Sec. 8. Rent Charges
Sec. 9. Partnership
Sec. 10. Concluding Remarks on Usury
SECTION 3. THE MACHINERY OF EXCHANGE
CHAPTER IV
CONCLUSION
INDEX
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
SECTION 1.--AIM AND SCOPE OF THE ESSAY
It is the aim of this essay to examine and present in as concise a
form as possible the principles and rules which guided and regulated
men in their economic and social relations during the period known as
the Middle Ages. The failure of the teaching of the so-called orthodox
or classical political economists to bring peace and security to
society has caused those interested in social and economic problems to
inquire with 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 study of modern European economic thought can be
complete or satisfactory unless it is based upon a knowledge of the
economic teaching which was accepted in mediaeval Europe. Therefore,
while many will deny that the economic teaching of that period is
deserving of approval, or that it is capable of being applied to the
conditions of the present day, none will deny that it is worthy of
careful and impartial investigation.
There is thus a demand for information upon the subject dealt with in
this essay. On the other hand, the supply of such information in the
English language is extremely limited. The books, such as Ingram's
_History of Political Economy_ and Haney's _History of Economic
Thought_, which deal with the whole of economic history, necessarily
devote but a few pages to the Middle Ages. Ashley's _Economic History_
contains two excellent chapters dealing with the Canonist teaching;
but, while these chapters contain a mass of most valuable information
on particular branches of the mediaeval 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 mediaeval 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
work dealing mainly with English economic practice. Dr. Cunningham
has also made many valuable contributions to particular aspects of the
subject; and there have also been published, principally in Catholic
periodicals, many important monographs on special points; but so
far there has not appeared in English any treatise, which is devoted
exclusively to mediaeval economic opinion and attempts to treat the
whole subject completely. It is this want in our economic literature
that has tempted the author to publish the present essay, although he
is fully aware of its many defects.
It is necessary, in the first place, to indicate precisely the extent
of the subject with which we propose to deal; and with this end in
view to give a definition of the three words, '_mediaeval, economic,
teaching_.'
SECTION 2.--EXPLANATION OF THE TITLE
Sec. 1. _Mediaeval_.
Ingram, in his well-known book on economic history, following the
opinion of Comte, refuses to consider the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries as part of the Middle Ages.[1] We intend, however, to treat
of economic teaching up to the end of the fifteenth century. The best
modern judges are agreed that the term Middle Ages must not be given
a hard-and-fast meaning, but that it is capable of bearing a very
elastic interpretation. The definition given in the _Catholic
Encyclopaedia_ 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 _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ contains a similar opinion: 'This
name is commonly given to that period of European history which lies
between what are known as ancient and modern times, and which has
generally been considered as extending from about the middle of the
fifth to about the middle of the fifteenth centuries. The two dates
adopted in old text-books were 476 and 1453, from the setting aside
of the last emperor of the west until the fall of Constantinople. In
reality it is impossible to fix any exact dates for the opening and
close of such a period.'
[Footnote 1: _History of Political Economy_, p. 35.]
We are therefore justified in considering the fifteenth century as
comprised hi the Middle Ages. This is especially so in the domain
of economic theory. In actual practice the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries may have presented the appearance rather of the first stage
of a new than of the last stage of an old era. This is Ingram's view.
However true this may be of practice, it is not at all true of theory,
which, as we shall see, continued to be entirely based on the
writings of an author of the thirteenth century. Ingram admits this
incidentally: 'During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the
Catholic-feudal system was breaking down by 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 mediaeval times.... On large lines, and from the viewpoint of
systems of thought rather than systems of industry, the Middle Ages
may with profit be divided into two periods. From 400 down to 1200,
or shortly thereafter, constitutes the first. During these years
Christian theology opposed Roman institutions, and Germanic customs
were superposed, until through action and reaction all were blended.
This was the reconstruction; it was the "stormy struggle" to found a
new ecclesiastical and civil system. From 1200 on to 1500 the world
of thought settled to its level. Feudalism and scholasticism, the
corner-stones of mediaevalism, emerged and were dominant.'
[Footnote 1: _Op. cit._, p. 35.]
[Footnote 2: _Memoires sur les commencements de l'economie politique
dans les ecoles du moyen age_, Academie des Inscriptions et
Belles-Lettres, vol. 28.]
[Footnote 3: _Geschichte zur National-Oekonomik in Deutschland_.]
[Footnote 4: _Introduction to the Study of Political Economy_.]
[Footnote 5: P. 70.]
We shall not continue the study further than the beginning of the
sixteenth century. It is true that, if we were to refer to several
sixteenth-century authors, we should be in possession of a very highly
developed and detailed mass of teaching on many points which
earlier 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
abrogation of the central authority which was a basic condition of
the success of the mediaeval system; and the same period also witnessed
'radical economic changes, reacting more and more on the scholastic
doctrines, which found fewer and fewer defenders in their original
form.'[1]
[Footnote 1: Cossa, _op. cit._, p. 151. Ashley warns us that 'we must
be careful not to interpret the writers of the fifteenth century by
the writers of the seventeenth' (_Economic History_, vol. i. pt. ii.
p. 387). These later writers sometimes contain historical accounts
of controversies in previous centuries, and are relevant on this
account.]
Sec. 2. _Economic_.
It must be clearly understood that the political economy of the
mediaevals was not a science, like modern political economy, but an
art. 'It is a branch of the virtue of prudence; it is half-way between
morality, which regulates the conduct of the individual, and politics,
which regulates the conduct of the sovereign. It is the morality of
the family or of the head of the family, from the point of view of the
good administration of the patrimony, just as politics is the morality
of the sovereign, from the point of view of the good government of the
State. There is as yet no question of economic 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 of it which we may call Christian ethics, laid
down certain principles of right and wrong in the economic sphere;
and it was the work of the canonists to apply them to specific
transactions and to pronounce judgment as to their permissibility.'[2]
The conception of economic laws, in the modern sense, was quite
foreign to the mediaeval treatment of the subject. It was only in
the middle of the fourteenth century that anything approaching a
scientific examination of the phenomena of economic life appeared,
and that was only in relation to a particular subject, namely, the
doctrine of money.[3]
[Footnote 1: Rambaud, _Histoire des Doctrines Economiques_, p. 39. 'It
is evident that a household is a mean between the individual and
the city or Kingdom, since just as the individual is part of the
household, so is the household part of the city or Kingdom, and
therefore, just as prudence commonly so called which governs the
individual is distinct from political prudence, so must domestic
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 many.' Aquinas, _Summa II_. ii.
50. 3, and see _Sent. III_. xxxiii. 3 and 4. 'Practica quidem scientia
est, quae recte vivendi modum ac disciplinae formam secundum virtutum
institutionem disponit. Et haec dividitur in tres, scilicet: primo
ethicam, id est moralem; et secundo oeconomicam, id est dispensativam;
et tertio politicam, id est civilem' (Vincent de Beauvais, _Speculum_,
VII. i. 2).]
[Footnote 2: _Op. cit._, vol. i. part. ii. p. 379.]
[Footnote 3: Rambaud, _op. cit._, p. 83; Ingram, _op. cit._, p. 36. So
marked was the contrast between the mediaeval and modern conceptions
of economics that the appearance of this one treatise has been said
by one high authority to have been the signal of the dawn of the
Renaissance (Espinas, _Histoire des Doctrines Economiques_, p. 110).]
To say that the mediaeval method of approaching economic problems was
fundamentally different from the modern, is not in any sense to be
taken as indicating disapproval of the former. On the contrary, it is
the general opinion to-day that the so-called classical treatment of
economics has proved disastrous in its application to real life,
and that future generations will witness a retreat to the earlier
position. The classical economists committed the cardinal error of
subordinating man to wealth, and consumption to production. In their
attempt to preserve symmetry and order in their generalisations they
constructed a weird creature, the economic man, who never existed, and
never could exist. The mediaevals made no such mistake. They insisted
that all production and gain which did not lead to the good of man was
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 mediaeval 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
consideration of the final and general end of his whole being, is
a principle which must exert on every department of the science
of wealth, an influence easy to understand. Economic laws are the
codification of the material activity of a sort of _homo economicus_;
of a being, who, having no end in view but wealth, produces all he
can, distributes his produce in the way that suits him best,
and consumes as much as he can. Self interest alone dictates his
conduct.'[3] Economics, far from being a science whose highest aim
was to evolve a series of abstractions, was a practical guide to the
conduct of everyday affairs.[4] 'The pre-eminence of morality in
the domain of economics constitutes at the same time the distinctive
feature, the particular merit, and the great teaching of the economic
lessons of this period.'[5]
[Footnote 1: _Irish Theological Quarterly_, vol. vii. p. 151.]
[Footnote 2: _Christianity and Economic Science_, p. 10.]
[Footnote 3: Brants, _Les Theories economiques aux xiii^{e} et xii^{e}
siecles, p_. 34.]
[Footnote 4: Gide and Rist, _History of Economic Doctrines_, Eng.
trans., p. 110.]
[Footnote 5: Brants, _op. cit._, p. 9.]
Dr. Cunningham draws attention to the fact that the existence of such
a universally received code of economic morality was largely due to
the comparative simplicity of the mediaeval social structure, where
the _relations of persons_ were all important, in comparison with the
modern order, where the _exchange of things_ is the dominant factor.
He further draws attention to the changes which affected the whole
constitution of society in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
and proceeds: 'These changes had a very important bearing on all
questions of commercial morality; so long as economic dealings were
based on a system of personal relationships they all bore an implied
moral character. To supply a bad article was morally wrong, to demand
excessive payment for goods or for labour was extortion, and the
right or wrong of every transaction was easily understood.'[1] The
application of ethics to economic transactions was rendered possible
by the existence of one universally recognised code of morality,
and the presence of one universally accepted 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 common religious life, with the powerful weapons of
spiritual censure and excommunication which it placed in the hands of
the clergy, so that they were able to enforce the line of policy which
Rome approved. Then there was the great judicial system of canon
law, a common code with similar tribunals for the whole of Western
Christendom, dealing not merely with strictly ecclesiastical affairs,
but with many matters that we should regard as economic, such as
questions of commercial morality, and also with social welfare as
affected by the law of marriage and the disposition of property by
will....'[3] 'To the influence of Christianity as a moral doctrine,'
says Dr. Ingram, 'was added that of the Church as an organisation,
charged with the application of the doctrine to men's daily
transactions. Besides the teaching of the sacred books there was a
mass of ecclesiastical legislation providing specific prescriptions
for the conduct of the faithful. And this legislation dealt with the
economic as well as with other provinces of social activity.'[4]
[Footnote 1: _Growth of English Industry and Commerce_, vol. i. p.
465.]
[Footnote 2: Cunningham, _Western Civilisation_, vol. ii. pp. 2-3.]
[Footnote 3: _Ibid._, p. 67.]
[Footnote 4: _Op. cit._, p. 27.]
The teaching of the mediaeval Church, therefore, on economic affairs
was but the application to particular facts and cases of its general
moral teaching. The suggestion, so often put forward by so-called
Christian socialists, that Christianity was the exponent of a special
social theory of its own, is unfounded. The direct opposite would be
nearer the truth. Far from concerning itself with the outward forms
of the political or economic structure, Christianity concentrated its
attention on the conduct of the individual. If Christianity can be
said to have possessed any distinctive 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 than there is a Christian physic or a
Christian medicine.'[1] In seeking to learn Christian teaching of
the Middle Ages on economic matters, we must therefore not look
for special economic treatises in the modern sense, but seek our
principles in the works dealing with general morality, in the Canon
Law, and in the commentaries on the Civil Law. 'We find the first
worked out economic theory for the whole Catholic world in the _Corpus
Juris Canonici_, that product of mediaeval science in which for so
many centuries theology, jurisprudence, philosophy, and politics were
treated....'[2]
[Footnote 1: Rambaud, _op. cit._, pp. 34-5; Cunningham, _Western
Civilisation_, vol. ii. p. 8.]
[Footnote 2: Roscher, _op. cit._, p. 5. It must not be concluded
that all the opinions expressed by the theologians and lawyers were
necessarily the official teaching 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 dominated the great
majority of the writers, but one must not conclude from this that
all their writings are entitled to rank as doctrinal teaching' (_Op.
cit._, p. 6).]
There is not to be found in the writers of the early Middle Ages, that
is to say from the eighth to the thirteenth centuries, a trace of any
attention given to what we at the present day would designate economic
questions. 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 to escape the attention of those who sought to
guide the people in their daily life; and money was accepted as the
inevitable instrument of exchange, without any discussion of its
origin or the laws which regulated it.
The writings of this period therefore betray no sign of any interest
in economic affairs. Jourdain says that he carefully examined the
works of Alcuin, Rabanas Mauras, Scotus Erigenus, Hincmar, Gerbert,
St. Anselm, and Abelard--the greatest lights of theology and
philosophy in 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 in reflections and results. The only work which might
be adduced as a partial exception to this rule is the _Polycraticus_
of John of Salisbury; but even this treatise contained only some
scattered moral reflections on luxury and on zeal for the interest of
the public treasury.[1]
[Footnote 1: Jourdain, _op. cit._, p. 4.]
Two causes contributed to produce this almost total lack of interest
in economic subjects. One was the miserable condition of society,
still only partially rescued from the ravages of the barbarians, and
half organised, almost without industry and commerce; the other
was the absence of all economic tradition. The existence of the
_Categories_ and _Hermenia_ of Aristotle ensured that the chain
of logical study was not broken; the works of Donatus and Priscian
sustained some glimmer of interest in grammatical theory; certain rude
notions of physics and astronomy were kept 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 encyclopaedia. 'Money,' according to Isidore,
'is so called because it warns, _monet_, lest any fraud should enter
into its composition or its weight. The piece of money is the coin of
gold, silver, or bronze, which is called _nomisma_, because it bears
the imprint of the name and likeness of the prince.... The pieces of
money _nummi_ have been so called from the King of Rome, Numa, who was
the first among the Latins to mark them with the imprint of his image
and name.'[1] Is it any wonder that the early Middle Ages were barren
of economic doctrines, when this was the best instruction to which
they had access?
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