Chapter V Conclusion
“Ther is a certaine man that shortly after my fyrst sermon, beynge asked if he had bene at the sermon that day, answered, yea. I praye you, said he, how lyked you hym? Mary, sayed he, even as I lyked hym alwayes—a sedicious fellow.”
Latimer, Seven Sermons before King Edward VI.
Societies, like individuals, have their moral crises and their spiritual revolutions. The student can observe the results which these cataclysms produce, but he can hardly without presumption attempt to appraise them, for it is at the fire which they kindled that his own small taper has been lit. The rise of a naturalistic science of society, with all its magnificent promise of fruitful action and of intellectual light; the abdication of the Christian Churches from departments of economic conduct and social theory long claimed as their province; the general acceptance by thinkers of a scale of ethical values, which turned the desire for pecuniary gain from a perilous, if natural, frailty into the idol of philosophers and the mainspring of society—such movements are written large over the history of the tempestuous age which lies between the Reformation and the full light of the eighteenth century. Their consequences have been worked into the very tissue of modern civilization. Posterity still stands too near their source to discern the ocean into which these streams will flow.
In an historical age the relativity of political doctrines is the tritest of commonplaces. But social psychology continues too often to be discussed in serene indifference to the categories of time and place, and economic interests are still popularly treated as though they formed a kingdom over which the Zeitgeist bears no sway. In reality, though inherited dispositions may be constant from generation to generation, the system of valuations, preferences and ideals—the social environment within which individual character functions—is in process of continuous change, and it is in the conception of the place to be assigned to economic interests in the life of society that change has in recent centuries been most comprehensive in its scope, and most sensational in its consequences. The isolation of economic aims as a specialized object of concentrated and systematic effort, the erection of economic criteria into an independent and authoritative standard of social expediency, are phenomena which, though familiar enough in classical antiquity, appear, at least on a grand scale, only at a comparatively recent date in the history of later civilizations. The conflict between the economic outlook of East and West, which impresses the traveller today, finds a parallel in the contrast between medieval and modern economic ideas, which strikes the historian.
The elements which combined to produce that revolution are too numerous to be summarized in any neat formula. But, side by side with the expansion of trade and the rise of new classes to political power, there was a further cause, which, if not the most conspicuous, was not the least fundamental. It was the contraction of the territory within which the spirit of religion was conceived to run. The criticism which dismisses the concern of Churches with economic relations and social organization as a modern innovation finds little support in past history. What requires explanation is not the view that these matters are part of the province of religion, but the view that they are not. When the age of the Reformation begins, economics is still a branch of ethics, and ethics of theology; all human activities are treated as falling within a single scheme, whose character is determined by the spiritual destiny of mankind; the appeal of theorists is to natural law, not to utility; the legitimacy of economic transactions is tried by reference, less to the movements of the market, than to moral standards derived from the traditional teaching of the Christian Church; the Church itself is regarded as a society wielding theoretical, and sometimes practical, authority in social affairs. The secularization of political thought, which was to be the work of the next two centuries, had profound reactions on social speculation, and by the Restoration the whole perspective, at least in England, has been revolutionized. Religion has been converted from the keystone which holds together the social edifice into one department within it, and the idea of a rule of right is replaced by economic expediency as the arbiter of policy and the criterion of conduct. From a spiritual being, who, in order to survive, must devote a reasonable attention to economic interest, man seems sometimes to have become an economic animal, who will be prudent, nevertheless, if he takes due precautions to assure his spiritual well-being.
The result is an attitude which forms so fundamental a part of modern political thought, that both its precarious philosophical basis, and the contrast which it offers with the conceptions of earlier generations, are commonly forgotten. Its essence is a dualism which regards the secular and the religious aspects of life, not as successive stages within a larger unity, but as parallel and independent provinces, governed by different laws, judged by different standards, and amenable to different authorities. To the most representative minds of the Reformation, as of the Middle Ages, a philosophy which treated the transactions of commerce and the institutions of society as indifferent to religion would have appeared, not merely morally reprehensible, but intellectually absurd. Holding as their first assumption that the ultimate social authority is the will of God, and that temporal interests are a transitory episode in the life of spirits which are eternal, they state the rules to which the social conduct of the Christian must conform, and, when circumstances allow, organize the discipline by which those rules may be enforced. By their successors in the eighteenth century the philosophy of Indifferentism, though rarely formulated as a matter of theory, is held in practice as a truism which it is irrational, if not actually immoral, to question, since it is in the heart of the individual that religion has its throne, and to externalize it in rules and institutions is to tarnish its purity and to degrade its appeal. Naturally, therefore, they formulate the ethical principles of Christianity in terms of a comfortable ambiguity, and rarely indicate with any precision their application to commerce, finance, and the ownership of property. Thus the conflict between religion and those natural economic ambitions which the thought of an earlier age had regarded with suspicion is suspended by a truce which divides the life of mankind between them. The former takes as its province the individual soul, the latter the intercourse of man with his fellows in the activities of business and the affairs of society. Provided that each keeps to its own territory, peace is assured. They cannot collide, for they can never meet.
History is a stage where forces which are within human control contend and coöperate with forces which are not. The change of opinion described in these pages drew nourishment from both. The storm and fury of the Puritan revolution had been followed by a dazzling outburst of economic enterprise, and the transformation of the material environment prepared an atmosphere in which a judicious moderation seemed the voice at once of the truest wisdom and the sincerest piety. But the inner world was in motion as well as the outer. The march of external progress woke sympathetic echoes in hearts already attuned to applaud its triumph, and there was no consciousness of an acute tension between the claims of religion and the glittering allurements of a commercial civilization, such as had tormented the age of the Reformation.
It was partly the natural, and not unreasonable, diffidence of men who were conscious that traditional doctrines of social ethics, with their impracticable distrust of economic motives, belonged to the conditions of a vanished age, but who lacked the creative energy to state them anew, in a form applicable to the needs of a more complex and mobile social order. It was partly that political changes had gone far to identify the Church of England with the ruling aristocracy, so that, while in France, when the crash came, many of the lower clergy threw in their lot with the tiers état, in England it was rarely that the officers of the Church did not echo the views of society which commended themselves to the rulers of the State. It was partly that, to one important body of opinion, the very heart of religion was a spirit which made indifference to the gross world of external circumstances appear, not a defect, but an ornament of the soul. Untrammelled by the silken chains which bound the Establishment, and with a great tradition of discipline behind them, the Nonconformist Churches might seem to have possessed opportunities of reasserting the social obligations of religion with a vigor denied to the Church of England. What impeded their utterance was less a weakness than the most essential and distinctive of their virtues. Founded on the repudiation of the idea that human effort could avail to win salvation, or human aid to assist the pilgrim in his lonely quest, they saw the world of business and society as a battlefield, across which character could march triumphant to its goal, not as crude materials waiting the architect’s hand to set them in their place as the foundations of the Kingdom of Heaven. It did not occur to them that character is social, and society, since it is the expression of character, spiritual. Thus the eye is sometimes blinded by light itself.
The certainties of one age are the problems of the next. Few will refuse their admiration to the magnificent conception of a community penetrated from apex to foundation by the moral law, which was the inspiration of the great reformers, not less than of the better minds of the Middle Ages. But, in order to subdue the tough world of material interests, it is necessary to have at least so much sympathy with its tortuous ways as is needed to understand them. The Prince of Darkness has a right to a courteous hearing and a fair trial, and those who will not give him his due are wont to find that, in the long run, he turns the tables by taking his due and something over. Common sense and a respect for realities are not less graces of the spirit than moral zeal. The paroxysms of virtuous fury, with which the children of light denounced each new victory of economic enterprise as yet another stratagem of Mammon, disabled them for the staff-work of their campaign, which needs a cool head as well as a stout heart. Their obstinate refusal to revise old formulæ in the light of new facts exposed them helpless to a counter-attack, in which the whole fabric of their philosophy, truth and fantasy alike, was overwhelmed together. They despised knowledge, and knowledge destroyed them.
Few can contemplate without a sense of exhilaration the splendid achievements of practical energy and technical skill, which, from the latter part of the seventeenth century, were transforming the face of material civilization, and of which England was the daring, if not too scrupulous, pioneer. If, however, economic ambitions are good servants, they are bad masters. Harnessed to a social purpose, they will turn the mill and grind the corn. But the question, to what end the wheels revolve, still remains; and on that question the naïve and uncritical worship of economic power, which is the mood of unreason too often engendered in those whom that new Leviathan has hypnotized by its spell, throws no light. Its result is not seldom a world in which men commands a mechanism that they cannot fully use, and an organization which has every perfection except that of motion.
Er nennt’s Vernunft und braucht’s allein,
Nur tierischer als jedes Tier zu sein.
The shaft of Mephistopheles, which drops harmless from the armor of Reason, pierces the lazy caricature which masquerades beneath that sacred name, to flatter its followers with the smiling illusion of progress won from the mastery of the material environment by a race too selfish and superficial to determine the purpose to which its triumphs shall be applied. Mankind may wring her secrets from nature, and use their knowledge to destroy themselves; they may command the Ariels of heat and motion, and bind their wings in helpless frustration, while they wrangle over the question of the master whom the imprisoned genii shall serve. Whether the chemist shall provide them with the means of life or with tri-nitro-toluol and poison gas, whether industry shall straighten the bent back or crush it beneath heavier burdens, depends on an act of choice between incompatible ideals, for which no increase in the apparatus of civilization at man’s disposal is in itself a substitute. Economic efficiency is a necessary element in the life of any sane and vigorous society, and only the incorrigible sentimentalist will depreciate its significance. But to convert efficiency from an instrument into a primary object is to destroy efficiency itself. For the condition of effective action in a complex civilization is coöperation. And the condition of coöperation is agreement, both as to the ends to which effort should be applied, and the criteria by which its success is to be judged.
Agreement as to ends implies the acceptance of a standard of values, by which the position to be assigned to different objects may be determined. In a world of limited resources, where nature yields a return only to prolonged and systematic effort, such a standard must obviously take account of economic possibilities. But it cannot itself be merely economic, since the comparative importance of economic and of other interests—the sacrifice, for example, of material goods worth incurring in order to extend leisure, or develop education, or humanize toil—is precisely the point on which it is needed to throw light. It must be based on some conception of the requirements of human nature as a whole, to which the satisfaction of economic needs is evidently vital, but which demands the satisfaction of other needs as well, and which can organize its activities on a rational system only in so far as it has a clear apprehension of their relative significance. “Whatever the world thinks,” wrote Bishop Berkeley, “he who hath not much meditated upon God, the human mind and the summum bonum may possibly make a thriving earthworm, but will most indubitably make a sorry patriot and a sorry statesman.” The philosopher of today, who bids us base our hopes of progress on knowledge inspired by love, does not differ from the Bishop so much, perhaps, as he would wish. The most obvious facts are the most easily forgotten. Both the existing economic order, and too many of the projects advanced for reconstructing it, break down through their neglect of the truism that, since even quite common men have souls, no increase in material wealth will compensate them for arrangements which insult their self-respect and impair their freedom. A reasonable estimate of economic organization must allow for the fact that, unless industry is to be paralyzed by recurrent revolts on the part of outraged human nature, it must satisfy criteria which are not purely economic. A reasonable view of its possible modifications must recognize that natural appetites may be purified or restrained, as, in fact, in some considerable measure they already have been, by being submitted to the control of some larger body of interests. The distinction made by the philosophers of classical antiquity between liberal and servile occupations, the medieval insistence that riches exist for man, not man for riches, Ruskin’s famous outburst, “there is no wealth but life,” the argument of the Socialist who urges that production should be organized for service, not for profit, are but different attempts to emphasize the instrumental character of economic activities by reference to an ideal which is held to express the true nature of man.
Of that nature and its possibilities the Christian Church was thought, during the greater part of the period discussed in these pages, to hold by definition a conception distinctively its own. It was therefore committed to the formulation of a social theory, not as a philanthropic gloss upon the main body of its teaching, but as a vital element in a creed concerned with the destiny of men whose character is formed, and whose spiritual potentialities are fostered or starved, by the commerce of the market-place and the institutions of society. Stripped of the eccentricities of period and place, its philosophy had as its center a determination to assert the superiority of moral principles over economic appetites, which have their place, and an important place, in the human scheme, but which, like other natural appetites, when flattered and pampered and overfed, bring ruin to the soul and confusion to society. Its casuistry was an attempt to translate these principles into a code of practical ethics, sufficiently precise to be applied to the dusty world of warehouse and farm. Its discipline was an effort, too often corrupt and pettifogging in practice, but not ignoble in conception, to work the Christian virtues into the spotted texture of individual character and social conduct. That practice was often a sorry parody on theory is a truism which should need no emphasis. But in a world where principles and conduct are unequally mated, men are to be judged by their reach as well as by their grasp—by the ends at which they aim as well as by the success with which they attain them. The prudent critic will try himself by his achievement rather than by his ideals, and his neighbors, living and dead alike, by their ideals not less than by their achievement.
Circumstances alter from age to age, and the practical interpretation of moral principles must alter with them. Few who consider dispassionately the facts of social history will be disposed to deny that the exploitation of the weak by the powerful, organized for purposes of economic gain, buttressed by imposing systems of law, and screened by decorous draperies of virtuous sentiment and resounding rhetoric, has been a permanent feature in the life of most communities that the world has yet seen. But the quality in modern societies which is most sharply opposed to the teaching ascribed to the Founder of the Christian Faith lies deeper than the exceptional failures and abnormal follies against which criticism is most commonly directed. It consists in the assumption, accepted by most reformers with hardly less naïveté than by the defenders of the established order, that the attainment of material riches is the supreme object of human endeavor and the final criterion of human success. Such a philosophy, plausible, militant, and not indisposed, when hard pressed, to silence criticism by persecution, may triumph or may decline. What is certain is that it is the negation of any system of thought or morals which can, except by a metaphor, be described as Christian. Compromise is as impossible between the Church of Christ and the idolatry of wealth, which is the practical religion of capitalist societies, as it was between the Church and the State idolatry of the Roman Empire.
“Modern capitalism,” writes Mr. Keynes, “is absolutely irreligious, without internal union, without much public spirit, often, though not always, a mere congeries of possessors and pursuers.” It is that whole system of appetites and values, with its deification of the life of snatching to hoard, and hoarding to snatch, which now, in the hour of its triumph, while the plaudits of the crowd still ring in the ears of the gladiators and the laurels are still unfaded on their brows, seems sometimes to leave a taste as of ashes on the lips of a civilization which has brought to the conquest of its material environment resources unknown in earlier ages, but which has not yet learned to master itself. It was against that system, while still in its supple and insinuating youth, before success had caused it to throw aside the mask of innocence, and while its true nature was unknown even to itself, that the saints and sages of earlier ages launched their warnings and their denunciations. The language in which theologians and preachers expressed their horror of the sin of covetousness may appear to the modern reader too murkily sulphurous; their precepts on the contracts of business and the disposition of property may seem an impracticable pedantry. But rashness is a more agreeable failing than cowardice, and, when to speak is unpopular, it is less pardonable to be silent than to say too much. Posterity has, perhaps, as much to learn from the whirlwind eloquence with which Latimer scourged injustice and oppression as from the sober respectability of the judicious Paley—who himself, since there are depths below depths, was regarded as a dangerous revolutionary by George III.
Notes
Chapter I
1 J. B. Say, Cours complet d’Economie politique pratique, vol. vi, 1829, pp. 351-2.
2 R. Torrens, An Essay on the Production of Wealth, 1821, Preface, p. xiii.
3 Lloyd George at Portmadoc (Times, June 16, 1921).
4 J. A. Froude, Revival of Romanism, in Short Studies on Great Subjects, 3rd ser., 1877, p. 108.
5 J. N. Figgis, From Gerson to Grotius, 1916, pp. 21 seqq.
6 Locke, Two Treatises of Government, bk. ii, chap. ix, § 124.
7 Nicholas Oresme, c. 1320-82, Bishop of Lisieux from 1377. His Tractatus de origine, natura, jure et mutationibus monetarum was probably written about 1360. The Latin and French texts have been edited by Wolowski (Paris, 1864), and extracts are translated by A. E. Monroe, Early Economic Thought, 1924, pp. 81-102. Its significance is discussed shortly by Cunningham, Growth of English Industry and Commerce, Early and Middle Ages (4th ed., 1905, pp. 354-9), and by Wolowski in his introduction. The date of the De Usuris of Laurentius de Rodolfis was 1403; a short account of his theories as to the exchanges will be found in E. Schreiber, Die volkswirthschaftlichen Anschauungen der Scholastik seit Thomas v. Aquin, 1913, pp. 211-17. The most important works of St. Antonino (1389-1459, Archbishop of Florence, 1446) are the Summa Theologica, Summa Confessionalis, and De Usuris. Some account of his teaching is given by Carl Ilgner, Die volkswirthschaftlichen Anschauungen Antonins von Florenz, 1904; Schreiber, op. cit., pp. 217-23; and Bede Jarrett, St. Antonino and Mediæval Economics, 1914. The full title of Baxter’s work is A Christian Directory: a Summ of Practical Theologie and Cases of Conscience.
8 See Chap. IV, p. 206.
9 Benvenuto da Imola, Comentum super Dantis Comœdiam (ed. Lacaita), vol. i, p. 579: “Qui facit usuram vadit ad infernum; qui non facit vadit ad inopiam” (quoted by G. G. Coulton, Social Life in Britain from the Conquest to the Reformation, 1919, p. 342).
10 Lanfranc, Elucidarium, lib. ii, p. 18 (in Opera, ed. J. A. Giles). See also Vita Sancti Guidonis (Bollandists’ Acta Sanctorum, September, vol. iv, p. 43): “Mercatura raro aut nunquam ab aliquo diu sine crimine exerceri potuit.”
11 B. L. Manning, The People’s Faith in the Time of Wyclif, 1919, p. 186.
12 Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 2a 2æ, div. 1, Q. iii, art. viii.
13 Ibid., 1a 2æ, div. i, Q. xciv, art. ii.
14 The Bull Unam Sanctam of Boniface VIII.
15 John of Salisbury, Polycraticus (ed. C. C. I. Webb), lib. v, cap. ii (“Est autem res publica, sicut Plutarco placet, corpus quoddam quod divini muneris beneficio animatur”), and lib. vi, cap. x, where the analogy is worked out in detail. For Henry VIII’s chaplain see Starkey, A Dialogue between Cardinal Pole and Thomas Lupset (Early English Text Society, Extra Ser., no. xxxii, 1878).
16 Chaucer, The Persone’s Tale, § 66.
17 On the Seven Deadly Sins, chap. xix (Select English Works of John Wyclif, ed. T. Arnold, vol. iii, 1871, p. 145).
18 John of Salisbury, op. cit., lib. vi, cap. x: “Tunc autem totius rei publicæ salus incolumis præclaraque erit, si superiora membra se impendant inferioribus et inferiora superioribus pari jure respondeant, ut singula sint quasi aliorum ad invicem membra.”
19 Wyclif, op. cit., chaps. ix, x, xi, xvii, passim (Works of Wyclif, ed. T. Arnold, vol. iii, pp. 130, 131, 132, 134, 143).
20 See, e.g., A. Doren, Studien aus der Florentiner Wirthschaftsgeschichte, 1901, vol. i, chaps. v, vii. His final verdict (p. 458) is: “Man kann es getrost aussprechen: es gibt wohl keine Periode in der Weltgeschichte, in der die natürliche Uebermacht des Kapitals über die besitz-und kapitallose Handarbeit rücksichtsloser, freier von sittlichen und rechtlichen Bedenken, naiver in ihrer selbstverständlichen Konsequenz gewaltet hätte, und bis in die entferntesten Folgen zur Geltung gebracht worden wäre, als in der Blütezeit der Florentiner Tuchindustrie.” The picture drawn by Pirenne of the textile industry in Flanders (Belgian Democracy: Its Early History, trans. by J. V. Saunders, 1915, pp. 128-34) is somewhat similar.
21 In Jan. 1298/9 there was held a “parliament of carpenters at Milehende, where they bound themselves by a corporal oath not to observe a certain ordinance or provision made by the Mayor and Aldermen touching their craft,” and in the following March a “parliament of smiths” was formed, with a common chest (Calendar of Early Mayor’s Court Rolls of the City of London, 1298-1307, ed. A. H. Thomas, 1924, pp. 25, 33-4).
22 The figures for Paris are the estimate of Martin Saint-Léon (Histoire des Corporations de Métiers, 3rd ed., 1922, pp. 219-20, 224, 226); those for Frankfurt are given by Bücher (Die Bevölkerung von Frankfurt am Main im XIV und XV Jahrhundert, 1886, pp. 103, 146, 605). They do not include apprentices, and must not be pressed too far. The conclusion of Martin Saint-Léon is: “Il est certain qu’au moyen âge (abstraction faite des villes de Flandre) il n’existait pas encore un prolétariat, le nombre des ouvriers ne dépassant guère ou n’atteignant même pas celui des maîtres” (op. cit., p. 227 n.). The towns of Italy should be added, as an exception, to those of Flanders, and in any case the statement is not generally true of the later Middle Ages, when there was certainly a wage-earning proletariat in Germany also (see Lamprecht, Zum Verständnis der wirthschaftlichen und sozialen Wandlungen in Deutschland vom 14. zum 16. Jahrhundert, in the Zeitschrift für Sozial-und Wirthschaftsgeschichte, vol. i, 1893, pp. 191-263), and even, though on a smaller scale, in England.
23 The Grete Sentence of Curs Expouned, chap. xxviii (Select English Works of Wyclif, ed. T. Arnold, vol. iii, p. 333). The passage contains comprehensive denunciations of all sorts of combination, in particular, gilds, “men of sutel craft, as fre masons and othere,” and “marchauntis, groceris, and vitileris” who “conspiren wickidly togidre that noon of hem schal bie over a certeyn pris, though the thing that thei bien be moche more worthi” (ibid., pp. 333, 334).
Wyclif’s argument is of great interest and importance. It is (1), that such associations for mutual aid are unnecessary. No special institutions are needed to promote fraternity, since, quite apart from them, all members of the community are bound to help each other: “Alle the goodnes that is in thes gildes eche man owith for to do bi comyn fraternyte of Cristendom, by Goddis comaundement.” (2) That combinations are a conspiracy against the public. Both doctrines were points in the case for the sovereignty of the unitary State, and both were to play a large part in subsequent history. They were used by the absolutist statesmen of the sixteenth century as an argument for State control over industry, in place of the obstructive torpor of gilds and boroughs, and by the individualists of the eighteenth century as an argument for free competition. The line of thought as to the relation of minor associations to the State runs from Wyclif to Turgot, Rousseau, Adam Smith, the Act of the Legislative Assembly in 1792 forbidding trade unions (“Les citoyens de même état ou profession, les ouvriers et compagnons d’un art quelconque ne pourront... former des règlements sur leurs prétendus intérêts communs”), and the English Combination Acts.
24 Kayser Sigmunds Reformation aller Ständen des Heiligen Römischen Reichs, printed by Goldast, Collectio Constitutionum Imperialium, 1713, vol. iv, pp. 170-200. Its probable date appears to be about 1437. It is discussed shortly by J. S. Schapiro, Social Reform and the Reformation, 1909, pp. 93-9.
25 Martin Saint-Léon, op. cit., p. 187. The author’s remark is made à propos of a ruling of 1270, fixing minimum rates for textile workers in Paris. It appears, however, to be unduly optimistic. The fact that minimum rates were fixed for textile workers must not be taken as evidence that that policy was common, for in England, and probably in France, the textile trades received special treatment, and minimum rates were fixed for them, while maximum rates were fixed for other, and much more numerous, bodies of workers. What is true is that the medieval assumption with regard to wages, as with regard to the much more important question of prices, was that it was possible to bring them into an agreement with an objective standard of equity, which did not reflect the mere play of economic forces.
26 “The Cardinals’ Gospel,” translated from the Carmina Burana by G. G. Coulton, in A Mediæval Garner, 1910, p. 347.
27 Printed from the Carmina Burana by S. Gaselee, An Anthology of Medieval Latin, 1925, pp. 58-9.
28 Innocent IV gave them in 1248 the title of “Romanæ ecclesiæ filii speciales” (Ehrenberg, Das Zeitalter der Fugger, 1896, vol. ii, p. 66).
29 For Grosstête see Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, vol. v, pp. 404-5 (where he is reported as denouncing the Cahorsines, “whom in our time the holy fathers and teachers... had driven out of France, but who have been encouraged and protected by the Pope in England, which did not formerly suffer from this pestilence”), and F. S. Stevenson, Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln, 1899, pp. 101-4. For the bishop of London and the Cahorsines see Matthew Paris, Chron. Maj., vol. iii, pp. 331-2. A useful collection of references on the whole subject is given by Ehrenberg, op. cit., vol. ii, pp. 64-8.
30 Registrum Epistolarum J. Peckham, vol. i, p. 18, July 1279 (translated by Coulton, Social Life in Britain from the Conquest to the Reformation, p. 345).
31 For cases of clerical usury see Selden Society, vol. v, 1891, Leet Jurisdiction in the City of Norwich, ed. W. Hudson, p. 35; Hist. MSS. Comm., MSS. of the Marquis of Lothian, 1905, p. 26; and Th. Bonnin, Regestrum Visitationum Odonis Rigaldi, 1852, p. 35. See also note 88 (below).
32 The Chapter of Notre-Dame appears to have lent money at interest to the citizens of Paris (A. Luchaire, Social France at the time of Philip Augustus, translated by E. B. Krehbiel, 1912, p. 130). For the bishop’s advice to the usurer see ibid., p. 166.
33 From a letter of St. Bernard, c.1125, printed by Coulton, A Mediæval Garner, pp. 68-73.
34 Aquinas, De Regimine Principum, lib. ii, cap. i-vii, where the economic foundations of a State are discussed.
35 Aquinas, Summa Theol., 2a 2æ, Q. lxxxiii, art. vi. For St. Antonino’s remarks to the same purpose, see Jarrett, St. Antonino and Mediæval Economics, p. 59.
36 Gratian, Decretum, pt. ii, causa xii, Q. i, c. ii, § 1.
37 A good account of St. Antonino’s theory of property is given by Ilgner, Die Volkswirthschaftlichen Anschauungen Antonins von Florenz, chap. x.
38 “Sed si esset bonus legislator in patria indigente, deberet locare pro pretio magno huiusmodi mercatores... et non tantum eis et familiæ sustentationem necessariam invenire, sed etiam industriam, peritiam, et pericula omnia locare; ergo etiam hoc possunt ipsi in vendendo” (quoted Schreiber, Die volkswirthschaftlichen Anschauungen der Scholastik seit Thomas v. Aquin, p. 154).
39 Henry of Ghent, Aurea Quodlibeta, p. 42b (quoted Schreiber, op. cit., p. 135).
40 Gratian, Decretum, pt. 1, dist. lxxxviii, cap. xi.
41 Aquinas, Summa Theol., 2a 2æ, Q. lxxvii, art.iv.
42 Ibid. Trade is unobjectionable, “cum aliquis negotiationi intendit propter publicam utilitatem, ne scilicet res necessariæ ad vitam patriæ desint, et lucrum expetit, non quasi finem, sed quasi stipendium laboris.”
43 Henry of Langenstein, Tractatus bipartitus de contractibus emptionis et venditionis, i, 12 (quoted Schreiber, op. cit., p. 197).
44 See Chap. II, § ii.
45 Examples of these stories are printed by Coulton, A Mediæval Garner, 1910, pp. 212-15, 298, and Social Life in England from the Conquest to the Reformation, 1919, p. 346.
46 The facts are given by Arturo Segre, Storia del Commercio, vol. i, p. 223. For a fuller account of credit and money-lending in Florence, see Doren, Studien aus der Florentiner Wirthschaftsgeschichte, vol. i, pp. 173-209.
47 Bruno Kuske, Quellen zur Geschichte des Kölner Handels und Verkehrs im Mittelalter, vol. iii, 1923, pp. 197-8.
48 Early English Text Society, The Coventry Leet Book, ed. M. D. Harris, 1907-13, p. 544.
49 Wyclif, On the Seven Deadly Sins, chap. xxiv (Works of Wyclif, ed. T. Arnold, vol. iii, pp. 154-5). The word rendered “loan” is “leeve” [? leene] in the text.
50 For examples of such cases see Early Chancery Proceedings, Bdle. lxiv, nos. 291 and 1089; Bdle. xxxvii, no. 38; Bdle. xlvi, no. 307. They are discussed in some detail in my introduction to Thomas Wilson’s Discourse upon Usury, 1925, pp. 28-9.
51 Hist. MSS. Com., MSS. of Marquis of Lothian, p. 27; Selden Soc., Leet Jurisdiction in the City of Norwich, p. 35.
52 Aquinas, Summa Theol., 1a 2æ, Q. xcv, art. ii.
53 On the Seven Deadly Sins, chap. xxiv (Works of Wyclif, ed. T. Arnold, vol. iii, p. 153): “Bot men of lawe and marchauntis and chapmen and vitelers synnen more in avarice then done pore laboreres. And this token hereof; for now ben thei pore, and now ben thei ful riche, for wronges that thei done.”
54 E.g., Ægidius Lessinus, De Usuris, cap. ix, pt. i: “Tantum res estimatur juste, quantum ad utilitatem possidentis refertur, et tantum juste valet, quantum sine fraude vendi potest.... Omnis translatio facta libera voluntate dominorum juste fit;” Johannes Buridanus, Quæstiones super decem libros Ethicorum Aristotelis, v, 23: “Si igitur rem suam sic alienat, ipse secundum suam estimationem non damnificatur, sed lucratur; igitur non injustum patitur.” Both writers are discussed by Schreiber (op. cit., pp. 161-71 and 177-91). The theory of Buridanus appears extraordinarily modern; but he is careful to emphasize that prices should be fixed “secundum utilitatem et necessitatem totius communitatis,” not “penes necessitatem ementis vel vendentis.”
55 St. Antonino, Summa Theologica, pars ii, tit. i, cap. viii, § 1, and cap. xvi, § iii. An account of St. Antonino’s theory of prices is given by Ilgner, Die volkswirthschaftlichen Anschauungen Antonins von Florenz, chap. iv; Jarrett, St. Antonino and Mediæval Economics; and Schreiber, op. cit., pp. 217-23. Its interest consists in the attempts to maintain the principle of the just price, while making allowance for practical necessities.
56 Henry of Langenstein, Tractatus bipartitus de contractibus emptionis et venditionis, i, 11, 12 (quoted Schreiber, op. cit., pp. 198-200).
57 For these examples see Cal. of Early Mayor’s Court Rolls of the City of London, ed. A. H. Thomas, pp. 259-60; Records of the City of Norwich, ed. W. Hudson and J. C. Tingey, vol. i, 1906, p. 227; Cal. of Early Mayor’s Court Rolls, p. 132; J. M. Wilson, The Worcester Liber Albus, 1920, pp. 199-200, 212-13. The question of the legitimacy of rent-charges and of the profits of partnership has been fully discussed by Max Neumann, Geschichte des Wuchers in Deutschland (1865), and by Ashley, Economic History. See also G. O’Brien, An Essay on Mediæval Economic Teaching (1920), and G. G. Coulton, An Episode in Canon Law (in History, July 1921), where the difficult question raised by the Decretal Naviganti is discussed.
58 Bernardi Papiensis Summa Decretalium (ed. E. A. D. Laspeyres, 1860); lib. v, tit. xv.
59 E.g., Ægidius Lessinus, De Usuris, cap. ix, pt. ii: “Etiam res futuræ per tempora non sunt tantæ estimationis, sicut eædem collectæ in instanti, nec tantam utilitatem inferunt possidentibus, propter quod oportet, quod sint minoris estimationis secundum justitiam.”
60 O’Brien (op. cit.) appears, unless I misunderstand him, to take this view.
61 Politics, I, iii, ad. fin. 1258b. See Who said “Barren Metal”? by E. Cannan, W. D. Ross, etc., in Economica, June 1922, pp. 105-7.
62 Innocent IV, Apparatus, lib. v, De Usuris.
63 For Italy, see Arturo Segre, Storia del Commercio, vol. i, pp. 179-91, and for France, P. Boissonade, Le Travail dans l’Europe chrétienne au Moyen Age, 1921, pp. 206-9, 212-13. Both emphasize the financial relations of the Papacy.
64 E.g., Council of Arles, 314; Nicæa, 325; Laodicea, 372; and many others.
65 Corpus Juris Canonici, Decretal. Greg. IX, lib. v, tit. xix, cap. i.
66 Ibid., cap. iii.
67 Ibid., Sexti Decretal, lib. v, tit. v, cap. i, ii.
68 Ibid., Clementinarum, lib. v, tit. v, cap. i.
69 The passages referred to in this paragraph are as follows: Corp. Jur. Can., Decretal. Greg. IX, lib. v, tit. xix, cap. ix, iv, x, xiii, xv, ii, v, vi.
70 A Formulary of the Papal Penitentiary in the Thirteenth Century, ed. H. C. Lea, 1892, Nos. xcii, clxxviii (2), clxxix.
71 Raimundi de Penna-forti Summa Pastoralis (Ravaisson, Catalogue Général des MSS. des Bibliothèques publiques des Departements, 1849, vol. i, pp. 592 seqq.). The archdeacon is to inquire: “Whether [the priest] feeds his flock, assisting those who are in need and above all those who are sick. Works of mercy also are to be suggested by the archdeacon, to be done by him for their assistance. If he cannot fully accomplish them out of his own resources, he ought, according to his power, to use his personal influence to get from others the means of carrying them out.... Inquiries concerning the parishioners are to be made, both from the priest and from others among them worthy of credence, who, if necessary, are to be summoned for the purpose to the presence of the archdeacon, as well as from the neighbours, with regard to matters which appear to need correction. First, inquiry is to be made whether there are notorious usurers, or persons reputed to be usurers, and what sort of usury they practise, whether any one, that is to say, lends money or anything else... on condition that he receive anything above the principal, or holds any pledge and takes profits from it in excess of the principal, or receives pledges and uses them in the meantime for his own gain;... whether he holds horses in pledge and reckons in the cost of their fodder more than they can eat... or whether he buys anything at a much lower price than it is worth, on condition that the seller can take it back at a fixed term on paying the price, though the buyer knows that he (the seller) will not be able to do so; or whether he buys anything for a less price than it is worth, because he pays before receiving the article, for example, standing corn; or whether any one, as a matter of custom and without express contract, is wont to take payment above the principal, as the Cahorsines do.... Further, it is to be inquired whether he practises usury cloaked under the guise of a partnership (nomine societatis palliatam), as when a man lends money to a merchant, on condition that he be a partner in the gains, but not in the losses.... Further, whether he practises usury cloaked under the guise of a penalty, that is to say, when his intention in imposing a penalty [for non-payment at a given date] is not that he may be paid more quickly, but that he may be paid more. Further, whether he practises usury in kind, as when a rich man, who has lent money, will not receive from a poor man any money above the principal, but agrees that he shall work two days in his vineyard, or something of the kind. Further, whether he practises usury cloaked by reference to a third party, as when a man will not lend himself, but has a friend whom he induces to lend. When it has been ascertained how many persons in that parish are notorious for usury of this kind, their names are to be reduced to writing, and the archdeacon is to proceed against them in virtue of his office, causing them to be cited to his court on a day fixed, either before himself or his responsible official, even if there is no accuser, on the ground that they are accused by common report. If they are convicted, either because their offence is evident, or by their own confession, or by witnesses, he is to punish them as he thinks best.... If they cannot be directly convicted, by reason of their manifold shifts and stratagems, nevertheless their ill fame as usurers can easily be established.... If the archdeacon proceed with caution and diligence against their wicked doings, they will hardly be able to hold their own or to escape—if, that is... he vex them with trouble and expense, and humiliate them, by frequently serving citations on them and assigning several different days for their trial, so that by trouble, expense, loss of time, and all manner of confusion they may be induced to repent and submit themselves to the discipline of the Church.”
72 E. Martène and U. Durand, Thesaurus novus Anecdotorum, 1717, vol. iv, pp. 696 seqq.
73 Pecock, The Repressor of over-much blaming of the Clergy, ed. C. Babington, 1860, pt. i, chap. iii, pp. 15-16. His words show both the difficulties which confronted ecclesiastical teaching and the attempts to overcome them. “I preie thee... seie to me where in Holi Scripture is yoven the hundrid parti of the teching upon matrimonie which y teche in a book mad upon Matrimonie, and in the firste partie of Cristen religioun.... Seie to me also where in Holi Scripture is yoven the hundrid part of the teching which is yoven upon usure in the thridde parti of the book yclepid The filling of the iiij tables; and yit al thilk hool teching yoven upon usure in the now named book is litil ynough or ouer litle for to leerne, knowe and have sufficientli into mannis behove and into Goddis trewe service and lawe keping what is to be leerned and kunnen aboute usure, as to reeders and studiers ther yn it muste needis be open. Is ther eny more writen of usure in al the Newe Testament save this, Luke vi, ‘Geve ye loone, hoping no thing ther of,’ and al that is of usure writen in the Oold Testament favourith rather usure than it reproveth. How evere, therfore, schulde eny man seie that the sufficient leernyng and kunnyng of usure or of the vertu contrarie to usure is groundid in Holi Scripture? Howe evere schal thilk litil now rehercid clausul, Luke vi, be sufficient for to answere and assoile alle the harde scrupulose doutis and questiouns which al dai han neede to be assoiled in mennis bargenyngis and cheffaringis togidere? Ech man having to do with suche questiouns mai soone se that Holi Writt geveth litil or noon light thereto at al. Forwhi al that Holi Writt seith ther to is that he forbedith usure, and therfore al that mai be take therbi is this, that usure is unleeful; but though y bileeve herbi that usure is unleeful, how schal y wite herbi what usure is, that y be waar for to not do it, and whanne in a bargeyn is usure, though to summen seemeth noon, and how in a bargeyn is noon usure though to summen ther semeth to be?”
Pecock’s defence of the necessity of commentaries on the teaching of Scripture was the real answer to the statement afterwards made by Luther that the text, “Love thy neighbour as thyself,” was an all-sufficient guide to action (see Chap. II, p. 99). Examples of teaching as to usury contained in books such as Pecock had in mind will be found in Myrc’s Instructions for Parish Priests (Early English Text Society, ed. E. Peacock and F. J. Furnivall, 1902), the Pupilla Oculi, and Dan Michel’s Ayenbite of Inwyt (Early English Text Society, ed. R. Morris, 1866).
74 The Catechism of John Hamilton, Archbishop of St. Andrews, 1552, ed. T. G. Law, 1884, pp. 97-9. Under the seventh commandment are denounced: “Fyftlie, al thay that defraudis or spoulyeis the common geir, aganis the common weill for lufe of their awin pryvate and singulare weill. Saxtlie, all usuraris and ockiraris synnis aganis this command, that wil nocht len thair geir frelie, bot makis conditione of ockir, aganis the command of Christe. Sevintlie, all thay quhilk hais servandis or work men and wyll nocht pay theim thair fee or waige, accordyng to conditioun and thair deservyng, quilk syn, as sanct James sayis, cryis vengeance before God. Auchtlie, all thai that strykis cowyne of unlauchful metall, quhair throuch the common weil is hurt and skaithit. The nynte, all Merchandis that sellis corruppit and evyll stufe for gude, and gyf thay or ony uther in bying or sellyng use desait, falsate, parjurie, wrang mettis or weychtis, to the skaith of thair nychtbour, thay committ gret syn agane this command. Nother can we clenge fra breakyng of this command all kyndis of craftis men quhilk usis nocht thair awin craft leillalie and trewlie as thai suld do.... All wrechis that wyl be ground ryche incontynent, quhay be fraud, falset, and gyle twynnis men and thair geir, quhay may keip thair nychbour fra povertie and myschance and dois it nocht. Quhay takis ouer sair mail, ouer mekle ferme or ony blake maillis fra thair tennands, or puttis thair cottaris to ouir sair labouris, quhair throw the tenentis and cottaris is put to herschip. Quha invies his nychbouris gud fortune, ouir byis him or takis his geir out of his handis with fair hechtis, or prevenis him, or begyles him at his marchandis hand.” The detail in which different forms of commercial sharp practice are denounced is noticeable.
75 See e.g. Matt. Paris, Chron. Maj., vol. iii, pp. 191-2, for the case of a priest who, for refusing to give Christian burial to an excommunicate usurer, is seized by order of the Count of Brittany and buried alive, bound to the dead man. See also Materials for the History of Thomas Becket, vol. v, p. 38.
76 Harduin, Acta Conciliorum, vol. vii, pp. 1017-20; “Anno prædicto [1485], diebus Mercurii et Jovis prædictis, scilicet ante Ramos Palmarum, ibidem apud Vicanum, in claustro ecclesiæ de Vicano; coram domino archiepiscopo, et mandato suo, personæ infrascriptæ, parochiani de Guorgonio, qui super usuraria pravitate erant quam plurimum diffamati; coram domino propter hoc vocati abjuraverunt: et per mandatum domini summas infrascriptas, quas se confessi fuerunt habuisse per usurariam pravitatem, per juramentum suum restituere promiserunt, et stare juri super his coram eo. Bertrandus de Faveriis abjuratus usuras, ut præmittitur, promisit restituere centum solidos monetæ antiquæ: quos, prout ipse confessus est, habuerat per usurariam pravitatem....” Thirty-six more cases were treated in this way.
77 Villani, Cronica, book xii, chap. lviii (ed.1823, vol. vi, p. 142): Villani complains of the conduct of the inquisitor: “Ma per attignere danari, d’ogni piccola parola oziosa che alcuno dicesse per iniquità contra Iddio, o dicesse che usura non fosse peccato mortale, o simili parole, condannava in grossa somma di danari, secondo che l’uomo era ricco.”
78 Constitutions of Clarendon, cap. 15: “Placita de debitis, quæ fide interposita debentur, vel absque interpositione fidei, sint in justitia regis.” On the whole subject see Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law, 2nd ed., 1898, vol. ii, pp. 197-202, and F. Makower, Constitutional History of the Church of England, 1895, § 60.
79 Cal. of Early Mayor’s Court Rolls of the City of London, ed. A. H. Thomas, pp. 44, 88, 156, 235; Selden Soc., Borough Customs, ed. M. Bateson, vol. ii, 1906, pp. 161 (London) and 209-10 (Dublin); Records of Leicester, ed. M. Bateson, vol. ii, 1901, p. 49. For similar prohibitions by manorial courts, see Hist. MSS. Com., MSS. of Marquis of Lothian, p. 28, and G. P. Scrope, History of the Manor and Barony of Castle Combe, 1852, p. 238.
80 Annales de Burton, p. 256; Wilkins, Concilia, vol. ii, p. 115; Rot. Parl., vol. ii, p. 129b.
81 Cal. of Letter Books of the City of London, ed. R. R. Sharpe, vol. H, pp. 23-4, 24-5, 27, 28, 200, 206-7, 261-2, 365; Liber Albus, bk. iii, pt. ii, pp. 77, 315, 394-401, 683; Selden Soc., Leet Jurisdiction in the City of Norwich, p. 35; Hist. MSS. Com., MSS. of Marquis of Lothian, pp. 26, 27.
82 Rot. Parl., vol. ii, pp. 332a, 350b.
83 R. H. Morris, Chester in the Plantagenet and Tudor Reigns, 1894 (?), p. 190.
84 Early Chancery Proceedings, Bdle. xi, no. 307; Bdle. xxix, nos. 193-5; Bdle. xxxi, nos. 96-100, 527; Bdle. lx, no. 20; Bdle. lxiv, no. 1089. See also Year Books and Plea Rolls as Sources of Historical Information, by H. G. Richardson, in Trans. Royal Historical Society, 4th series, vol. v, 1922, pp. 47-8.
85 Ed. Gibson, Codex Juris Ecclesiastici Anglicani, 2nd ed., 1761, p. 1026.
86 15 Ed. III, st. 1, c. 5; 3 Hen. VII, c. 5; 11 Hen. VII, c. 8; 13 Eliz. c. 8; 21 Jac. I, c. 17.
87 Cal. of Early Mayor’s Court Rolls of City of London, ed. A. H. Thomas, pp. 1, 12, 28-9, 33-4, 44, 52, 88, 141, 156, 226, 235, 251. The cases of the smiths and spurriers occur on pp. 33-4 and 52. In the fifteenth century a gild still occasionally tried to enforce its rules by proceedings in an ecclesiastical court (see Wm. H. Hale, A Series of Precedents and Proceedings in Criminal Causes, 1847, nos. xxxvi and lxviii, where persons breaking gild rules are cited before the Commissary’s court).
88 Canterbury and York Soc., Registrum Thome Spofford, ed. A. T. Bannister, 1919, p. 52 (1424); and Surtees Society, vol. cxxxviii, The Register of Thomas of Corbridge, Lord Archbishop of York, ed. Wm. Brown, 1925, vol. i, pp. 187-8: “6 kal. Maii, 1303. Wilton.’ Littera testimonialis super purgacione domini Johannis de Multhorp, vicarii ecclesie de Garton’, de usura sibi imposita. Universis Christi fidelibus, ad quos presentes littere pervenerint, pateat per easdem quod, cum dominus Johannes de Multhorp’, vicarius ecclesie de Garton’, nostre diocesis, coram nobis Thoma, Dei gracia, etc., in visitacione nostra super usura fuisset notatus, videlicet, quod mutuavit cuidam Jollano de Briddale, ut dicebatur, xxxiij s. iiij d., eo pacto quod idem vicarius ab eo reciperet per x annos annis singulis x s. pro eisdem, de quibus eciam dictum fuit quod prefatus Jollanus dicto vicario pro octo annis ex pacto satisfecit et solvit predicto; eundem vicarium super hoc vocari fecimus coram nobis et ei objecimus supradicta, que ipse inficians constancius atque negans se optulit in forma juris super hiis legitime purgaturum. Nos autem eidem vicario purgacionem suam cum sua sexta manu vicariorum et aliorum presbiterorum sui ordinis indiximus faciendam, quam die Veneris proxima ante festum apostolorum Philippi et Jacobi (April 26), anno gracie mºcccº tercio, ad hoc sibi prefixo, in manerio nostro de Wilton’ super articulo recipimus supradicto, idemque vicarius unacum dominis Johanne, rectore ecclesie B.M. juxta portam castri de Eboraco, Johanne et Johanne, de Wharrum et de Wyverthorp’ ecclesiarum vicariis ac Roberto, Johanne, Alano, Stepheno et Willelmo, de Nafferton’, Driffeld’, Wetewang’, Foston’ et Wintringham ecclesiarum presbiteris parochialibus fidedignis, de memorato articulo legitime se purgavit; propter quod ipsum vicarium sic purgatum pronunciamus et inmunem sentencialiter declaramus, restituentes eundem ad suam pristinam bonam famam. In cujus rei testimonium sigillum nostrum presentibus est appensum.”
89 Early Chancery Proceedings, Bdle. xviii, no. 137; Bdle. xix, no. 2155; Bdle. xxiv, no. 255; Bdle. xxxi, no. 348. See also A. Abram, Social England in the Fifteenth Century, 1909, pp. 215-17. In view of these examples, it seems probable that a more thorough examination of the Early Chancery Proceedings would show that, even in the fifteenth century, the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts in matters of contract and usury was of greater practical importance than has sometimes been supposed.
90 Surtees Soc., vol. lxiv, 1875 (Acts of Chapter of the Collegiate Church of Ripon) contains more than 100 cases in which the court deals with questions of contract, debt, etc. The case which is dismissed “propter civilitatem causæ” occurs in 1532 (Surtees Soc., vol. xxi, 1845, Ecclesiastical Proceedings from the Courts of Durham, p. 49).
91 Chetham Soc., vol. xliv, 1901, Act Book of the Ecclesiastical Court of Whalley, pp. 15-16.
92 Surtees Soc., vol. lxiv, 1875, Acts of Chapter of the Collegiate Church of Ripon, p. 26.
93 Hale, op. cit. (note 87 above), no. ccxxxviii.
94 See Chap. III, p. 161.
95 For parishes, see S. O. Addy, Church and Manor, 1913, chap. xv, where numerous examples are given. For a gild which appears to have acted as a bank, see Hist. MSS. Com., 11th Report, 1887, Appx., pt. iii, p. 228 (MSS. of the Borough of King’s Lynn), and for other examples of loans, H. F. Westlake, The Parish Gilds of Mediæval England, 1919, pp. 61-3, Records of the City of Oxford, ed. Wm. H. Turner, 1880, p. 8, Statutes of Lincoln Cathedral, ed. C. Wordsworth, pt. ii, 1897, pp. 616-17, and G. Unwin, The Gilds and Companies of London, 1908, p. 121. For a hospital, see Hist. MSS. Com., 14th Report, Appx., pt. viii, 1895, p. 129 (MSS. of the Corporation of Bury St. Edmunds), where 20d. is lent (or given) to a poor man to buy seed for his land. A statement (made half a century after the Dissolution) as to loans by monasteries is quoted by F. A. Gasquet, Henry VIII and the English Monasteries, 7th ed., 1920, p. 463; specific examples are not known to me.
96 W. H. Bliss, Cal. of Papal Letters, vol. i, pp. 267-8.
97 For the early history of the Monts de Piété see Holzapfel, Die Anfänge der Montes Pietatis (1903), and for their development in the Low Countries, A. Henne, Histoire du Règne de Charles-quint en Belgique, 1859, vol. v, pp. 220-3. For proposals to establish them in England see S.P.D. Eliz., vol. cx, no. 57 (printed in Tawney and Power, Tudor Economic Documents, vol. iii, sect. iii, no. 6), and my introduction to Thomas Wilson’s Discourse upon Usury, 1925, pp. 125-7.
98 Camden Soc., A Relation of the Island of England about the Year (translated from the Italian), 1847, p. 23.
99 Lyndwood, Provinciale, sub. tit. Usura, and Gibson, Codex Jur. Eccl. Angl., vol. ii, p. 1026.
100 Pecock, The Repressor of over-much blaming of the Clergy, pt. iii, chap. iv, pp. 296-7: “Also Crist seide here in this present proces, that ’at God’ it is possible a riche man to entre into the kingdom of heuen; that is to seie, with grace which God profrith and geueth... though he abide stille riche, and though withoute such grace it is ouer hard to him being riche to entre. Wherfore folewith herof openli, that it is not forbodun of God eny man to be riche; for thanne noon such man schulde euere entre heuen.... And if it be not forbode eny man to be riche, certis thanne it is leeful ynough ech man to be riche; in lasse than he vowe the contrarie or that he knowith bi assay and experience him silf so miche indisposid anentis richessis, that he schal not mowe rewle him silf aright anentis tho richessis: for in thilk caas he is bonde to holde him silf in poverte.” The embarrassing qualification at the end—which suggests the question, who then dare be rich?—is the more striking because of the common-sense rationalism of the rest of the passage.
101 Trithemius, quoted by J. Janssen, History of the German People at the close of the Middle Ages, vol. ii, 1896, p. 102.
102 Cal. of Early Mayor’s Court Rolls of the City of London, ed. A. H. Thomas, pp. 157-8.
103 See A. Luchaire, Social France at the time of Philip Augustus (translated by E. B. Krehbiel), pp. 391-2, where an eloquent denunciation by Jacques de Vitry is quoted.
104 Topographer and Genealogist, vol. i, 1846, p. 35. (The writer is a surveyor, one Humberstone.)
105 See e.g. Chaucer, The Persone’s Tale, §§ 64-6. The parson expresses the orthodox view that “the condicioun of thraldom and the firste cause of thraldom is for sinne.” But he insists that serfs and lords are spiritually equal: “Thilke that thou clepest thy thralles been goddes peple; for humble folk been Cristes freendes.”
106 Gratian, Decretum, pt. ii, causa x, Q. ii, c. iii, and causa xii, Q. ii, c. xxxix.
107 Summa Theol., 1a 2ae, Q. xciv, art. v, § 3.
108 An article of the German Peasants’ program in 1525 declared: “For men to hold us as their own property... is pitiable enough, considering that Christ has delivered and redeemed us all, the lowly as well as the great, without exception, by the shedding of His precious blood. Accordingly it is consistent with Scripture that we should be free.” (The program is printed in J. S. Schapiro, Social Reform and the Reformation, 1909, pp. 137-42.) The rebels under Ket prayed “that all bondmen may be made free, for God freed them all with His precious blood-shedding” (printed in Bland, Brown, and Tawney, English Economic History, Select Documents, pt. ii, sect. i, no. 8).