Usury in Christian Middle Ages. A Reconsideration of the Historiographical Tradition (1949–2010)

16 Pages·2012·0.191 MB·English

by  Giacomo Todeschini

FONDAZIONE
ISTITUTO INTERNAZIONALE DI STORIA ECONOMICA “F.DATINI”
PRATO
RELIGIONE E ISTITUZIONI RELIGIOSE
NELL’ECONOMIA EUROPEA. 1000-1800
RELIGION AND RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS
IN THE EUROPEAN ECONOMY. 1000-1800

Atti della “Quarantatreesima Settimana di Studi”
8-12 maggio 2011
a cura di Francesco Ammannati
Firenze University Press
2012
INDICE
Domenica 8 maggio – APERTURA DEI LAVORI
ERIK AERTS,La religione nell’economia. L’economia nella religione.
Europa 1000-1800 ........................................................................................................... pag. 3
Lunedì 9 maggio – TRA DOTTRINA E PRATICA DELLA VITA QUOTIDIANA: FINANZA
& CAPITALE/BETWEENDOCTRINEAND PRACTICE OF EVERYDAY LIFE: FINANCE & CAPITAL
Relazioni
GIACOMO TODESCHINI, Usury in Christian Middle Ages. A Reconsideration
of the Historiographical Tradition (1949-2010) .......................................................... pag. 119
MARKUS A.DENZEL, The Curial Payments System of the Late Middle Ages
and the Sixteenth Century: Between Doctrineand Practice of EverydayLife ....... » 131
JOHN MUNRO, Usury, Calvinism and Credit in Protestant England:
from the Sixteenth Century to the Industrial Revolution ........................................... » 155
JUANM.CARRETEROZAMORA, Les Collectories de la Monarchie Hispaniqueet
la banque Italienne aux XVIe-XVIIe siècles (1506-1614)........................................... » 185
Comunicazioni
JORDI MORELLÓ BAGET, Searching the “Veros Valores” of Some Religious
Centresof Barcelona(About the Ecclesiastical Subsidy of 1443) ........................... pag. 207
DAVID KUSMAN, Le rôle de l’Église comme institution dans la contractualisation
des opérations de crédit en Brabant, XIIIe-XVe siècle ................................................ » 227
Martedì 10 maggio – TRA DOTTRINA E PRATICA DELLA VITA QUOTIDIANA: FINANZA
& CAPITALE/BETWEENDOCTRINEAND PRACTICE OF EVERYDAY LIFE: FINANCE & CAPITAL
Comunicazioni
MAREKS�O�, Die Rolle der kirchlichen Institutionen imGeldumlauf zwischen Stadt
und Umland. Das Herzogtum Breslau im Spätmittelalter .......................................... pag. 249
ELISA SOLDANI,DANIEL DURAN I DUELT, Religion, Warfare and Business
in Fifteenth-Century Rhodes .......................................................................................... » 257
GIOVANNI CECCARELLI, Concezioni economiche dell’Occidente cristiano
alla fine del medioevo: fontie materiali inediti ............................................................ » 271
MORITZ ISENMANN, The Administration of the Papal Funded Debt:
Structural Deficiencies and Institutional Reforms ...................................................... » 281
FABIENNE HENRYOT, La quête franciscaine aux XVIIe et XVIIIesiècles :
théories et pratiques d’une économie de l’Evangile .................................................... » 293
PRESTON PERLUSS, From Alms to Investments: Monastic Credit Structures
in 17th and 18th Century Paris......................................................................................... » 307
VIII INDICE
Martedì 10 maggio – RELIGIONE E SVILUPPO ECONOMICO /RELIGION AND ECONOMIC
DEVELOPMENT
Relazioni
RICHARD D.ORAM, Breaking New Ground: the Monastic Orders and Economic
Development along the NorthernEuropean Periphery c.1070 to c.1300............... pag. 331
STEPHANE BOISSELLIER, Capitauxecclésiastiques, croissance économique
et circuits épiscopaux dans la formation du Portugal, XIe-XIIIe siècles................... » 345
MURATÇIZAKÇA Long TermCauses of Decline of the
Ottoman/Islamic Economies ........................................................................................ » 361
CÁTIA ANTUNES,FILIPA RIBEIRO DA SILVA, In Nomine Domini et In Nomine
Rex Regis: Inquisition, Persecution and Royal Finances in Portugal, 1580-1715 .... » 377
Mercoledì 11 maggio – RELIGIONE E SVILUPPO ECONOMICO/RELIGION AND ECONOMIC
DEVELOPMENT
Relazioni
MONICA MARTINAT, Un modello cattolico di sviluppo economico? La riflessione
teorica e la pratica degli scambi nell’Europa mediterranea (secc. XVI-XVIII)....... pag. 413
THIJS LAMBRECHT, “NineProtestants Are to Be Esteemed Worth TenCatholics.”
Representing Religion, Labour and Economic Performance in Pre-Industrial Europe
c. 1650-c. 1800 .................................................................................................................. » 431
Comunicazioni
HANNELORE PEPKE-DURIX, L’économie monastique bourguignonne en quête
d'organisation rationnelle (XIIe-XVe siècles) ................................................................ pag. 451
ANTONIO JOSÉ MIRA JÓDAR, La propiedad agraria eclesiásticaenValencia
en la baja Edad Media. Rentas, gestión de la tierra y explotación campesina.......... » 465
GUIDOALFANI, Reformation, “Counter-reformation” and Economic Development
from the Point of View of Godparenthood: an Anomaly?
(Italy and Europe, 14th-19th Centuries) .......................................................................... » 477
LOREDANA PANARITI, “Non si acquista la scienza se non si studia”.
La componente ebraica nel sistemaassicurativo triestino .......................................... » 491
MARIA GRAZIAD’AMELIO,MANUELVAQUEROPIÑEIRO, Devozione e risorse monetarie:
aspetti del finanziamentodegli edifici religiosi tra Medioevoe età Moderna.......... » 499
ROMINA TSAKIRI, L’istituzione della cessione dei monasteri ortodossi nella Creta
dei secoli XVI e XVII ed il suo contributo alle attività economiche
degli ambienti circostanti................................................................................................ » 511
SAMIA CHERGUI, Institutions religieuses des habûs : nature, fonctionnement et impact
sur les investissements immobiliersen Alger ottomane ............................................. » 529
MANON VAN DER HEIJDEN,ELISE VAN NEDERVEENMEERKERK,ARIADNESCHMIDT,
Religion, Economic Development and Women’s Agency in the Dutch Republic .. » 543
MARIA CIE�LA, Between Religious Law and Practice. The Role of Jewish Communities
in the Development of Town's Economy in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in
the 17th and 18th Centuries.............................................................................................. » 563
MARÍA DOLORES MUÑOZ DUEÑAS, La formación de un discurso secularizado sobre el
sistema económico de la Iglesia: la cuestión del diezmo en Córdoba, 1750-1820 .. » 575
NICOLAS LYON-CAEN, Les jansénistes, le commerce et l’argent au 18e siècle ........ » 585
INDICE IX
Giovedì 12 maggio – RELIGIONE E CONSUMI /RELIGION AND CONSUMPTION
Relazioni
PHILIP SLAVIN, Church and Food Provisioning in Late-Medieval England, 1250-1450:
Production Costs, Markets and the Decline of Direct Demesne Management...... pag. 597
Comunicazioni
TIMOTHY P.NEWFIELD, Epizootics and the Consumption of Diseased Meat
in the Middle Ages.......................................................................................................... pag. 619
LAUREANOM.RUBIO PÉREZ,OSCAR FERNÁNDEZ ALVAREZ, Religion, Culture
and Eating: Believes, Consumption Ways and Collective Practices in the Northwest of
Spain from the 16th to the 18th Centuries..................................................................... » 641
ISABEL DRUMOND BRAGA, Les familles de chrétiens nouveaux et la possession d’objets
religieux (XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles) ................................................................................. » 655
BRECHTDEWILDE,JOHAN POUKENS, Confraternities, Jansenism and the Birth
of a Consumer Society in 17th-18th-Century Leuven .................................................. » 671
Giovedì 12 maggio – MOBILITÀ E MIGRAZIONE: PERSECUZIONE, PELLEGRINAGGI E
TURISMO RELIGIOSO /MOBILITY AND MIGRATION: AGGRESSION, PILGRIMAGE AND
RELIGIOUS TOURISM
Relazioni
DAVID JACOBY, The Economic Impact of Christian Pilgrimage on the Holy Land,
Eighth-SixteenthCentury – a Long-Term Overview ................................................. pag. 697
CHRISTOPHEDUHAMELLE, Pèlerinage etéconomie dans l’Empire
au XVIIIe siècle................................................................................................................ » 713
Comunicazioni
JUDICAËL PETROWISTE, Pèlerinages et essor commercial dans les pays occitans
médiévaux (XIe-XIIIe siècle)........................................................................................... pag. 729
FEDERICO PIGOZZO, I denari dei pellegrini. Oblazioni votivee istituzioni ecclesiastiche
nell’Italia centrale alla fine del XIV secolo ................................................................... » 743
CLÉMENT LENOBLE, Investimenti religiosi, civici edeconomici. Diritto e teologia in alcuni
aspetti degli scambi tra mercanti italiani e fratiminori (Avignone secc. XIV-XV) . » 755
MICHAELA.PENMAN, The Economics of Faith: Approaches to Monastic Saints’ Cults
in Medieval Scotland ........................................................................................................ » 765
YVES JUNOT, Les migrants, unenjeu? Pacification religieuse et relance économique
de part etd’autre de la frontièreentre la Franceet les Pays-Bas espagnols
(c. 1580-c. 1610) ............................................................................................................... » 779
MARIA MARTA LOBO DE ARAUJO, Les pèlerinages au Sanctuaire de Notre Dame
de Porto de Ave en tant que moteurs de changement : la dynamisationde l’économie
locale (XVIIIe siècle) ........................................................................................................ » 793
MARIA ENGRACIA LEANDRO, Quand la religion et l’économie se mêlent.
Triomphe des croyances autour du Sanctuairede Notre Dame da Nazaré,
triomphe de l’économie locale....................................................................................... » 805
Abstracts ........................................................................................................................... » 823
Giacomo Todeschini
Usury in Christian Middle Ages.
A Reconsideration of the Historiographical Tradition (1949-2010)*
“The Idea of Usury. From Tribal Brotherhood to Universal Otherhood” by
Benjamin Nelson, a well known American sociologist and historian, was published
in 1949. It was an outline of the historical development of biblical (Dt 23)1 forbid-
ding of lending on interest aiming at underlining, on the one hand, the central role
of “usury” in the economic formation of western European society, and, on the
other hand, the opposition between Christian religious ethics and economy that
Nelson, on a weberian basis, supposed to be at the core of the difference between
pre-modern and modern economy. The radical change of the notion described
through the word “usury,” and the transition from a forbidding to the liberalization
of lending on interest would have been the same, in this perspective, than the evo-
lution from the “tribal brotherhood” to (capitalistic) “universal otherhood.” As
Wim Decock2 puts it, the problem would be to discover when “the breakdown of
the Scholastic paradigm” actually happened.
The idea that “usury” and its forbidding were the heart of the medieval “eco-
nomic doctrine,” and at the same time the idea that something like a coherent me-
dieval “economic doctrine” had existed, are however two very typical
interconnected and complementary historical assumptions widely represented by
European economic historians since the beginning of the past century, and firmly
recapitulated in the Fifties and Sixties by historians devoted to explain, on the
whole, the transition from “feudal” to “capitalistic mode of production.”3

* This paper is strictly connected to my until today unpublished presentation in the Harvard
Workshop Christian relation to Jewish Finance in Europe (12th-16th centuries ) (Harvard University, Centre of
Middle Eastern Studies, February 18-19, 2011): “Judas and the Christian common people: Jewish
“usury” and ordinary Christian economic behaviors inthe perspective of the late-medieval building of
an economy ofthebonum commune (14th-15th C.).”
1 See J.NEUSNER, The Mishnah: social perspectives, Leiden-Boston 1999 (Brill), pp. 115 ff., 156 ff.
2 W. DECOCK, Lessius and the Breakdown of the Scholastic Paradigm, in “Journal of the History of
Economic Thought”, 31, 2009, n. 1, pp. 57-78.
3 H. CONTZEN, Geschichte der volkswirtschaftlichen Literatur des Mittelalters Berlin 1869, 18722; F.X.
FUNK, Geschichte des kirchlichen Zinsverbotes, Tübingen 1876; H. GARNIER, De l'idée du juste prix chez les
théologiens et canonistes du moyen âge,Paris 1900; F. SCHAUB, Der Kampf gegen den Zinswucher, ungerechten Preis
und unlauteren Handel im Mittelalter. Von Karl dem Grossen bis Papst Alexander III, Freiburg 1905; O.
SCHILLING, Reichtum und Eigentum in der ethisch-rechtlichen Literatur, Freiburg 1908; H. BREY,
Hochscholastik und 'Geist' des Kapitalismus, Leipzig 1927; A. FANFANI, Le origini dello spirito capitalistico in
Italia, Milano 1933; J.T. NOONAN, The Scholastic Analysis of Usury, Cambridge Mass 1957; J.W.
BALDWIN, The Medieval Theories of the Just Price: Romanists, Canonists and Theologians in the 12. and 13.
Centuries, Philadelphia 1959; E. SALIN, Politische Ökonomie: Geschichte der wirtschaftspolitischen Ideen von
120
GIACOMO TODESCHINI
The entire problem and its historiographical formalization, as well as the incon-
gruities depending on an anachronistic economic sketch of medieval societies
representing them in terms of obligatory opposition between “economic theory”
and “economic practice,” basically depend on the misunderstanding of what, in
fact, the word usura4 and the legal, theological and economic definitions connected
to this word truly signify in the variegated medieval textual universe.
Actually, a close analysis of Christian textual sources normally used to detect
the medieval Christian “doctrinal” attitude on wealth, profit and fertility or sterility
of money, as well as their contextualized reading and comparison, clearly indicates
that a systematic and coherent economic Christian doctrine absolutely allowing or
forbidding specific forms of economic interplay never existed. On the contrary,
what historians between nineteenth and twentieth century have described as the
beginning of an increasingly coherent Christian social philosophy is most likely a
slow and progressive (and so not necessarily coherent) stratification of linguistic
habits aimed, firstly, to describe the religious Christian notions of spiritual fructifi-
cation and final salvation through economic and financial metaphors, and, second-
ly, to represent gain and profit, namely to shape Christian economic interplay, as
inner phases of a more wide social and ecclesiological project founding the recogni-
tion of everyone's economic credibility on the authentication of a faith intended as
factor of social identification and basis of each legitimate kinship. In this perspec-
tive, the medieval representation of the economic interplay is hardly reducible to a
theoretical system shaping economic games as individual relations whose meaning
is readable only in ethical terms.5
The western construction of economic lexica and the western economic repre-
sentational strategies concerning economic objects and relations appear, in a pers-
pective not opposing (in an anachronistic way) “personal” and “impersonal”
economic games, as deeply depending on the political identity and administrative
objectives of the literate minority both writing the economic metaphors or eco-
nomic prescriptions we today read, and concretely governing the monasteries, ab-
beys, bishoprics, castles and cities geographically shaping what we today call the
western medieval market space, namely the markets ruled by the multiple European
powers.6
In other words, the representation of biblical and ancient Jewish economic
space in terms of “brotherhood” contradicted by the commercial and anonymous
namely impersonal (that is to say non-political) modern “otherhood,” on its turn

Platon bis zur Gegenwart, Tübingen-Zürich 1967; J. GILCHRIST, The Church and economic Activity in the
Middle Ages New York 1969 ; R. DE ROOVER, La pensée économique des Scolastiques Montréal-Paris 1971;
R. DE ROOVER, Business, Banking and Economic Thought in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. J.
KIRSHNER, Chicago-London 1974. On these authors and writings see G. TODESCHINI, Il prezzo della
salvezza. Lessici medievali del pensiero economico, Roma 1994 (La Nuova Italia Scientifica).
4 See H. SIEMS, Handel und Wucher im Spiegel frühmittelalterlicher Rechtsquellen, Hannover 1992 (Hahn,
MGH Schriften).
5 G. TODESCHINI, I mercanti e il tempio, Bologna 2002 (Il Mulino); IDEM, Theological Roots of the
Medieval/Modern Merchants’ Self-Representation, inThe Self-Perception of Early Modern Capitalists, M.J. JACOB,
C. SECRETAN eds., New York 2008 (Palgrave), pp.17-46.
6 M. ARNOUX, Vérité et questions des marchés médiévaux, in L'activité marchande sans le marché?, A.
HATCHUEL, O. FAVEREAU, F.AGGERIeds., Paris 2010 (Presses des Mines), pp. 27-40.
121
USURY IN CHRISTIAN MIDDLE AGES
gradually defined by the attenuation of the medieval Christian forbidding of usury,
was and is rooted in an imprecise cognition of the different meanings the medieval
condemnation of usura could assume in different political and historical contexts.
At the same time, the widely diffused historiographical representation of Jewish
medieval economic role as obviously identical everywhere, since the High Middle
Ages, to the specialization of the “Jews” in lending activities7 (a representation al-
ready developed by Sombart’s Die Juden und das Wirtschaftsleben in 1911) matches
with the historiographical representation of Christian condemnation of credit trans-
actions as a condemnation of the “Jewish” notion of “brotherhood,” namely as
condemnation of the distinction made by the Book of Deuteronomy between lend-
ing to brothers and lending to strangers that, in turn, was and is perceived by many
historians as typically Jewish.8
The historiographical idea shaping “usury” as the medieval summary and syn-
onym of “credit,” an idea depending on some common places very typical of 19th
century historiography, is, in other words, based on a stereotyped representation of
Jews and Christians as economic performers: the ones represented as the founders
of an archaic economic “brotherhood,” the others described as the dramatic initia-
tors of modern, universalistic kinship forms opening the way to the “market” after
the crisis of the so-called ethical “Scholastic paradigm.” In this light the absolute
historiographical conviction concerning the existence of a long-lasting and indis-
putable medieval Christian prohibition of lending on interest was and often is the
outcome of an interpretation of western economic rationality as a linear process de-
layed by the (Christian) denial of money’s productivity. The inner meaning of this
denial was however generally interpreted as directly functional to the crossing of
the obstacle represented by a (Jewish) “brotherhood” defining the fruitfulness of
money as a main consequence of the exclusion from “tribal” belonging. Through
the refusal of the abstract notion of money’s fertility the Christian community
would have shaped an idea of productive work activating the capital, an idea cha-
racterizing – in the historiographical perspective well represented by Sapori and de
Roover – the western development of the Christian universalistic “market.”
Actually, at the origin of Nelson’s depiction of Christian rejection of usury it is
possible to see the simplified denotation of “usury” performed by historiography
between nineteenth and the first half of the past century.9 Analogously, Nelson’s
description of the Christian attenuationof this forbidding as a main consequence of

7 See the final counterarguments presented in Wirtschaftsleben der abendländischen Juden. Fragen und
Einschätzungen, ed. M. TOCH, München 2008 (Oldenbourg,). See also IDEM, Jews and Commerce: Modern
Fancies and Medieval Realities, in Il ruolo economico delle minoranze in Europa. Secc. XIII-XVIII. Atti della
XXXI Settimana di Studi, ed. S. CAVACIOCCHI, Firenze 2000, pp.43-58; G. TODESCHINI, Les historiens
juifs en Allemagne et le débat sur l’origine du capitalisme avant 1914, in Écriture de l’histoire et identité juive.
L’Europe ashkénaze XIXe-XXe siècle, D. BECHTEL, E. PATLAGEAN, J.-C. SZUREK, P. ZAWADZKI eds.,
Paris 2003 (Les Belles Lettres), pp. 209-228 ; IDEM, Christian Perceptions of Jewish Economic Activity in the
Middle Ages,” in Wirtschaftsgeschichte der mittelalterlichen Juden. Fragen und Einschätzungen, cit.,pp. 1-16.
8 F. RAPHAEL, Judaïsme et capitalisme. Essai sur la controverse entre Max Weber et Werner Sombart,
Paris 1982 (Presses Universitaires de France).
9 I discussed this historiographical line in a book published seventeen years ago: G. TODESCHINI,
Il prezzo della salvezza, cit. See the excellent survey by H. SIEMS, Handel und Wucher im Spiegel
fru�hmittelalterlicher Rechtsquellen, Hannover 1992 (Hahn, MGH Schriften).
122
GIACOMO TODESCHINI
the wide medieval diffusionof a notionof holy war (exemplified, according to Nel-
son, by the circulation of a dictum of Ambrose translating the idea of “right war” in
economic terms: it is licit to lend on interest to the enemies, ubi ius belli ibi ius usu-
rae)10 appears today as an argumentproduced by a form of historical reasoning sub-
stantially unconcerned by the different linguistic structure of the sources. This
simplifying logic is primarily rooted in a reading of the sources establishing the im-
probable continuity of the meaning of usura from Patristic Age until the thirteenth
century, as well as the improbable semantic homogeneity of this concept in very
different textual fields as those defined by the writings of theologians like Clemens
of Alexandria and Ambrose and Augustine, or Robert de Courçon and Thomas
Aquinas, ecclesiastical polemists as Hincmar of Reims and Humbert of Silvacandi-
da, canonists and civil lawyers like Gratian and Etienne de Tournai, or Henry of
Susa, Accursius and Bartolo of Sassoferrato, local jurists or penitential authorities as
Thomas of Chobham and Raymond of Peñafort, each one of them representing,
on the contrary, a different and specific namely discontinuous phase of the histori-
cal development of what we today tend to roughly imagine as the beginning of
western economic thought.
Actually, if we closely consider these different authors, or, to be more exact,
these very different written sources and their own specific vocabulary, it becomes
immediately clear, firstly, that the forbidding of “usury” had in different contexts
very different meanings, secondly that “usury” never was intended as an automatic
synonym of “credit,” and, thirdly, that the relation between debtors and creditors
was changing its sense according to the social and institutional role of debtors and
creditors. At the same time the abstract problem of the productivity or sterility of
money, so frequently described by historiography, from Benjamin Nelson to Jac-
ques Le Goff until the systematic description of the sources by Odd Langholm, as
the theoretical fundament of the medieval forbidding of usury,11 played a minor
role in the linguistic definitions and regulations of the real core of late medieval
economic discourse: the political managing of the violence implicit in social ex-
change as it was mirrored in the economic games.12 Actually a clear understanding
of what Scholastics intended to say through their reasoning on the fact that pecunia
can not bear as the pecus does, should be connected to their variegated representa-
tion of money as sign of value, as symbol of power, as metallic coin. From the late-
medieval point of view, as well as in other pre-modern economic perceptions of
money,13 it was perfectly clear that the measure of value expressed through the ab-
stract namely mathematical notion of money was neatly different both from money
symbolizing the power of a ruler and from money reified by coins. Obviously this

10 AMBROSIUS, De Tobia 15, 51; Decretum Gratiani C. XIV q. 3 c. 12, ed. A. FRIEDBERG, Leipzig
1879 (Tauchnitz), 738.
11 The historiographical idea of a medieval “doctrine” (directly rooted in Aristotle’s writings)
focussed on the “sterility of money” is a sort of historiographical dogma, already present in MAX
WEBER’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904-5), New York 2003 (Dover), p. 82. This
assumption generally based on a simplified reading of some Thomas Aquinas’ passages, is finally
repeated by O. LANGHOLM, Economics in Medieval Schools. Wealth, Exchange, Value, Money and Usury
According to the Paris Theological Tradition, 1200-1350, Leiden 1992 (Brill.)
12 R.DUMOUCHEL-J.-P. DUPUY, L’enfer des choses. René Girard et la logique de l’économie, Paris 1979 (Seuil).
13 See M. GODELIER, L’enigme du don, Paris 1996 (Fayard), pp. 39 ff.
123
USURY IN CHRISTIAN MIDDLE AGES
third type of “money” could not be imagined as bearing a fruit (for the same reason
than each artificial object); on the contrary money as an idealization of value pos-
sessed and used by specific economic performers could be activated and so become
fertile through their competence: in other words when money was not perceived as
an unanimated metallic thing but as a sign of possible value managed by well identi-
fiable entrepreneurs, its nature could appear as full of potential fruits, a capitale and
not simply a sors.14
It is possible indeed to distinguish in the textual and economic Christian history
of usura, both as economic notion and linguistic definition of a practice hardly ever
so clear as often historians believed, three approximate stages corresponding to the
patristic age, to the age of formation of Canon Law, between seventh and twelfth
century, and finally to the development of a legal definition of credit transactions,
after the thirteenth century. A main problem in the study of these different percep-
tions and descriptions of what in any case is deceptively called usurais caused by the
fact that historiography rarely has considered the relation between these phases of
meaning. So, we can find some important studies on the economic language of the
Fathers, Clemens of Alexandria or Ambrose of Milan or Augustine, and on the
other side some clever analysis of the conflicting economic interplay between eccle-
siastic and imperial powers summed up by the key-word simony (simonia).15 At the
same time, the textual flow developed after 1140, namely the first codification of
Canon law, about the illicitness of the activities performed by the so-called usurarius
manifestus, the public seller of money, was considered by many scholars specialized
in the study of Canon Law only for the period going from the first commentators
of Gratian’s Decretum to the redaction of the second part of Canon Law, the De-
cretals of Gregory the Ninth and its first commentaries (as it is possible to see in
the first essays by Giuseppe Salvioli and Franz Schaub as well as in the articles and
books by Terence McLaughlin and John Baldwin and, more recently, Harald
Siems.) Finally the so-called Scholastic doctrine on usury and just price was studied
with subtlety by many well known scholars and synthesized in many huge books
from the Studien by Wilhelm Endemann in the eighties of the nineteenth century to
the Scholastic Analysis of Usury (1957) by John Thomas Noonan in the fifties of the
last century, until Raymond De Roover’s La pensée èconomique des Scholastiques (1971),
and lastly Odd Langholm’s Economics in Medieval Schools (1992).16 Especially this last
kind of studies seems to be on the one hand totally founded on the presumption
that Christian representations of the economic interplay after the beginning of the
13th century are definitely rooted in the forbidding of “usury.” On the other hand,
these studies are absolutely pervaded by the idea that the last two centuries of the
medieval era are the beginning of an ambiguous new way of economic thinking:

14 See J. KAYE, Economy and Nature in the Fourteenth Century: Money, Market Exchange, and the
Emergence of Scientific Thought, Cambridge 1998 (Cambridge University Press); G. CECCARELLI, Risky
Business: Theological and Canonical Thought on Insurance from the Thirteenth to the Seventeenth Century, in
“Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies”, 31, 2001, n. 3, pp. 607-658; G. TODESCHINI,
Franciscan Wealth. From Voluntary Poverty to Market Society, New York 2009 (St. Bonaventure University.)
15 See now J.-M. SALAMITO, Christianisme antique et économie: raisons et modalités d’une rencontre
historique, in “Antiquité tardive”, 14, 2006, pp. 27-37.
16 A commentedbibliography in G.TODESCHINI, Il prezzo della salvezza, cit., pp. 39-113.
124
GIACOMO TODESCHINI
that, in fact, as Joseph Schumpeter wrote around fifty years ago, the fundament of
each future economic science “is all in the Scholastics.”17
The absence of a scholarly attention for the relation between the different
meanings assumed in different periods by the word-concept usura, as well as by the
universe of economic practice it could indicate, is verisimilarly at the origin of a sys-
tematic misunderstanding of what credit relations could actually signify in different
political contexts like, for example, the Carolingian empire, late medieval kingdoms
or Italian cities between 12th and 13th centuries. The categorical assumption of the
forbidding of usury as fil rouge connecting these and others institutional realities
made impossible on the whole to see the evidence of a distinction, basic in Canon
Law since twelfth century, between credit performed by ecclesiastic institution or
other public subjects, and selling of money performed by “private” subjects, namely
unauthorized individuals. With the end of the myth of modern free market as arriv-
al point of the mythological history of the market written by neo-liberist econo-
mists in terms of progressive edification of a perfect independence of economy
from politics and institutional powers and choices, the late-medieval and early
modern economic discourse can finally be considered through a more limpid and
less ideological lens.18
In fact, the idea that licit and socially useful forms of credit were linked to the
institutional visibility of the entrepreneurs namely to their participation in the polit-
ic and social networks shaping the so-called bonum commune was widely circulated by
highly authoritative textual tools like conciliar canons and Decretals. Licit forms of
credit were at this point well separated from usurious contracts, and, although his-
toriography rarely admits it, the system of exceptions gradually introduced by ca-
nonists to define legal types of credit contracts became a precise economic strategy
aimed at facilitating the development of specific economic behaviors assumed as a-
priori honorable. From the middle of the 13th century this kind of exceptions com-
posed a system of economic rules in itself more clear and understandable than the
forbidding of a practice, “usury,” whose traditional ambiguous meaning appeared
now, in the light of a credit life manifestlydetermining the fiscal revenues of Sacred
powers such as the Holy See, even more blurred. Matrimonial credit deriving from
the retarded payment of a dowry, commercial credit in the form of society or com-
menda, commerce of public and ecclesiastical rents, selling on credit when this busi-
ness was formalized as connected to the politically significant economic activities of
relevant merchant-bankers: these and others formalizations became typical repre-
sentations of the lay credit forms recognized as an ordinary way of economic ad-
ministration in consequence of the public importance of the subjects performing

17 J. SCHUMPETER, History of Economic Analysis, London 1986 [1954] (Routledge), p. 294.
18 D.C. NORTH, The rise of the western world: a new economic history, Cambridge 1973 (Cambridge
University Press); IDEM, Structure and Change in Economic History, New York 1981 (Norton); IDEM,
Institutions, institutional change, and economic performance, Cambridge 1990 (Cambridge University Press); D.
C. NORTH, JOHN JOSEPH WALLIS, BARRY R. WEINGAST, Violence and Social Orders: a Conceptual
Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History, Cambridge 2009 (Cambridge University Press); M.
GRANOVETTER, Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness, in “American Journal of
Sociology”,91, 1985, pp. 481-510; V.ZELIZER, The Social Meaning of Money: Pin Money, Paychecks, Poor
Relief, and Other Currencies, New York 1994 (Basic Books).