An Essay on Mediæval Economic Teaching

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 mediæval 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 mediæval 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 mediæval 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 mediæval 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, 'mediæval, economic, teaching.'

Section 2.--Explanation of the Title

§ 1. Mediæval.

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. 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 Encyclopædia 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 Encyclopædia 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.'

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.' 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, Roscher, and Cossa. Haney, in his History of Economic Thought, says: 'It seems more nearly true to regard the years about 1500 as marking the end of mediæval 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 mediævalism, emerged and were dominant.'

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 mediæval 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.'

§ 2. Economic.

It must be clearly understood that the political economy of the mediævals 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.' '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.' The conception of economic laws, in the modern sense, was quite foreign to the mediæval 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.

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