Economics in the Medieval Schools

Book excerpt: From the early thirteenth century, social change and the emergence of a commercial economy caused theologians of the main scholastic tradition associated with the University of Paris to devote a small but significant part of their attention to economic problems. Their primary purpose was to guide conduct, but a concern with economic ethics acted as a stimulant to the development of predictive theory as well. This book is a comprehensive survey of this tradition of economic thought until its decline in the mid-fourteenth century. The study focuses on exchange and value, money and usury, on fraud, on duress and economic freedom. The strong link between economic theory and the theory of property is accentuated. It is based partly on familiar printed sources, but a large body of previously unexplored manuscript sources are examined as well. New interpretations are offered on several points of doctrine. Its scope and the extent of the sources examined make this book an indispensable reference work for future research in medieval and early modern economic thought.