An Essay on Mediaeval Economic Teaching Part 1

An Essay on Mediaeval Economic Teaching.

by George O'Brien.

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY

SECTION 1.--AIM AND SCOPE OF THE ESSAY

It is the aim of this essay to examine and present in as concise a form as possible the principles and rules which guided and regulated men in their economic and social relations during the period known as the Middle Ages. The failure of the teaching of the so-called orthodox or cla.s.sical political economists to bring peace and security to society has caused those interested in social and economic problems to inquire with ever-increasing anxiety into the economic teaching which the orthodox economy replaced; and this inquiry has revealed that each system of economic thought that has from time to time been accepted can be properly understood only by a knowledge of the earlier system out of which it grew. A process of historical inquiry of this kind leads one ultimately to the Middle Ages, and it is certainly not too much to say that no study of modern European economic thought can be complete or satisfactory unless it is based upon a knowledge of the economic teaching which was accepted in mediaeval Europe. Therefore, while many will deny that the economic teaching of that period is deserving of approval, or that it is capable of being applied to the conditions of the present day, none will deny that it is worthy of careful and impartial investigation.

There is thus a demand for information upon the subject dealt with in this essay. On the other hand, the supply of such information in the English language is extremely limited. The books, such as Ingram's _History of Political Economy_ and Haney's _History of Economic Thought_, which deal with the whole of economic history, necessarily devote but a few pages to the Middle Ages. Ashley's _Economic History_ contains two excellent chapters dealing with the Canonist teaching; but, while these chapters contain a ma.s.s of most valuable information on particular branches of the mediaeval doctrines, they do not perhaps sufficiently indicate the relation between them, nor do they lay sufficient emphasis upon the fundamental philosophical principles out of which the whole system sprang. One cannot sufficiently acknowledge the debt which English students are under to Sir William Ashley for his examination of mediaeval opinion on economic matters; his book is frequently and gratefully cited as an authority in the following pages; but it is undeniable that his treatment of the subject suffers somewhat on account of its being introduced but incidentally into a work dealing mainly with English economic practice. Dr. Cunningham has also made many valuable contributions to particular aspects of the subject; and there have also been published, princ.i.p.ally in Catholic periodicals, many important monographs on special points; but so far there has not appeared in English any treatise, which is devoted exclusively to mediaeval economic opinion and attempts to treat the whole subject completely. It is this want in our economic literature that has tempted the author to publish the present essay, although he is fully aware of its many defects.

It is necessary, in the first place, to indicate precisely the extent of the subject with which we propose to deal; and with this end in view to give a definition of the three words, '_mediaeval, economic, teaching_.'

SECTION 2.--EXPLANATION OF THE t.i.tLE

-- 1. _Mediaeval_.

Ingram, in his well-known book on economic history, following the opinion of Comte, refuses to consider the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as part of the Middle Ages.[1] We intend, however, to treat of economic teaching up to the end of the fifteenth century. The best modern judges are agreed that the term Middle Ages must not be given a hard-and-fast meaning, but that it is capable of bearing a very elastic interpretation. The definition given in the _Catholic Encyclopaedia_ is: 'a term commonly used to designate that period of European history between the Fall of the Roman Empire and about the middle of the fifteenth century. The precise dates of the beginning, culmination, and end of the Middle Ages are more or less arbitrarily a.s.sumed according to the point of view adopted.' The eleventh edition of the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ contains a similar opinion: 'This name is commonly given to that period of European history which lies between what are known as ancient and modern times, and which has generally been considered as extending from about the middle of the fifth to about the middle of the fifteenth centuries. The two dates adopted in old text-books were 476 and 1453, from the setting aside of the last emperor of the west until the fall of Constantinople. In reality it is impossible to fix any exact dates for the opening and close of such a period.'

[Footnote 1: _History of Political Economy_, p. 35.]

We are therefore justified in considering the fifteenth century as comprised hi the Middle Ages. This is especially so in the domain of economic theory. In actual practice the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries may have presented the appearance rather of the first stage of a new than of the last stage of an old era. This is Ingram's view.

However true this may be of practice, it is not at all true of theory, which, as we shall see, continued to be entirely based on the writings of an author of the thirteenth century. Ingram admits this incidentally: 'During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the Catholic-feudal system was breaking down by the mutual conflicts of its own official members, while the const.i.tuent elements of a new order were rising beneath it. The movements of this phase can scarcely be said to find an echo in any contemporary economic literature.'[1]

We need not therefore apologise further for including a consideration of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in our investigations as to the economic teaching of the Middle Ages. We are supported in doing so by such excellent authorities as Jourdain,[2] Roscher,[3] and Cossa.[4] Haney, in his _History of Economic Thought_,[5] says: 'It seems more nearly true to regard the years about 1500 as marking the end of mediaeval times.... On large lines, and from the viewpoint of systems of thought rather than systems of industry, the Middle Ages may with profit be divided into two periods. From 400 down to 1200, or shortly thereafter, const.i.tutes the first. During these years Christian theology opposed Roman inst.i.tutions, and Germanic customs were superposed, until through action and reaction all were blended.

This was the reconstruction; it was the "stormy struggle" to found a new ecclesiastical and civil system. From 1200 on to 1500 the world of thought settled to its level. Feudalism and scholasticism, the corner-stones of mediaevalism, emerged and were dominant.'

[Footnote 1: _Op. cit._, p. 35.]

[Footnote 2: _Memoires sur les commencements de l'economie politique dans les ecoles du moyen age_, Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, vol. 28.]

[Footnote 3: _Geschichte zur National-okonomik in Deutschland_.]

[Footnote 4: _Introduction to the Study of Political Economy_.]

[Footnote 5: P. 70.]

We shall not continue the study further than the beginning of the sixteenth century. It is true that, if we were to refer to several sixteenth-century authors, we should be in possession of a very highly developed and detailed ma.s.s of teaching on many points which earlier authors left to some extent obscure. We deliberately refrain nevertheless from doing so, because the whole nature of the sixteenth-century literature was different from that of the fourteenth and fifteenth; the early years of the sixteenth century witnessed the abrogation of the central authority which was a basic condition of the success of the mediaeval system; and the same period also witnessed 'radical economic changes, reacting more and more on the scholastic doctrines, which found fewer and fewer defenders in their original form.'[1]

[Footnote 1: Cossa, _op. cit._, p. 151. Ashley warns us that 'we must be careful not to interpret the writers of the fifteenth century by the writers of the seventeenth' (_Economic History_, vol. i. pt. ii.

p. 387). These later writers sometimes contain historical accounts of controversies in previous centuries, and are relevant on this account.]

-- 2. _Economic_.

It must be clearly understood that the political economy of the mediaevals was not a science, like modern political economy, but an art. 'It is a branch of the virtue of prudence; it is half-way between morality, which regulates the conduct of the individual, and politics, which regulates the conduct of the sovereign. It is the morality of the family or of the head of the family, from the point of view of the good administration of the patrimony, just as politics is the morality of the sovereign, from the point of view of the good government of the State. There is as yet no question of economic laws in the sense of historical and descriptive laws; and political economy, not yet existing in the form of a science, is not more than a branch of that great tree which is called ethics, or the art of living well.'[1] 'The doctrine of the canon law,' says Sir William Ashley, 'differed from modern economics in being an art rather than a science. It was a body of rules and prescriptions as to conduct, rather than of conclusions as to fact. All art indeed in this sense rests on science; but the science on which the canonist doctrine rested was theology. Theology, or rather that branch of it which we may call Christian ethics, laid down certain principles of right and wrong in the economic sphere; and it was the work of the canonists to apply them to specific transactions and to p.r.o.nounce judgment as to their permissibility.'[2]

The conception of economic laws, in the modern sense, was quite foreign to the mediaeval treatment of the subject. It was only in the middle of the fourteenth century that anything approaching a scientific examination of the phenomena of economic life appeared, and that was only in relation to a particular subject, namely, the doctrine of money.[3]

[Footnote 1: Rambaud, _Histoire des Doctrines economiques_, p. 39. 'It is evident that a household is a mean between the individual and the city or Kingdom, since just as the individual is part of the household, so is the household part of the city or Kingdom, and therefore, just as prudence commonly so called which governs the individual is distinct from political prudence, so must domestic prudence (oeconomica) be distinct from both. Riches are related to domestic prudence, not as its last end, but as its instrument. On the other hand, the end of political prudence is a good life in general as regards the conduct of the household. In _Ethics_ i. the philosopher speaks of riches as the end of political prudence, by way of example, and in accordance with the opinion of many.' Aquinas, _Summa II_. ii.

50. 3, and see _Sent. III_. x.x.xiii. 3 and 4. 'Practica quidem scientia est, quae recte vivendi modum ac disciplinae formam secundum virtutum inst.i.tutionem disponit. Et haec dividitur in tres, scilicet: primo ethicam, id est moralem; et secundo oeconomicam, id est dispensativam; et tertio politicam, id est civilem' (Vincent de Beauvais, _Speculum_, VII. i. 2).]

[Footnote 2: _Op. cit._, vol. i. part. ii. p. 379.]

[Footnote 3: Rambaud, _op. cit._, p. 83; Ingram, _op. cit._, p. 36. So marked was the contrast between the mediaeval and modern conceptions of economics that the appearance of this one treatise has been said by one high authority to have been the signal of the dawn of the Renaissance (Espinas, _Histoire des Doctrines economiques_, p. 110).]

To say that the mediaeval method of approaching economic problems was fundamentally different from the modern, is not in any sense to be taken as indicating disapproval of the former. On the contrary, it is the general opinion to-day that the so-called cla.s.sical treatment of economics has proved disastrous in its application to real life, and that future generations will witness a retreat to the earlier position. The cla.s.sical economists committed the cardinal error of subordinating man to wealth, and consumption to production. In their attempt to preserve symmetry and order in their generalisations they constructed a weird creature, the economic man, who never existed, and never could exist. The mediaevals made no such mistake. They insisted that all production and gain which did not lead to the good of man was not alone wasteful, but positively evil; and that man was infinitely more important than wealth. When he exclaims that 'Production is on account of man, not man of production,' Antoninus of Florence sums up in a few words the whole view-point of his age.[1] 'Consumption,'

according to Dr. Cunningham, 'was the aspect of human nature which attracted most attention.... Regulating consumption wisely was the chief practical problem in mediaeval economics.'[2] The great practical benefits of such a treatment of the problems relating to the acquisition and enjoyment of material wealth must be obvious to every one who is familiar with the condition of the world after a century of cla.s.sical political economy. 'To subordinate the economic order to the social order, to submit the industrial activity of man to the consideration of the final and general end of his whole being, is a principle which must exert on every department of the science of wealth, an influence easy to understand. Economic laws are the codification of the material activity of a sort of _h.o.m.o economicus_; of a being, who, having no end in view but wealth, produces all he can, distributes his produce in the way that suits him best, and consumes as much as he can. Self interest alone dictates his conduct.'[3] Economics, far from being a science whose highest aim was to evolve a series of abstractions, was a practical guide to the conduct of everyday affairs.[4] 'The pre-eminence of morality in the domain of economics const.i.tutes at the same time the distinctive feature, the particular merit, and the great teaching of the economic lessons of this period.'[5]

[Footnote 1: _Irish Theological Quarterly_, vol. vii. p. 151.]

[Footnote 2: _Christianity and Economic Science_, p. 10.]

[Footnote 3: Brants, _Les Theories economiques aux xiii^{e} et xii^{e} siecles, p_. 34.]

[Footnote 4: Gide and Rist, _History of Economic Doctrines_, Eng.

trans., p. 110.]

[Footnote 5: Brants, _op. cit._, p. 9.]

Dr. Cunningham draws attention to the fact that the existence of such a universally received code of economic morality was largely due to the comparative simplicity of the mediaeval social structure, where the _relations of persons_ were all important, in comparison with the modern order, where the _exchange of things_ is the dominant factor.

He further draws attention to the changes which affected the whole const.i.tution of society in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and proceeds: 'These changes had a very important bearing on all questions of commercial morality; so long as economic dealings were based on a system of personal relationships they all bore an implied moral character. To supply a bad article was morally wrong, to demand excessive payment for goods or for labour was extortion, and the right or wrong of every transaction was easily understood.'[1] The application of ethics to economic transactions was rendered possible by the existence of one universally recognised code of morality, and the presence of one universally accepted moral teacher. 'In the thirteenth century, the ecclesiastical organisation gave a unity to the social structure throughout the whole of Western Europe; over the area in which the Pope was recognised as the spiritual and the Emperor as the temporal vicar of G.o.d, political and racial differences were relatively unimportant. For economic purposes it is scarcely necessary to distinguish different countries from one another in the thirteenth century, for there were fewer barriers to social intercourse within the limits of Christendom than there are to-day.... Similar ecclesiastical canons, and similar laws prevailed over large areas, where very different admixtures of civil and barbaric laws were in vogue. Christendom, though broken into so many fragments politically, was one organised society for all the purposes of economic life, because there was such free intercommunication between its parts.'[2]

'There were three great threads,' we read later in the same book, 'which ran through the whole social system of Christendom. First of all there was a common religious life, with the powerful weapons of spiritual censure and excommunication which it placed in the hands of the clergy, so that they were able to enforce the line of policy which Rome approved. Then there was the great judicial system of canon law, a common code with similar tribunals for the whole of Western Christendom, dealing not merely with strictly ecclesiastical affairs, but with many matters that we should regard as economic, such as questions of commercial morality, and also with social welfare as affected by the law of marriage and the disposition of property by will....'[3] 'To the influence of Christianity as a moral doctrine,'

says Dr. Ingram, 'was added that of the Church as an organisation, charged with the application of the doctrine to men's daily transactions. Besides the teaching of the sacred books there was a ma.s.s of ecclesiastical legislation providing specific prescriptions for the conduct of the faithful. And this legislation dealt with the economic as well as with other provinces of social activity.'[4]

[Footnote 1: _Growth of English Industry and Commerce_, vol. i. p.

465.]

[Footnote 2: Cunningham, _Western Civilisation_, vol. ii. pp. 2-3.]

[Footnote 3: _Ibid._, p. 67.]

[Footnote 4: _Op. cit._, p. 27.]

The teaching of the mediaeval Church, therefore, on economic affairs was but the application to particular facts and cases of its general moral teaching. The suggestion, so often put forward by so-called Christian socialists, that Christianity was the exponent of a special social theory of its own, is unfounded. The direct opposite would be nearer the truth. Far from concerning itself with the outward forms of the political or economic structure, Christianity concentrated its attention on the conduct of the individual. If Christianity can be said to have possessed any distinctive social theory, it was intense individualism. 'Christianity brought, from the point of view of morals, an altogether new force by the distinctly individual and personal character of its precepts. Duty, vice or virtue, eternal punishment--all are marked with the most individualist imprint that can be imagined. No social or political theory appeared, because it was through the individual that society was to be regenerated....

We can say with truth that there is not any Christian political economy--in the sense in which there is a Christian morality or a Christian dogma--any more than there is a Christian physic or a Christian medicine.'[1] In seeking to learn Christian teaching of the Middle Ages on economic matters, we must therefore not look for special economic treatises in the modern sense, but seek our principles in the works dealing with general morality, in the Canon Law, and in the commentaries on the Civil Law. 'We find the first worked out economic theory for the whole Catholic world in the _Corpus Juris Canonici_, that product of mediaeval science in which for so many centuries theology, jurisprudence, philosophy, and politics were treated....'[2]

[Footnote 1: Rambaud, _op. cit._, pp. 34-5; Cunningham, _Western Civilisation_, vol. ii. p. 8.]

[Footnote 2: Roscher, _op. cit._, p. 5. It must not be concluded that all the opinions expressed by the theologians and lawyers were necessarily the official teaching of the Church. Brants says: 'It is not our intention to attribute to the Church all the opinions of this period; certainly the spirit of the Church dominated the great majority of the writers, but one must not conclude from this that all their writings are ent.i.tled to rank as doctrinal teaching' (_Op.

cit._, p. 6).]

There is not to be found in the writers of the early Middle Ages, that is to say from the eighth to the thirteenth centuries, a trace of any attention given to what we at the present day would designate economic questions. Usury was condemned by the decrees of several councils, but the reasons of this prohibition were not given, nor was the question made the subject of any dialectical controversy; commerce was so undeveloped as to escape the attention of those who sought to guide the people in their daily life; and money was accepted as the inevitable instrument of exchange, without any discussion of its origin or the laws which regulated it.