Religion and the rise of capitalism

by R. H. Tawney

[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., 2^a 2^æ, 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.