[6] The best contemporary picture of the trade of Antwerp is that of L. Guicciardini, Descrittione di tutti i Paesi Bassi (1567), of which part is reprinted in a French translation in Tawney and Power, Tudor Economic Documents, vol. iii, pp. 149-173. The best modern accounts of Antwerp are given by Pirenne, Histoire de Belgique, vol. ii, pp. 399-403, and vol. iii, pp. 259-72; Ehrenberg, Das Zeitalter der Fugger, vol. ii, pp. 3-68; and J. A. Goris, Étude sur les Colonies Marchandes Méridionales à Anvers de 1488 à 1567 (1925).
[7] The Meutings had opened a branch in Antwerp in 1479, the Hochstetters in 1486, the Fuggers in 1508, the Welsers in 1509 (Pirenne, op. cit., vol. iii, p. 261).
[8] Pirenne, op. cit., vol. iii, pp. 273-6.
[9] Ehrenberg, op. cit., vol. ii, pp. 7-8.
[10] A short account of international financial relations in the sixteenth century will be found in my introduction to Thomas Wilson’s Discourse upon Usury, 1925, pp. 60-86.
[11] Erasmus, Adagia; see also The Complaint of Peace.
[12] For the Fuggers, see Ehrenberg, op. cit., vol. i, pp. 85-186, and for the other German firms mentioned, ibid., pp. 187-269.
[13] See Goris, op. cit., pp. 510-45, where the reply of the Paris theologians is printed in full; and Ehrenberg, op. cit., vol. ii, pp. 18, 21. For Bellarmin, see Goris, op. cit., pp. 551-2. A curious illustration of the manner in which it was still thought necessary in the later sixteenth century, and in Protestant England, to reconcile economic policy with canonist doctrine, will be found in S.P.D. Eliz., vol. lxxv, no. 54 (printed in Tawney and Power, Tudor Economic Documents, vol. iii, pp. 359-70). The writer, who is urging the repeal of the Act of 1552 forbidding all interest whatever, cites Aquinas and Hostiensis to prove that “trewe and unfayned interest” is not to be condemned as usury.
[14] Ashley, Economic History, 1893, vol. i, pt. ii, pp. 442-3.
[15] Bodin, La Response de Jean Bodin aux Paradoxes de Malestroit touchant l’enchérissement de toutes choses et le moyen d’y remédier.