FONDAZIONE

ISTITUTO INTERNAZIONALE DI STORIA ECONOMICA “F. DATINI”

PRATO

RELIGIONE E ISTITUZIONI RELIGIOSE

NELL’ECONOMIA EUROPEA. 1000-1800

RELIGION AND RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS

IN THE EUROPEAN ECONOMY. 1000-1800

Atti della “Quarantatreesima Settimana di Studi”

8-12 maggio 2011

a cura di Francesco Ammannati

Firenze University Press

2012
 INDICE

Domenica 8 maggio – APERTURA DEI LAVORI

ERIK AERTS, La religione nell’economia. L’economia nella religione.
Europa 1000-1800 ........................................................................................................... pag. 3

Lunedì 9 maggio – TRA DOTTRINA E PRATICA DELLA VITA QUOTIDIANA: FINANZA

& CAPITALE / BETWEEN DOCTRINE AND PRACTICE OF EVERYDAY LIFE: FINANCE & CAPITAL

Relazioni
GIACOMO TODESCHINI, Usury in Christian Middle Ages. A Reconsideration
of the Historiographical Tradition (1949-2010) ..........................................................pag. 119
MARKUS A. DENZEL, The Curial Payments System of the Late Middle Ages
and the Sixteenth Century: Between Doctrine and Practice of Everyday Life ....... » 131
JOHN MUNRO, Usury, Calvinism and Credit in Protestant England:
from the Sixteenth Century to the Industrial Revolution........................................... » 155
JUAN M. CARRETERO ZAMORA, Les Collectories de la Monarchie Hispanique et
la banque Italienne aux XVIe-XVIIe siècles (1506-1614) ........................................... » 185

Comunicazioni
JORDI MORELLÓ BAGET, Searching the “Veros Valores” of Some Religious
Centres of Barcelona (About the Ecclesiastical Subsidy of 1443) ...........................pag. 207
DAVID KUSMAN, Le rôle de l’Église comme institution dans la contractualisation
des opérations de crédit en Brabant, XIIIe-XVe siècle................................................ » 227

Martedì 10 maggio – TRA DOTTRINA E PRATICA DELLA VITA QUOTIDIANA: FINANZA

& CAPITALE / BETWEEN DOCTRINE AND PRACTICE OF EVERYDAY LIFE: FINANCE & CAPITAL

Comunicazioni
MAREK S�O�, Die Rolle der kirchlichen Institutionen im Geldumlauf zwischen Stadt
und Umland. Das Herzogtum Breslau im Spätmittelalter .......................................... pag. 249
ELISA SOLDANI, DANIEL DURAN I DUELT, Religion, Warfare and Business
in Fifteenth-Century Rhodes.......................................................................................... » 257
GIOVANNI CECCARELLI, Concezioni economiche dell’Occidente cristiano
alla fine del medioevo: fonti e materiali inediti ............................................................ » 271
MORITZ ISENMANN, The Administration of the Papal Funded Debt:
Structural Deficiencies and Institutional Reforms ...................................................... » 281
FABIENNE HENRYOT, La quête franciscaine aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles :
théories et pratiques d’une économie de l’Evangile .................................................... » 293
PRESTON PERLUSS, From Alms to Investments: Monastic Credit Structures
in 17th and 18th Century Paris......................................................................................... » 307
VIII INDICE

Martedì 10 maggio – RELIGIONE E SVILUPPO ECONOMICO / RELIGION AND ECONOMIC

DEVELOPMENT

Relazioni
RICHARD D. ORAM, Breaking New Ground: the Monastic Orders and Economic
Development along the Northern European Periphery c.1070 to c.1300 ...............pag. 331
STEPHANE BOISSELLIER, Capitaux ecclésiastiques, croissance économique
et circuits épiscopaux dans la formation du Portugal, XIe-XIIIe siècles................... » 345
MURAT ÇIZAKÇA Long Term Causes of Decline of the
Ottoman/Islamic Economies ........................................................................................ » 361
CÁTIA ANTUNES, FILIPA RIBEIRO DA SILVA, In Nomine Domini et In Nomine
Rex Regis: Inquisition, Persecution and Royal Finances in Portugal, 1580-1715 .... » 377

Mercoledì 11 maggio – RELIGIONE E SVILUPPO ECONOMICO / RELIGION AND ECONOMIC

DEVELOPMENT

Relazioni
MONICA MARTINAT, Un modello cattolico di sviluppo economico? La riflessione
teorica e la pratica degli scambi nell’Europa mediterranea (secc. XVI-XVIII) .......pag. 413
THIJS LAMBRECHT, “Nine Protestants Are to Be Esteemed Worth Ten Catholics.”
Representing Religion, Labour and Economic Performance in Pre-Industrial Europe
c. 1650-c. 1800 .................................................................................................................. » 431

Comunicazioni
HANNELORE PEPKE-DURIX, L’économie monastique bourguignonne en quête
d'organisation rationnelle (XIIe-XVe siècles) ................................................................pag. 451
ANTONIO JOSÉ MIRA JÓDAR, La propiedad agraria eclesiástica en Valencia
en la baja Edad Media. Rentas, gestión de la tierra y explotación campesina.......... » 465
GUIDO ALFANI, Reformation, “Counter-reformation” and Economic Development
from the Point of View of Godparenthood: an Anomaly?
(Italy and Europe, 14th-19th Centuries).......................................................................... » 477
LOREDANA PANARITI, “Non si acquista la scienza se non si studia”.
La componente ebraica nel sistema assicurativo triestino .......................................... » 491
MARIA GRAZIA D’AMELIO, MANUEL VAQUERO PIÑEIRO, Devozione e risorse monetarie:
aspetti del finanziamento degli edifici religiosi tra Medioevo e età Moderna .......... » 499
ROMINA TSAKIRI, L’istituzione della cessione dei monasteri ortodossi nella Creta
dei secoli XVI e XVII ed il suo contributo alle attività economiche
degli ambienti circostanti ................................................................................................ » 511
SAMIA CHERGUI, Institutions religieuses des habûs : nature, fonctionnement et impact
sur les investissements immobiliers en Alger ottomane ............................................. » 529
MANON VAN DER HEIJDEN, ELISE VAN NEDERVEEN MEERKERK, ARIADNE SCHMIDT,
Religion, Economic Development and Women’s Agency in the Dutch Republic .. » 543
MARIA CIE�LA, Between Religious Law and Practice. The Role of Jewish Communities
in the Development of Town's Economy in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in
the 17th and 18th Centuries.............................................................................................. » 563
MARÍA DOLORES MUÑOZ DUEÑAS, La formación de un discurso secularizado sobre el
sistema económico de la Iglesia: la cuestión del diezmo en Córdoba, 1750-1820 .. » 575
NICOLAS LYON-CAEN, Les jansénistes, le commerce et l’argent au 18e siècle ........ » 585
INDICE
IX

Giovedì 12 maggio – RELIGIONE E CONSUMI / RELIGION AND CONSUMPTION

Relazioni
PHILIP SLAVIN, Church and Food Provisioning in Late-Medieval England, 1250-1450:
Production Costs, Markets and the Decline of Direct Demesne Management...... pag. 597

Comunicazioni
TIMOTHY P. NEWFIELD, Epizootics and the Consumption of Diseased Meat
in the Middle Ages..........................................................................................................pag. 619
LAUREANO M. RUBIO PÉREZ, OSCAR FERNÁNDEZ ALVAREZ, Religion, Culture
and Eating: Believes, Consumption Ways and Collective Practices in the Northwest of
Spain from the 16th to the 18th Centuries ..................................................................... » 641
ISABEL DRUMOND BRAGA, Les familles de chrétiens nouveaux et la possession d’objets
religieux (XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles) ................................................................................. » 655
BRECHT DEWILDE, JOHAN POUKENS, Confraternities, Jansenism and the Birth
of a Consumer Society in 17th-18th-Century Leuven .................................................. » 671

Giovedì 12 maggio – MOBILITÀ E MIGRAZIONE: PERSECUZIONE, PELLEGRINAGGI E

TURISMO RELIGIOSO / MOBILITY AND MIGRATION: AGGRESSION, PILGRIMAGE AND
RELIGIOUS TOURISM

Relazioni
DAVID JACOBY, The Economic Impact of Christian Pilgrimage on the Holy Land,
Eighth-Sixteenth Century – a Long-Term Overview ................................................. pag. 697
CHRISTOPHE DUHAMELLE, Pèlerinage et économie dans l’Empire
au XVIIIe siècle ................................................................................................................ » 713

Comunicazioni
JUDICAËL PETROWISTE, Pèlerinages et essor commercial dans les pays occitans
médiévaux (XIe-XIIIe siècle)........................................................................................... pag. 729
FEDERICO PIGOZZO, I denari dei pellegrini. Oblazioni votive e istituzioni ecclesiastiche
nell’Italia centrale alla fine del XIV secolo ................................................................... » 743
CLÉMENT LENOBLE, Investimenti religiosi, civici ed economici. Diritto e teologia in alcuni
aspetti degli scambi tra mercanti italiani e frati minori (Avignone secc. XIV-XV) . » 755
MICHAEL A. PENMAN, The Economics of Faith: Approaches to Monastic Saints’ Cults
in Medieval Scotland........................................................................................................ » 765
YVES JUNOT, Les migrants, un enjeu? Pacification religieuse et relance économique
de part et d’autre de la frontière entre la France et les Pays-Bas espagnols
(c. 1580-c. 1610) ............................................................................................................... » 779
MARIA MARTA LOBO DE ARAUJO, Les pèlerinages au Sanctuaire de Notre Dame
de Porto de Ave en tant que moteurs de changement : la dynamisationde l’économie
locale (XVIIIe siècle) ........................................................................................................ » 793
MARIA ENGRACIA LEANDRO, Quand la religion et l’économie se mêlent.
Triomphe des croyances au tour du Sanctuaire de Notre Dame da Nazaré,
triomphe de l’économie locale ....................................................................................... » 805

Abstracts ........................................................................................................................... » 823

Giacomo Todeschini

Usury in Christian Middle Ages.

A Reconsideration of the Historiographical Tradition (1949-2010)*

“The Idea of Usury. From Tribal Brotherhood to Universal Otherhood” by

Benjamin Nelson, a well known American sociologist and historian, was published
in 1949. It was an outline of the historical development of biblical (Dt 23)1 forbid-
ding of lending on interest aiming at underlining, on the one hand, the central role
of “usury” in the economic formation of western European society, and, on the
other hand, the opposition between Christian religious ethics and economy that
Nelson, on a weberian basis, supposed to be at the core of the difference between
pre-modern and modern economy. The radical change of the notion described
through the word “usury,” and the transition from a forbidding to the liberalization
of lending on interest would have been the same, in this perspective, than the evo-
lution from the “tribal brotherhood” to (capitalistic) “universal otherhood.” As
Wim Decock2 puts it, the problem would be to discover when “the breakdown of
the Scholastic paradigm” actually happened.
The idea that “usury” and its forbidding were the heart of the medieval “eco-
nomic doctrine,” and at the same time the idea that something like a coherent me-
dieval “economic doctrine” had existed, are however two very typical
interconnected and complementary historical assumptions widely represented by
European economic historians since the beginning of the past century, and firmly
recapitulated in the Fifties and Sixties by historians devoted to explain, on the
whole, the transition from “feudal” to “capitalistic mode of production.”3
* This paper is strictly connected to my until today unpublished presentation in the Harvard
Workshop Christian relation to Jewish Finance in Europe (12th-16th centuries ) (Harvard University, Centre of
Middle Eastern Studies, February 18-19, 2011): “Judas and the Christian common people: Jewish
“usury” and ordinary Christian economic behaviors in the perspective of the late-medieval building of
an economy of the bonum commune (14th-15th C.).”
1 See J. NEUSNER, The Mishnah: social perspectives, Leiden-Boston 1999 (Brill), pp. 115 ff., 156 ff.
2 W. DECOCK, Lessius and the Breakdown of the Scholastic Paradigm, in “Journal of the History of
Economic Thought”, 31, 2009, n. 1, pp. 57-78.
3 H. CONTZEN, Geschichte der volkswirtschaftlichen Literatur des Mittelalters Berlin 1869, 1872 2; F.X.
FUNK, Geschichte des kirchlichen Zinsverbotes, Tübingen 1876; H. GARNIER, De l'idée du juste prix chez les
théologiens et canonistes du moyen âge, Paris 1900; F. SCHAUB, Der Kampf gegen den Zinswucher, ungerechten Preis
und unlauteren Handel im Mittelalter. Von Karl dem Grossen bis Papst Alexander III, Freiburg 1905; O.
SCHILLING, Reichtum und Eigentum in der ethisch-rechtlichen Literatur, Freiburg 1908; H. BREY,
Hochscholastik und 'Geist' des Kapitalismus, Leipzig 1927; A. FANFANI, Le origini dello spirito capitalistico in
Italia, Milano 1933; J.T. NOONAN, The Scholastic Analysis of Usury, Cambridge Mass 1957; J.W.
BALDWIN, The Medieval Theories of the Just Price: Romanists, Canonists and Theologians in the 12. and 13.
Centuries, Philadelphia 1959; E. SALIN, Politische Ökonomie: Geschichte der wirtschaftspolitischen Ideen von
120 GIACOMO TODESCHINI

The entire problem and its historiographical formalization, as well as the incon-
gruities depending on an anachronistic economic sketch of medieval societies
representing them in terms of obligatory opposition between “economic theory”
and “economic practice,” basically depend on the misunderstanding of what, in
fact, the word usura4 and the legal, theological and economic definitions connected
to this word truly signify in the variegated medieval textual universe.
Actually, a close analysis of Christian textual sources normally used to detect
the medieval Christian “doctrinal” attitude on wealth, profit and fertility or sterility
of money, as well as their contextualized reading and comparison, clearly indicates
that a systematic and coherent economic Christian doctrine absolutely allowing or
forbidding specific forms of economic interplay never existed. On the contrary,
what historians between nineteenth and twentieth century have described as the
beginning of an increasingly coherent Christian social philosophy is most likely a
slow and progressive (and so not necessarily coherent) stratification of linguistic
habits aimed, firstly, to describe the religious Christian notions of spiritual fructifi-
cation and final salvation through economic and financial metaphors, and, second-
ly, to represent gain and profit, namely to shape Christian economic interplay, as
inner phases of a more wide social and ecclesiological project founding the recogni-
tion of everyone's economic credibility on the authentication of a faith intended as
factor of social identification and basis of each legitimate kinship. In this perspec-
tive, the medieval representation of the economic interplay is hardly reducible to a
theoretical system shaping economic games as individual relations whose meaning
is readable only in ethical terms.5
The western construction of economic lexica and the western economic repre-
sentational strategies concerning economic objects and relations appear, in a pers-
pective not opposing (in an anachronistic way) “personal” and “impersonal”
economic games, as deeply depending on the political identity and administrative
objectives of the literate minority both writing the economic metaphors or eco-
nomic prescriptions we today read, and concretely governing the monasteries, ab-
beys, bishoprics, castles and cities geographically shaping what we today call the
western medieval market space, namely the markets ruled by the multiple European
powers.6
In other words, the representation of biblical and ancient Jewish economic
space in terms of “brotherhood” contradicted by the commercial and anonymous
namely impersonal (that is to say non-political) modern “otherhood,” on its turn

Platon bis zur Gegenwart, Tübingen-Zürich 1967; J. GILCHRIST, The Church and economic Activity in the
Middle Ages New York 1969 ; R. DE ROOVER, La pensée économique des Scolastiques Montréal-Paris 1971;
R. DE ROOVER, Business, Banking and Economic Thought in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. J.
KIRSHNER, Chicago-London 1974. On these authors and writings see G. TODESCHINI, Il prezzo della
salvezza. Lessici medievali del pensiero economico, Roma 1994 (La Nuova Italia Scientifica).
4 See H. SIEMS, Handel und Wucher im Spiegel frühmittelalterlicher Rechtsquellen, Hannover 1992 (Hahn,
MGH Schriften).
5 G. TODESCHINI, I mercanti e il tempio, Bologna 2002 (Il Mulino); IDEM, Theological Roots of the
Medieval/Modern Merchants’ Self-Representation, in The Self-Perception of Early Modern Capitalists, M.J. J ACOB,
C. SECRETAN eds., New York 2008 (Palgrave), pp. 17-46.
6 M. ARNOUX, Vérité et questions des marchés médiévaux, in L'activité marchande sans le marché?, A.
HATCHUEL, O. FAVEREAU, F. AGGERI eds., Paris 2010 (Presses des Mines), pp. 27-40.
USURY IN CHRISTIAN MIDDLE AGES 121

gradually defined by the attenuation of the medieval Christian forbidding of usury,

was and is rooted in an imprecise cognition of the different meanings the medieval
condemnation of usura could assume in different political and historical contexts.
At the same time, the widely diffused historiographical representation of Jewish
medieval economic role as obviously identical everywhere, since the High Middle
Ages, to the specialization of the “Jews” in lending activities7 (a representation al-
ready developed by Sombart’s Die Juden und das Wirtschaftsleben in 1911) matches
with the historiographical representation of Christian condemnation of credit trans-
actions as a condemnation of the “Jewish” notion of “brotherhood,” namely as
condemnation of the distinction made by the Book of Deuteronomy between lend-
ing to brothers and lending to strangers that, in turn, was and is perceived by many
historians as typically Jewish.8
The historiographical idea shaping “usury” as the medieval summary and syn-
onym of “credit,” an idea depending on some common places very typical of 19th
century historiography, is, in other words, based on a stereotyped representation of
Jews and Christians as economic performers: the ones represented as the founders
of an archaic economic “brotherhood,” the others described as the dramatic initia-
tors of modern, universalistic kinship forms opening the way to the “market” after
the crisis of the so-called ethical “Scholastic paradigm.” In this light the absolute
historiographical conviction concerning the existence of a long-lasting and indis-
putable medieval Christian prohibition of lending on interest was and often is the
outcome of an interpretation of western economic rationality as a linear process de-
layed by the (Christian) denial of money’s productivity. The inner meaning of this
denial was however generally interpreted as directly functional to the crossing of
the obstacle represented by a (Jewish) “brotherhood” defining the fruitfulness of
money as a main consequence of the exclusion from “tribal” belonging. Through
the refusal of the abstract notion of money’s fertility the Christian community
would have shaped an idea of productive work activating the capital, an idea cha-
racterizing – in the historiographical perspective well represented by Sapori and de
Roover – the western development of the Christian universalistic “market.”
Actually, at the origin of Nelson’s depiction of Christian rejection of usury it is
possible to see the simplified denotation of “usury” performed by historiography
between nineteenth and the first half of the past century.9 Analogously, Nelson’s
description of the Christian attenuation of this forbidding as a main consequence of

7 See the final counterarguments presented in Wirtschaftsleben der abendländischen Juden. Fragen und
Einschätzungen, ed. M. TOCH, München 2008 (Oldenbourg,). See also IDEM, Jews and Commerce: Modern
Fancies and Medieval Realities, in Il ruolo economico delle minoranze in Europa. Secc. XIII-XVIII. Atti della
XXXI Settimana di Studi, ed. S. CAVACIOCCHI, Firenze 2000, pp.43-58; G. TODESCHINI, Les historiens
juifs en Allemagne et le débat sur l’origine du capitalisme avant 1914, in Écriture de l’histoire et identité juive.
L’Europe ashkénaze XIXe-XXe siècle, D. BECHTEL, E. PATLAGEAN, J.-C. SZUREK, P. ZAWADZKI eds.,
Paris 2003 (Les Belles Lettres), pp. 209-228 ; IDEM, Christian Perceptions of Jewish Economic Activity in the
Middle Ages,” in Wirtschaftsgeschichte der mittelalterlichen Juden. Fragen und Einschätzungen, cit., pp. 1-16.
8 F. RAPHAEL, Judaïsme et capitalisme. Essai sur la controverse entre Max Weber et Werner Sombart,
Paris 1982 (Presses Universitaires de France).
9 I discussed this historiographical line in a book published seventeen years ago: G. TODESCHINI,
Il prezzo della salvezza, cit. See the excellent survey by H. SIEMS, Handel und Wucher im Spiegel
fru�hmittelalterlicher Rechtsquellen, Hannover 1992 (Hahn, MGH Schriften).
122 GIACOMO TODESCHINI

the wide medieval diffusion of a notion of holy war (exemplified, according to Nel-
son, by the circulation of a dictum of Ambrose translating the idea of “right war” in
economic terms: it is licit to lend on interest to the enemies, ubi ius belli ibi ius usu-
rae)10 appears today as an argument produced by a form of historical reasoning sub-
stantially unconcerned by the different linguistic structure of the sources. This
simplifying logic is primarily rooted in a reading of the sources establishing the im-
probable continuity of the meaning of usura from Patristic Age until the thirteenth
century, as well as the improbable semantic homogeneity of this concept in very
different textual fields as those defined by the writings of theologians like Clemens
of Alexandria and Ambrose and Augustine, or Robert de Courçon and Thomas
Aquinas, ecclesiastical polemists as Hincmar of Reims and Humbert of Silvacandi-
da, canonists and civil lawyers like Gratian and Etienne de Tournai, or Henry of
Susa, Accursius and Bartolo of Sassoferrato, local jurists or penitential authorities as
Thomas of Chobham and Raymond of Peñafort, each one of them representing,
on the contrary, a different and specific namely discontinuous phase of the histori-
cal development of what we today tend to roughly imagine as the beginning of
western economic thought.
Actually, if we closely consider these different authors, or, to be more exact,
these very different written sources and their own specific vocabulary, it becomes
immediately clear, firstly, that the forbidding of “usury” had in different contexts
very different meanings, secondly that “usury” never was intended as an automatic
synonym of “credit,” and, thirdly, that the relation between debtors and creditors
was changing its sense according to the social and institutional role of debtors and
creditors. At the same time the abstract problem of the productivity or sterility of
money, so frequently described by historiography, from Benjamin Nelson to Jac-
ques Le Goff until the systematic description of the sources by Odd Langholm, as
the theoretical fundament of the medieval forbidding of usury,11 played a minor
role in the linguistic definitions and regulations of the real core of late medieval
economic discourse: the political managing of the violence implicit in social ex-
change as it was mirrored in the economic games.12 Actually a clear understanding
of what Scholastics intended to say through their reasoning on the fact that pecunia
can not bear as the pecus does, should be connected to their variegated representa-
tion of money as sign of value, as symbol of power, as metallic coin. From the late-
medieval point of view, as well as in other pre-modern economic perceptions of
money,13 it was perfectly clear that the measure of value expressed through the ab-
stract namely mathematical notion of money was neatly different both from money
symbolizing the power of a ruler and from money reified by coins. Obviously this
10 AMBROSIUS, De Tobia 15, 51; Decretum Gratiani C. XIV q. 3 c. 12, ed. A. FRIEDBERG, Leipzig
1879 (Tauchnitz), 738.
11 The historiographical idea of a medieval “doctrine” (directly rooted in Aristotle’s writings)
focussed on the “sterility of money” is a sort of historiographical dogma, already present in M AX
WEBER’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904-5), New York 2003 (Dover), p. 82. This
assumption generally based on a simplified reading of some Thomas Aquinas’ passages, is finally
repeated by O. LANGHOLM, Economics in Medieval Schools. Wealth, Exchange, Value, Money and Usury
According to the Paris Theological Tradition, 1200-1350, Leiden 1992 (Brill.)
12 R. DUMOUCHEL-J.-P. DUPUY, L’enfer des choses. René Girard et la logique de l’économie, Paris 1979 (Seuil).
13 See M. GODELIER, L’enigme du don, Paris 1996 (Fayard), pp. 39 ff.
USURY IN CHRISTIAN MIDDLE AGES 123

third type of “money” could not be imagined as bearing a fruit (for the same reason
than each artificial object); on the contrary money as an idealization of value pos-
sessed and used by specific economic performers could be activated and so become
fertile through their competence: in other words when money was not perceived as
an unanimated metallic thing but as a sign of possible value managed by well identi-
fiable entrepreneurs, its nature could appear as full of potential fruits, a capitale and
not simply a sors.14
It is possible indeed to distinguish in the textual and economic Christian history
of usura, both as economic notion and linguistic definition of a practice hardly ever
so clear as often historians believed, three approximate stages corresponding to the
patristic age, to the age of formation of Canon Law, between seventh and twelfth
century, and finally to the development of a legal definition of credit transactions,
after the thirteenth century. A main problem in the study of these different percep-
tions and descriptions of what in any case is deceptively called usura is caused by the
fact that historiography rarely has considered the relation between these phases of
meaning. So, we can find some important studies on the economic language of the
Fathers, Clemens of Alexandria or Ambrose of Milan or Augustine, and on the
other side some clever analysis of the conflicting economic interplay between eccle-
siastic and imperial powers summed up by the key-word simony (simonia).15 At the
same time, the textual flow developed after 1140, namely the first codification of
Canon law, about the illicitness of the activities performed by the so-called usurarius
manifestus, the public seller of money, was considered by many scholars specialized
in the study of Canon Law only for the period going from the first commentators
of Gratian’s Decretum to the redaction of the second part of Canon Law, the De-
cretals of Gregory the Ninth and its first commentaries (as it is possible to see in
the first essays by Giuseppe Salvioli and Franz Schaub as well as in the articles and
books by Terence McLaughlin and John Baldwin and, more recently, Harald
Siems.) Finally the so-called Scholastic doctrine on usury and just price was studied
with subtlety by many well known scholars and synthesized in many huge books
from the Studien by Wilhelm Endemann in the eighties of the nineteenth century to
the Scholastic Analysis of Usury (1957) by John Thomas Noonan in the fifties of the
last century, until Raymond De Roover’s La pensée èconomique des Scholastiques (1971),
and lastly Odd Langholm’s Economics in Medieval Schools (1992).16 Especially this last
kind of studies seems to be on the one hand totally founded on the presumption
that Christian representations of the economic interplay after the beginning of the
13th century are definitely rooted in the forbidding of “usury.” On the other hand,
these studies are absolutely pervaded by the idea that the last two centuries of the
medieval era are the beginning of an ambiguous new way of economic thinking:

14 See J. KAYE, Economy and Nature in the Fourteenth Century: Money, Market Exchange, and the
Emergence of Scientific Thought, Cambridge 1998 (Cambridge University Press); G. CECCARELLI, Risky
Business: Theological and Canonical Thought on Insurance from the Thirteenth to the Seventeenth Century, in
“Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies”, 31, 2001, n. 3, pp. 607-658; G. TODESCHINI,
Franciscan Wealth. From Voluntary Poverty to Market Society, New York 2009 (St. Bonaventure University.)
15 See now J.-M. SALAMITO, Christianisme antique et économie: raisons et modalités d’une rencontre
historique, in “Antiquité tardive”, 14, 2006, pp. 27-37.
16 A commented bibliography in G. TODESCHINI, Il prezzo della salvezza, cit., pp. 39-113.
124 GIACOMO TODESCHINI

that, in fact, as Joseph Schumpeter wrote around fifty years ago, the fundament of
each future economic science “is all in the Scholastics.”17
The absence of a scholarly attention for the relation between the different
meanings assumed in different periods by the word-concept usura, as well as by the
universe of economic practice it could indicate, is verisimilarly at the origin of a sys-
tematic misunderstanding of what credit relations could actually signify in different
political contexts like, for example, the Carolingian empire, late medieval kingdoms
or Italian cities between 12th and 13th centuries. The categorical assumption of the
forbidding of usury as fil rouge connecting these and others institutional realities
made impossible on the whole to see the evidence of a distinction, basic in Canon
Law since twelfth century, between credit performed by ecclesiastic institution or
other public subjects, and selling of money performed by “private” subjects, namely
unauthorized individuals. With the end of the myth of modern free market as arriv-
al point of the mythological history of the market written by neo-liberist econo-
mists in terms of progressive edification of a perfect independence of economy
from politics and institutional powers and choices, the late-medieval and early
modern economic discourse can finally be considered through a more limpid and
less ideological lens.18
In fact, the idea that licit and socially useful forms of credit were linked to the
institutional visibility of the entrepreneurs namely to their participation in the polit-
ic and social networks shaping the so-called bonum commune was widely circulated by
highly authoritative textual tools like conciliar canons and Decretals. Licit forms of
credit were at this point well separated from usurious contracts, and, although his-
toriography rarely admits it, the system of exceptions gradually introduced by ca-
nonists to define legal types of credit contracts became a precise economic strategy
aimed at facilitating the development of specific economic behaviors assumed as a-
priori honorable. From the middle of the 13th century this kind of exceptions com-
posed a system of economic rules in itself more clear and understandable than the
forbidding of a practice, “usury,” whose traditional ambiguous meaning appeared
now, in the light of a credit life manifestly determining the fiscal revenues of Sacred
powers such as the Holy See, even more blurred. Matrimonial credit deriving from
the retarded payment of a dowry, commercial credit in the form of society or com-
menda, commerce of public and ecclesiastical rents, selling on credit when this busi-
ness was formalized as connected to the politically significant economic activities of
relevant merchant-bankers: these and others formalizations became typical repre-
sentations of the lay credit forms recognized as an ordinary way of economic ad-
ministration in consequence of the public importance of the subjects performing

17 J. SCHUMPETER, History of Economic Analysis, London 1986 [1954] (Routledge), p. 294.

18 D.C. NORTH, The rise of the western world: a new economic history, Cambridge 1973 (Cambridge
University Press); IDEM, Structure and Change in Economic History, New York 1981 (Norton); IDEM,
Institutions, institutional change, and economic performance, Cambridge 1990 (Cambridge University Press); D.
C. NORTH, JOHN JOSEPH WALLIS, BARRY R. WEINGAST, Violence and Social Orders: a Conceptual
Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History, Cambridge 2009 (Cambridge University Press); M.
GRANOVETTER, Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness, in “American Journal of
Sociology”, 91, 1985, pp. 481-510; V. ZELIZER, The Social Meaning of Money: Pin Money, Paychecks, Poor
Relief, and Other Currencies, New York 1994 (Basic Books).
USURY IN CHRISTIAN MIDDLE AGES 125

them.19 This conceptual elaboration integrated a complex notion of risk distinguish-

ing the legitimacy namely the rationality of a profit derived from the investment
performed by honest and trustworthy citizens (that is citizens belonging to impor-
tant kinships and bound together by a system of friendships, “neighborhood” and
“clientage”, also rooted in neighborhood20) from the small-scale and “vile” forms
of business assumed in general as sterile commerce of money or disreputable
speculations performed by those who are called by canonists and jurists viles personae
and alienigenae or usurarii manifesti. The definition of commercial risk as the wa-
tershed separating honorable from deviant forms of credit, was then elaborated
during the second half of the thirteenth century. The principal sense of this eco-
nomic finding was to highlight the plainly administrative nature of credit practice
when this economic practice was carried out by institutions or citizens whose aim
was presupposed to be favorable to the growth of common good; the difference
between the riskless activity of the usurer and the dangerous and risky achievement
of the merchant/banker is not from this point of view a description of the hetero-
geneity of the market, but the consequence of a textual and ideological elaboration
of the difference between two dissimilar economic ways: inner and outer in respect
to what the theological/economic culture identified as of public interest.
The ancient distinction between the wicked simoniac management of the sa-
cred economy and the holy administration of the church patrimony21 (intended as
typical form of a common wealth, namely as the “patrimony of the poor”) was then
textually reshaped in a conflict between usury as economic manifestation of hereti-
cal perversity (thus typical of many categories of infidels, not citizens or semi-
citizens, outcasts and aliens) and credit as publicly useful administrative technique.
The recontextualization of the late medieval theological and juridical discourse
on usury into the writings system produced by Christian authorities on economy
and exchange between 12th and 15th century, namely its recontextualization into the
flow of the medieval metadiscourse on bonum commune22 and its boundaries, allows

19 I recently considered this system of “exceptions” and their meaning: G. TODESCHINI, Eccezioni
e usura nel Duecento. Osservazioni sulla cultura economica medievale come realtà non dottrinaria, in “Quaderni
Storici”, 114, 2009, n. 2, pp. 443-460.
20 See J. PADGETT, P. MCLEAN, Organizational Invention and Elite Transformation: The Birth of
Partnership Systems in Renaissance Florence, in “American Journal of Sociology”, 111, 2006, n. 5, pp. 1463-
1568, 1517 (http://networks.harrimaninstitute.org/padgett%20and%20mclean.pdf); J. P ADGETT, P.
MCLEAN, Economic Credit in Renaissance Florence (2009),
(http://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1007&context=pn_wp); G. ALFANI, Fathers
and godfathers. Spiritual kinship in Early Modern Italy, Aldershot 2009 (Ashgate); P. NANNI, Ragionare tra
mercanti. Per una rilettura della personalità di Francesco di Marco Datini (1335ca-1410), Pisa 2010 (Pacini), pp.
135 ff. On the whole problem, I. LAZZARINI, Amicizia e potere. Reti politiche e sociali nell'Italia medievale,
Milano 2010 (Bruno Mondadori).
21 J. H. LYNCH, Simoniacal Entry into Religious Life from 1000 to 1260. A social, economic and legal Study,
Columbus/Ohio 1976 (The Ohio State University Press); on simony and usury in Canon Law, see W.
HARTMANN, K. PENNINGTON, The history of medieval canon law in the classical period, 1140-1234: from
Gratian to the Decretals of Pope Gregory IX, Washington 2008 (The Catholic University of America Press),
especially the essays by Peter Landau and Joseph Goering. The connection between simony and usury
in medieval economic writings was emphasized by O. LANGHOLM, Economics in Medieval Schools, cit.
22 De Bono Communi: The Discourse and Practice of the Common Good in the European City (13th-16th c.), E.
LECUPPRE-DESJARDIN, A.–L. VAN BRUAENE eds., Turnhout 2009 (Brepols).
126 GIACOMO TODESCHINI

to clearly understand that the “forbidding of usury” by Christian theologians, jurists

and confessors never was a general, abstract and unconditioned statement. On the
contrary, a reading of the sources not reduced to an anthology of isolated quota-
tions out of context, can reveal the political and at the same time symbolic meaning
the condemnation of lending on interest assumed in a cultural world whose first
religious and juridical aim was to separate fidelity from infidelity, reliability from
untrustworthiness, citizens from foreigners, and public (that is institutional and sa-
cred) wealth from private (that is pertaining to a family in the restrained sense of
blood kinship) accounting.
Let us consider, in this perspective, two main problems assumed by the histori-
ography of the past century, Noonan, Le Goff and Langholm primarily, in terms of
painful evolution from a pre-modern economy whose search for profit was affected
by the condemnation of avarice and usury, to a modern, rational economy totally
free to maximize profit and exploit the opportunities for growth: the transition
from usurer to merchant or businessman, and the so-called usura palliata, that is, as
Raymond de Roover puts it, the “loan concealed under the color of another con-
tract.”23
The first case, normally presented by historiography, as a gradual transforma-
tion of the forbidden condition of usurer in the accepted profession of merchant,
banker and businessman, namely as a progressive change produced by the attenua-
tion of the ecclesiastic prohibition of profit gained through an investment of capi-
tal, appears, at a close reading of the sources, from Raymond of Peñafort to Henry
of Susa, Thomas Aquinas, Olivi, Guiral Ot and the fifteenth century doctors, a se-
quence of sources whose context is the late-medieval interplay between Canon and
Civil Law, more as the description of the strong and well defined difference existing
between two opposite subjects than as the representation of the conversion of a
sinner in a pious and socially useful Christian. From the first more specific canoni-
cal definition of what could indicate the usurer as a definite social figure, namely
from the second Lateran Council in 1139, until the technical descriptions of usury
proclaimed during the fourth Council of Lyon in 1274, and then at the Council of
Vienne in 1312, the usurer is in any case a manifest usurer, an usurarius manifestus,
and his obvious weirdness in the economic context shaped by the Christian market
is designated through two very specific words: alienigena, “stranger” or “born
abroad”, and hereticus, “heretic” and “dissident.”24 It is enough to read attentively

23 R. DE ROOVER, The Rise and Decline of the Medici Bank. 1397-1494, Washington 1999 (1963)
(BeardBooks), pp. 10 ff.: The Church’s Usury Doctrine and the Business World.
24 Corpus Iuris Canonici II, Sexti Decretalium, V, De usuris, 1 (FRIEDBERG ed., 1081): “Gregorius X in
generali concìlio Lugdunensi. Usurarum voraginem, quae animas devorat et facultates exhaurit,
compescere cupientes, constitutìonem Lateranensis concilii contra usurarios editam sub divìnae
maledìctionis interminatione praecipimus inviolabiliter observari. Et quia, quo minor foeneratorìbus
aderìt foenerandi commodìtas, eo magìs adimetur foenus exercendi libertas : hac generali constitutìone
sancimus, ut nec collegium, nec alia universìtas vel singularis persona, cuiuscunque sit dignitatis,
conditionis aut status, alienigenas et alios non oriundos de terris ipsorum, publìce foenebrem pecuniam exercentes aut
exercere volentes, ad hoc domos in terris suis conducere vel conductas habere, aut alias habìtare permittant, sed huìusmodì
usurarios manifestos omnes infra tres menses de terris suìs expellant, nunquam alìquos tales de cetero
admissuri.”; Clementinarum, III, V De usuris (Friedberg ed., 1184): “Clemens V, ìn concìlio Viennensi.
Ex gravi ad nos insinuatìone pervenit, quod quorundam communìtales locorurm ìn offensam Dei et
USURY IN CHRISTIAN MIDDLE AGES 127

the definition of the professional usurer offered by many authoritative texts be-
tween the end of 12th to the end of 15th century, to see that his or her public reputa-
tion as usurer is the main argument used to prove his/her belonging to the group
of the spurious businesspeople.25 The importance of fame and reputation in mat-
ters of usury, namely a designation of the usurer based on the tautological assump-
tion that the usurer is whom the common opinion indicates as usual usurer,26 make
clear that this “infamous” profession had nothing to do with the social competence
attributed by very different kinds of sources to the mercator industrius, the hero of an

proximi, ac contra iura divina pariter et humana usurariam approbantes quodammodo pravitatem, per
statuta sua iuraraento quandoque firmata, usuras exigi el solvi nedum concedunt, sed ad solvendas
eas» debìtores scienter compellunt, ac iuxta ìpsorum continentiam stalulorum gravia imponendo,
plerumque usuras repetentìbus onera,alììsque utendo super hìs diversis coloribus et fraudibus
exquìsitìs, repetitìonem impediunt earundem. Nos ìgìtur, perniciosis bis ausibus obviare volentes,
sacro approbante conciho statuimus, ut, quicunque communilatum ipsarum potestates, capitaneì,
rectores, consules, iudìces, consiharii aut alii quivis officìales statuta huiusmodi de cetero facere,
scribere vel dictare, aut quod solvantur usurae, vel quod solutae, quum repetuntur, non restituantur
piene ac lìbere, scienter indicare praesumpserint, sententìam excommunicatìonis incurrant, eandem
etìam sententìam ìncursuri, nìsi statuta huiusmodi hactenus edita de libris coraraunitatum ipsarum, (sì
super hoc potestatem habuerint) infra tres menses deleverint, aui si ipsa statuta sìve consueiudìnes,
effectum eorum habentes, quoquo modo praesumpserint observare. §. 1. Ceterum, quia foeneratores
sic ut plurimum contractus usurarios occulte ineunt et dolose, quod vix convìnci possunt de usurarìa
pravitale: ad exhibendum, quum de usuris agetur, suarum codìces rationum censura ipsos
decerniraus»» ecclesiastica compeilendos. §. 2. Sane, si quis ìn illum errorem incìderit, ut pertinaciter affirmare
praesumat, exercere usuras non esse peccatum: decernimus, eum velut haereticum punìendum, locorum nihiiomìnus
ordinariis et haeretìcae pravitatìs Ìnquisitoribus districtius iniungentes, ut contra eos, quos de errore huiusmodi
diffamatos invenerint aut suspectos, tanquam contra diffamatos vel suspectos de haeresi procedere non omittant.” See
R.M. FREHER, Preventing Crime in the High Middle Ages: The Medieval Lawyers’ Search for Deterrence, in J.R.
SWEENEY, S. CHODOROW eds., Popes, Teachers, and Canon Law in the Middle Ages, Ithaca-London 1989,
pp. 212 ff.
25 PETER THE CHANTER, Verbum abbreviatum. Textus conflatus, I 48, ed. M. BOUTRY, Turnhout 2004
(Brepols), p. 325: “Et cum quereretur qui essent notorii, dictum est: ‘Qui publice fatentur se esse
usurarios vel aliquot noto signo hoc indicant’, ut quasi capistra venalia in summitate haste vel virge
fenerandam pecuniam circumferant…”; RAYMOND OF PEÑAFORT, Summa de poenitentia cum glossis
Johannis de Friburgo, Avignon 1715 (F. Mallard), pp. 324 ss., p. 330: “Si autem ille qui talem penam
apposuit consuevit esse usurarius, presumitur quod in fraudem usurarum adiecerit penam”; J OHN OF
FREIBURG, Summa confessorum, (1297-98), s. l., 1476 (BODLEIAN LIBRARY, Bod. L. Auct. 5 Q inf. 1.15), q.
XLVIII: “Sed qualiter intelligitur usurarius manifestus fore. Respondeo secundum Hostiensem ibidem
[Summa aurea] V secundum quomodo. Manifestos voco notorios et hoc vel ex evidentia facti, puta quia
usurariam mensam tenet paratam ad mutuandum pecuniam cuilibet sub usura.”
26 GUILLAUME DURAND, Speculum iuris, Pavia 1479, III, f. 24v ; ASTESANUS DE ASTI, Summa de
casibus, IV 16, Strassburg, ante 1475: “…Aliud est notorium facti interpolati ut illud quod sic fit
publice quod aliqua tergiversacione celari non potest et quod sepius iteratum non fit tamen continue.
Huiusmodi est circa modum usurarii manifesti et de hoc habetur extra de usuris … In notorio vere
facti transeuntis interpolati ut est receptio usurarum requiritur semiplena probacio extra de usuris cum
in diocesi, tamen Raymundus dicit indistincte quia si forte iudex velit talem in notorie sive evidenter
delinquentem secundum quid ius exigit corrigere idest punire et ille appellet, non est appellacioni
huiusmodi deferendum”; ANGELUS CARLETTI DE CLAVASIO, Summa, Nürnberg 1498 (Anton
Koberger), f. 173r : “Tertium est [notorium] facti interpolati, exemplum in eo qui paratus est mutuare
sub usuris et de meretrice quia non semper mutuat vel peccat. Sed Bartolus post Jacobus de Butrio in
l. cives, C. de appell. dicit quod notorium est quod habet actum permanentem ut edicta in albo
pretorio et quod in platea est palacium dominorum. Illa autem que numquam habuerunt actum
permanentem ut vox, preconia et huiusmodi non possunt transire in notorium, sed bene in
manifestum.”
128 GIACOMO TODESCHINI

economic rhetoric circulated by the texts written, especially after the beginning of
the 14th century, by the main Canonists, Romanists and theologians. The rationali-
zation of merchants’ profit expressed through a large variety of dicta underlining
merchant’s right to gain both the stipendium laboris compensating his risk, and the
interest derived from lending the money he “usually” invests in trade, focus in any
case, from Thomas Aquinas to Conrad Summenhart, on the economic capacity of
the mercator, namely on his economic skillfulness in estimating costs and revenues.27
This skill, however, is indicated by the same sources as something actual and au-
thentic if it is publicly recognized as the shape of merchant’s political belonging to
the group of the well-renowned, the real citizens, that is to say the maiores in the
city.
From this perspective, the ancient Roman legal principle, codified by Justinian
and updated by Irnerius and Azo between twelfth and thirteenth century in Bolog-
na, establishing the legitimacy of different amounts of interest (usurae) according to
the different social contexts lenders belong to (“usurarum vero modus spectandus
est ex personarum delectu”28), is not so far from the canonical definition of the le-
gitimacy of interest as compensation of a loss (damnum emergens or lucrum cessans) bas-
ically depending on the belonging to a social kinship whose economic, political and
religious reputation is beyond any doubt. To say it with the words of Raymond of
Peñafort “if he who defines the amounting of interest as penalty in a contract is
used to be [is usually known as] an usurer, therefore it is presumable that his con-
tract is an usurious contract” (“Si autem ille qui talem penam apposuit consuevit
esse usurarius, presumitur quod in fraudem usurarum adiecerit penam.” 29) In other
words, usura and usurarius are the words shaping, more than an objective economic
technique, a social condition.
The history of expressions as usura palliata and palliare usuras, namely “disguised
usury” and “to disguise usuries,” shows analogously and as corollary that these lo-
cutions had not an absolute and abstract meaning, but indirectly hinted to the status
of the entrepreneur. The discovery of the usura palliata was not, in this light, a theo-
retical procedure aiming to detect every possible sort of hidden economic trea-
chery, but a way of unmasking those who, among the “true merchants,” were not
(or no more) identifiable as trustworthy and socially reliable.
The solemn denunciation by the Sienese government in 1335 of usury as a
crime secretly and hideously and also typically performed by a despicable crowd of
servants, poor widows, small artisans and unknown foreigners, is a good example
of the inner relation existing between the “doctrinal” and “legal” definitions of usu-
ra in an advanced phase of the medieval “economic revolution.”30 For the same

27O. LANGHOLM, Economics in Medieval Schools, cit.; G. TODESCHINI, Il prezzo della salvezza, cit.,
IDEM, I mercanti e il tempio, cit.
28 Die Summa Codicis des Irnerius, XXXIV, ed. H. FITTING, Berlin 1894.
29 RAYMOND OF PEÑAFORT, Summa de poenitentia cum glossis Johannis de Friburgo, Avignon 1715 (F.
Mallard), p. 330.
30 G. PICCINNI, Il sistema senese del credito nella fase di smobilitazione dei suoi banchi internazionali, in
Fedeltà ghibellina affari guelfi, ed. IDEM, Pisa 2008 (Pacini), pp. 209-289, 209 ff., 232 ff. See now G.
TODESCHINI, Come Giuda. La gente comune e i giochi dell’economia all’inizio dell’epoca moderna, Bologna 2011
(Il Mulino).
USURY IN CHRISTIAN MIDDLE AGES 129

reasons, allowing Conrad Summenhart to state, at the end of fifteenth century, that
multum differunt mutuare ad usuram et mutuantem recipere ultra sortem (“there is a huge dif-
ference between the lending on usury and the fact that a lender can receive some-
thing beyond the capital”31), in Siena a century and a half before Summenhart’s de
contractibus an abyss was separating the shameful usury transactions achieved by the
so-called vile people (viles et abiectae personae, the “little people”32) from credit trans-
actions shaping the core of the economic and institutional life of the mercatores civita-
tis Senarum.
Most likely, the wide circulated historiographical opinion connecting the idea of
the theological refusal of each form of fruitfulness of money to the apriori exis-
tence of a “doctrine of the sterility of money”,33 was and is connected to the un-
knowing (or misunderstanding) of the deep ecclesiological roots of late medieval
distinction between the notion of useful and institutionally correct credit implying a
vision of the productivity of money, and, on the opposite, the well specific defini-
tion of the unfruitfulness of money administrated by those who were recognized as
outside the city and the church. A clear distinction between these two very different
concepts of money, actually a double representation of money connecting its possi-
bility to bear a fruit to its social and institutional meaning, namely to its political
sense, is already perfectly visible in the first codification of Canon Law, the Decretum
Gratiani. This crucial text, the long second canon of the second quaestio in the tenth
Causa, transmits an imperial Novella (formerly contained in the Corpus Iuris Civilis)
stating indisputably that ecclesiastic institutions can pledge their immovable proper-
ty in case of debt so that the creditor could recover the capital (sors) and the fruits
produced by the pledged immobile good as interest valuable in monetary terms (res
inmobiles speciali dentur pignori, cuius fructus creditor sibi reputet tam in sortem quam in usuras
usque ad quartam centesimae34). The entire text emphasizes in many different ways that
the good ecclesiastic administrator (yconomus) should evaluate not only the actual
value of ecclesiastical namely institutional movable and immovable properties, but
also their possible or virtual value, as for instance when, in case of emphyteosis, it

31 C. SUMMENHART, De contractibus licitis atque illecitis, II 46, Venice 1580 (apud Bernardum
Iuntam), p. 208
32 See Gerarchie economiche e gerarchie sociali, secoli 12.-18., ed. A. G UARDUCCI, Firenze 1990 (Le
Monnier); Le petit peuple dans l’Occident médiéval: terminologies, perceptions, réalités, P. BOGLIONI, R. DELORT,
C. GAUVARD eds., Paris 2002 (Publications de la Sorbonne); G. TODESCHINI, Visibilmente crudeli.
Malviventi, persone sospette e gente qualunque dal medioevo all’età moderna, Bologna 2007 (Il Mulino).
33 See, lately, D. WOOD, Medieval Economic Thought, Cambridge 2002 (Cambridge University Press),
p. 178.
34 Decretum Gratiani, C. X, q. II, c. 2 (Friedberg ed., 618): “Si autem debitum ex mobilibus solui
non ualet, primo res inmobiles speciali dentur pignori, cuius fructus creditor sibi reputet tam in sortem
quam in usuras usque ad quartam centesimae. Quod si nolit, tunc ordinator domus apud eum, a quo
ordinatur, habitis absque dispendio gestis iuret, maiore parte ibidem seruientium consentiente, et
debitum urgere, nec ex mobilibus solui posse. Quo subsecuto, per uiginti dies rem ecclesiae esse
uenalem sit publice notum, ut plus offerenti detur, precio modis omnibus pro debito dando. Aliter
enim res emptori non conceditur, et hoc inscribatur nil esse factum in ea re ad dampnum diuinae
domus. Emptore non inuento, res estimata districte creditori detur in solutum, addita in precio decima
parte uniuersae estimationis et accedente consensu ordinatoris et maioris partis ibidem seruientium. Sit
tamen ea res mediocris inter ceteras, inspecta ipsius qualitate, et quantitate, et onere. Et is creditor hic
intelligatur, qui quod credidit probat in utilitates religiosae domus processisse.”
130 GIACOMO TODESCHINI

becomes mandatory to know (to “estimate with subtlety”) the final possible yield of
an immovable good apparently unproductive.35
This seminal text, mostly commented and summarized since the second half of
12th century, produced a flow of interpretations of what productivity of money
could signify, and was at the core of the 13th century definitions of money as object
whose economic life had to be linked to the public and institutional role of its own-
ers. The importance assumed by the term-concept industria between 13th and 14th
century, namely the underlining, by late medieval theologians and Romanists, of
merchants’ work as factor generating the productivity of money and activating its
capacity to bear a fruit, is readable in this textual perspective as the highlighting of
the social and institutional nature of money owned by the most relevant merchant-
bankers. In this “economic narrative,” the strict relation between industria and the
potentiality of pecunia to become fruitful36 is the consequence of its belonging to a
professional group, the élite of the veri mercatores, whose public utility was by this
time accepted and progressively assimilated to the civic utility traditionally
characterizing the economic performance of Christian institutional sacred powers.
It seems very probable that the late medieval vision of “usury” has been the
linguistic elaboration of a way to represent from an institutional, namely dominant
point of view, the difference existing between the economic games played by who
was belonging to the centre of the sacred social Body, and the “vile” economy ma-
naged by who was entitled to be recognized as inhabitator of the Christian market
space, that is to say as a stranger in that space, and not as a real civis of the Christian
respublica including the market37. How this attitude influenced the shaping of mod-
ern economic rationality and politics is a problem to solve.38

35 Ibid., (Friedberg ed., 619): “Perpetua quoque emphiteosis in his rebus permittitur, si res in
eorum geritur presentia, quibus hoc assignatur lege, iurantibus his, quorum interest, ex eo contractu
nichil ad lesionem diuinae domus effici, solito redditu ipsius rei, qui fuit, cum diuino iuri dedicaretur,
non inminuendo nisi in sextam partem, aut si ob cladem diminuta fuerit, tunc constante nunc
pensione in emphiteosim detur. Quod si res preciosa quidem est, parum tamen aut nichil prestet
pensionis res subtiliter estimanda est, ut ex hoc iusta pensio constituatur. Ea tamen sola dantur in
emphiteosim, que ad hoc congrua uidentur yconomo et aliis gubernatoribus.”
36 G. TODESCHINI, Credito ed economia della civitas: Angelo da Chivasso e la dottrina della pubblica utilità
fra Quattro e Cinquecento, in Ideologia del credito fra Tre e Quattrocento: dall’Astesano ad Angelo da Chivasso, B.
MOLINA-G. SCARCIA eds., Asti 2001 (Centro Studi sui Lombardi e sul Credito nel Medioevo); G.
CECCARELLI, Risky Business, cit.
37 THOMAS AQUINAS, Sententia libri politicorum, III, 4, 6: “Deinde cum dicit et quod dicitur maxime
etc., ostendit, quid sit maxime civis. Et dicit quod maxime ille dicitur civis in qualibet politia, qui
participat honoribus civitatis. Unde homerus dixit poetice de quodam quod post alios exsurrexit, puta
ad loquendum, sicut quidam inhonoratus idest sicut quidam advena, qui non erat civis. Sed ubi ista
ratio civis occultatur propter deceptionem, cohabitantium (est) esse civem, ut scilicet omnes
inhabitantes civitatem cives dicantur; sed hoc non est conveniens quia ille qui non participat
honoribus civitatis, est sicut advena in civitate .” See THOMAS AQUINAS, Summa Theologica, I IIae, Q.
105, a. III. P. BOGLIONI, Populus, vulgus et termes apparentés chez Thomas d'Aquin, in Le petit peuple dans
l'Occident médiéval, pp. 67-82.
38 See F. TRIVELLATO, The Familiarity of Strangers: the Sephardic Diaspora, Livorno, and Cross-Cultural
Trade in the Early Modern Period, Yale 2009 (Yale University Press).