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An introduction to medieval economic thought from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries.
List of contents
Preface; Introduction: problems, evidence, and background; 1. Private property versus communal rights: the conflict of two laws; 2. Wealth, beggary and sufficiency; 3. What is money?; 4. Sovereign concerns: weights, measures and coinage; 5. The mercantile system; 6. The just price and the just wage; 7. The nature of usury: the usurer as winner; 8. The theory of interest: the usurer as loser; Conclusion; Appendix: notes on the main writers and anonymous works used in the text; Glossary; Bibliography.
About the author
Diana Wood is Senior Research Fellow in History, University of East Anglia, and Associate Tutor in Local History, Oxford University Department for Continuing Education. Her publications include Clement VI: the Pontificate and Ideas of an Avignon Pope (Cambridge, 1989).
Summary
This book studies medieval economic thought, from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries, as it emerges from the works of academic theologians and lawyers and a variety of secular sources. Its aim is to make accessible a relatively neglected subject, and to explore the relationship between theory and practice.
