Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dk4vv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T08:06:23.576Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

In Pursuit of the Just Wage: A Comparison of Reformation and Counter-Reformation Economic Thought

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2009

Edd S. Noell
Edd S. Noell
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, Westmont College, Santa Barbara, CA.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Students of economic thought have long associated with the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the spread of attitudes in Europe more tolerant of market processes. New economic attitudes appear in a variety of literary forms during the fifteenth century (McGovern 1970). As compared to the pronouncements of a number of Patristic figures, relatively greater tolerance of commerce is expressed by medieval theologians. In fact, recent scholarly efforts suggest that by the late thirteenth century, suspicions of economic activity remained, but Scholastic thinkers increasingly recognized the importance of an impersonal market process in everyday life and sought to find ways to understand it in light of their concern with natural order (Kaye 1998a). While condemning avarice, Scholastic writers such as San Antonino of Florence and San Bernadino of Sienna explicitly endorsed trade as legitimate when practiced for the common good and when associated with modest profit (Origo 1962; De Roover 1967). Recognition of this movement in thought, especially as it applied the concerns of economic justice to trade in commodities, is explicit in the literature of preclassical economics. But until recently, less attention has been paid to more specific developments in scholastic thinking on justice in the labor market.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the History of Economic Thought , Volume 23 , Issue 4 , December 2001 , pp. 467 - 489
Copyright
Copyright © The History of Economics Society 2001

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Aquinas, Thomas. 1365. Summa Theologica. 5 vols. Westminster, MD: Christian Classics, 1981.Google Scholar
Baldwin, John W. 1959. “The Medieval Theories of the Just Price: Romanists, Canonists, and Theologians in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries.” In Pre- Capitalist Economic Thought: Three Modern Interpretations. New York: Arno Press, 1972.Google Scholar
Balke, Willem. 1981. Calvin and the Anabaptist Radicals, translated by Heynen, W J.. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.Google Scholar
Biéler, André. 1964. The Social Humanism of Calvin, translated by Fuhrmann, P. T.. Richmond, VA: John Knox Press.Google Scholar
Brams, Steven J. and Taylor, Alan D.. 1996. Fair Division: From Cake-Cutting to Dispute Resolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Calvin, John. 1555. Sermons on Deuteronomy, translated by Golding, A.Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1991.Google Scholar
Calvin, John. 1559. Institutes of the Christian Religion. 2 vols., edited by McNeill, J. T., translated by Battles, F. L.. Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1960.Google Scholar
Calvin, John. 1563a. Commentary on the Four Last Books of Moses Arranged in the Form of a Harmony, translated by Bingham, C. W.. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1979.Google Scholar
Calvin, John. 1563b. Commentaries on a Harmony of the Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, translated by Pringle, W.Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1979.Google Scholar
Calvin, John. 1563c. Sermons on Ephesians, translated by Pringle, W.. Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1978.Google Scholar
Calvin, John. 1576. Commentaries on the Prophet Jeremiah and Lamentations, translated by Owen, J.. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1979.Google Scholar
Calvin, John. 1578. Commentaries on Genesis, translated by King, J.. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1979.Google Scholar
Camacho, Francisco G. 1998. “Later Scholastics Spanish Economic Thought in the XVIth and XVIIth Centuries.” In Lowry, S. T. and Gordon, B., eds., Ancient and Medieval Economic Ideas and Concepts of Social Justice. Leiden, The Netherlands: E. J. Brill, pp. 503–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chafuen, Alejandro. 1986. Christians for Freedom: Late-Scholastic Economics. San Francisco: Ignatius.Google Scholar
DeRoover, Bernard. 1955. “Scholastic Economics: Survival and Lasting Influence from the Sixteenth Century to Adam Smith.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 64: 61–90.Google Scholar
DeRoover, Bernard. 1957. “Joseph A. Schumpeter and Scholastic Economics.” Kyklos 10: 115–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DeRoover, Bernard. 1958. “The Concept of the Just Price: Theory and Economic Policy.” Journal of Economic History 18: 418–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DeRoover, Bernard. 1963. The Rise and Decline of the Medici Bank, 1397–1494. New York: W. W. Norton, 1966.Google Scholar
DeRoover, Bernard. 1967. San Bernardino of Siena and Sant'Antonino of Florence: The Two Great Economic Thinkers of the Middle Ages. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration.Google Scholar
DeRoover, Bernard. 1968. “Labour Conditions in Florence Around 1400: Theory, Policy and Reality.” In Rubenstein, N, ed., Florentine Studies: Politics and Society in Renaissance Florence. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.Google Scholar
DeRoover, Bernard. 1974. “The Scholastic Attitude Toward Trade and Entrepreneurship.” In Kirshner, J., ed., Business, Banking, and Economic Thought in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Ekelund, Robert B., Hébert, Robert, Tollison, Robert D., Anderson, Gary, and Davidson, Audrey B.. 1996. Sacred Trust: The Medieval Church as an Economic Firm. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Epstein, Steven. A. 1991. “The Theory and Practice of the Just Wage.” Journal of Medieval History 17: 53–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Firey, Abigail. 1998. “‘For I Was Hungry and You Fed Me’: Social Justice and Economic Thought in the Latin Patristic and Medieval Christian Traditions.” In Lowry, S. T. and Gordon, B., eds., Ancient and Medieval Economic Ideas and Concepts of Social Justice. Leiden, The Netherlands: E. J. Brill, pp. 333–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foster, Herbert. D. 1908. “Calvin's Programme for a Puritan State in Geneva, 1536–1541.” Harvard Theological Review 1: 391–434.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Friedman, David. 1980. “In Defense of Thomas Aquinas and the Just Price.” History of Political Economy 12: 234–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gordon, Barry. 1975. Economic Analysis Before Adam Smith: Hesiod to Lessius. London: Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Graham, W. Fred. 1971. The Constructive Revolutionary: John Calvin and His Socio-Economic Impact. Atlanta, GA: John Knox Press, 1978.Google Scholar
Grassby, Richard. 1999. The Idea of Capitalism Before the Industrial Revolution. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
Grice-Hutchinson, Marjorie 1978. Early Economic Thought in Spain, 1177–1740. London: George Allen & Unwin.Google Scholar
Kaye, Joel. 1998a. Economy and Nature in the Fourteenth Century: Money, Market Exchange and the Emergence of Scientific Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaye, Joel. 1998b. “Monetary and Market Consciousness in Thirteenth and Fourteenth Century Europe.” In Lowry, S. T. and Gordon, B., eds., Ancient and Medieval Economic Ideas and Concepts of Social Justice. Leiden, The Netherlands: E. J. Brill, pp. 371–403.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kingdon, Robert. M. 1975. “Was the Protestant Reformation a Revolution? The Case of Geneva.” In Baker, D., ed., Church, Society and State. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 203–22.Google Scholar
Langholm, Odd. 1992. Economics in the Medieval Schools: Exchange, Value, Money, and Usury According to the Paris Theological Tradition 1200–1350. Leiden, The Netherlands: E. J. Brill.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Langholm, Odd. 1998a. The Legacy of Scholasticism in Economic Thought: Antecedents of Choice and Power. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Langholm, Odd. 1998b. “The Medieval Schoolmen (1200–1400).” In Lowry, S. T. and Gordon, B., eds., Ancient and Medieval Economic Ideas and Concepts of Social Justice. Leiden, The Netherlands: E. J. Brill, pp. 439–502.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lessnoff, Michael. H. 1994. The Spirit of Capitalism and the Protestant Ethic: An Inquiry Into the Weber Thesis. Aldershot, UK: Edward Elgar.Google Scholar
Lowry, S. Todd. 1994. “The Market as a Distributive and Allocative System: Its Legal, Ethical, and Analytical Evolution.” In Higgling: Transactors and Their Markets in the History of Economics. History of Political Economy 26 (Supplement): 25–46.Google Scholar
Lowry, S. Todd, and Gordon, Barry. 1998. “Introduction.” In Lowry, S. T. and Gordon, B., eds., Ancient and Medieval Economic Ideas and Concepts of Social Justice. Leiden, The Netherlands: E. J. Brill, pp. 1–10.Google Scholar
Luther, Martin. 1520. “To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation Concerning the Reform of the Christian Estate, 1520.” In Luther's Works: The Christian in Society (I), translated by Jacobs, C. M.. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966.Google Scholar
Luther, Martin. 1524. “Trade and Usury, 1524.” In Luther's Works: The Christian in Society (II), translated by Jacobs, C. M.. Philadelphia: Muhlenburg Press, 1962.Google Scholar
Luther, Martin. 1528. Luther's Works: Sermons, translated by Doberstein, J. W.. Philadelphia, PA: Muhlenburg Press, 1959.Google Scholar
MacKinnon, Malcolm. H. 1993. “The Longevity of the Thesis A Critique of the Critics.” In Lehmann, H. and Roth, G., eds., Weber's Protestant Ethic: Origins, Evidence, Contexts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
McGovern, John. T. 1970. “The Rise of New Economic Attitudes—Economic Humanism, Economic Nationalism—During the Later Middle Ages and the Renaissance, A.D. 1200–1550.” Traditio 26: 217–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nitsch, Thomas O. 1998. “Social Justice: The New-Testament Perspective.” In Lowry, S. T. and Gordon, B., eds., Ancient and Medieval Economic Ideas and Concepts of Social Justice. Leiden, The Netherlands: E. J. Brill, pp. 147–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Noell, Edd. S. 1995. “Smith on Economic Justice in the Labor Market.” Journal of the History of Economic Thought 17: 228–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Noell, Edd. S. 1998. “Bargaining, Consent and the Just Wage in the Sources of Scholastic Economic Thought.” Journal of the History of Economic Thought 20: 467–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
North, Gary. 1975. “The Economic Thought of Luther and Calvin.” Journal of Christian Reconstruction 2: 76–108.Google Scholar
Novak, Michael. 1993. The Catholic Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
O'Brien, George. 1920. An Essay on Medieval Economic Teaching. New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1967.Google Scholar
Origo, Iris. 1962. The World of San Bernardino. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World.Google Scholar
Robertson, Hector. M. 1933. Aspects of the Rise of Economic Individualism: A Critique of Max Weber and His School. Clifton, NJ: Augustus M. Kelley, 1973.Google Scholar
Rothbard, Murray. 1995. An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought, Vol. 1: Economic Thought Before Adam Smith. Aldershot, UK: Edward Elgar.Google Scholar
Schumpeter, Joseph. A. 1954. History of Economic Analysis. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Tawney, Richard. H. 1926. Religion and the Rise of Capitalism. Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1962.Google Scholar
Weber, Max. 1904–1905. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, translated by Parsons, T.. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1958.Google Scholar
Worland, Stephen. T. 1977. “Justum Pretium: One More Round in an Endless Series.” History of Political Economy 9: 504–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Worland, Stephen. T. 1981. “Exploitative Capitalism: The Natural-Law Perspective.” Social Research 48: 277–305.Google Scholar
Young, Jeffrey. T. and Gordon, Barry. 1992. “Economic Justice in the Natural Law Tradition: Thomas Aquinas to Francis Hutcheson.” Journal of the History of Economic Thought. 14: 1–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar