The subtitle of this work was not idly chosen: “the two great economic thinkers of the Middle Ages.” It is the key to Professor de Roover’s perceptive appraisal of the economic ideas and views on business ethics of San Bernardino da Siena, O.F.M. (1380-1444) and Sant’Antonino da Firenze, O. P. (1389-1459). His careful setting of these men in their spiritual and secular environments poses the tensions they experienced between dogma and freedom of economic thought. Yet the economic “escape-hatches” which they propounded in their interpretation of the canon emerge as much more propitious for the development of capitalism and Weber, Tawney, and many others have thought.
![San Bernardino of Siena and SantAntonino of Florence](https://cdn.mises.org/styles/responsive_6_9_650w/s3/static-page/img/San%20Bernardino%20of%20Siena%20and%20SantAntonino%20of%20Florence%20The%20Two%20Great%20Economic%20Thinkers%20of%20the%20Middle%20Ages.jpg.webp?itok=qJv4QFP6 650w,https://cdn.mises.org/styles/responsive_6_9_870w/s3/static-page/img/San%20Bernardino%20of%20Siena%20and%20SantAntonino%20of%20Florence%20The%20Two%20Great%20Economic%20Thinkers%20of%20the%20Middle%20Ages.jpg.webp?itok=ez7SnAtw 870w,https://cdn.mises.org/styles/responsive_6_9_1090w/s3/static-page/img/San%20Bernardino%20of%20Siena%20and%20SantAntonino%20of%20Florence%20The%20Two%20Great%20Economic%20Thinkers%20of%20the%20Middle%20Ages.jpg.webp?itok=Ck0QEPvH 1090w,https://cdn.mises.org/styles/responsive_6_9_1310w/s3/static-page/img/San%20Bernardino%20of%20Siena%20and%20SantAntonino%20of%20Florence%20The%20Two%20Great%20Economic%20Thinkers%20of%20the%20Middle%20Ages.jpg.webp?itok=NWLYC_9m 1310w,https://cdn.mises.org/styles/responsive_6_9_1530w/s3/static-page/img/San%20Bernardino%20of%20Siena%20and%20SantAntonino%20of%20Florence%20The%20Two%20Great%20Economic%20Thinkers%20of%20the%20Middle%20Ages.jpg.webp?itok=L14O7ZzE 1530w)
Baker Library, Boston, 1967