THE SCHOOL OF
SALAMANCA

UNIVERSITY OF SALAMANCA
PATIO DE LAS ESCUELAS

THE SCHOOL OF
SALAMANCA

READINGS IN
SPANISH MONETARY THEORY
1544-1605

BY
MARJORIE GRICE-HUTCHINSON

Lecturer in Spanish at Birkbeck College
University of London, 1948 to 1951

OXFORD
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
1952

Oxford University Press, Amen House, London E.C. 4.

GLASGOW NEW YORK TORONTO MELBOURNE WELLINGTON
BOMBAY CALCUTTA MADRAS CAPE TOWN

Geoffrey Cumberlege, Publisher to the University

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I CANNOT, alas, mention by name all those who have helped in the production of this little book. Here, I wish to express my gratitude to Professor Carmelo Viñas y Mey, who first drew my attention to the monetary theory of the School of Salamanca. I am also very greatly indebted to Professor F. A. Hayek and Professor R. S. Sayers for reading my work as it progressed and giving me much valuable help and advice. I have to thank Mr. J. A. Goris for allowing me to quote at length from a document first published by him in full.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

THE UNIVERSITY OF SALAMANCA

DIEGO DE COVARRUBIAS Y LEIVA
Photograph by Moreno, Madrid

MARTÍN DE AZPILCUETA NAVARRO
Photograph by Moreno, Madrid

The printer’s colophon used on the title-page is taken from Cristobal de Villalón’s Provechoso tratado de cambios Photograph by British Museum

‘’TIS vain to look for birds in last year’s nests,’ said Don Quixote. And many economists would feel inclined to agree with him. We have often been warned against the sin of reading our own ideas into the work of older writers—so often, in fact, that earlier economic literature now seems remote from our own ways of thought and no longer holds much interest for us. In any case, the history of doctrine has generally been looked upon as a luxury in this country, and the refinements of modern theory leave less time for it than ever.

AMERICAN TREASURE AND THE PRICE-LEVEL

IF there was one economic lesson which the whole Spanish nation had learned by the middle of the sixteenth century, it was that the value of money is fickle and that gold and silver are not synonymous with wealth, a lesson made all the more bitter by the high hopes that had attended the discovery of the New World a few decades before. The dream of El Dorado had been followed by a harsh awakening.x