ENGLISH books on medieval monetary theory being few and far between, the following outline of the subject is intended to help students who do not read French or German easily. It need hardly be said that many of the ideas noted here as ‘medieval’ must, in fact, be even older, and others have far outlived the Middle Ages. Some particularly persistent doctrines appear to have been handed down intact from writer to writer until our own day and still leave their mark in our text-books.

THE MEN

IF in most parts of Europe the old scholastic tradition had nearly died away by the middle of the sixteenth century, in Spain it was not until this time that it bore its finest fruits. The work of the theologians and jurists who brought fame to the Spanish universities is thoroughly scholastic in form. The full panoply of Questions, Articles, Objections, Distinctions, Solutions, and Conclusions is unsparingly displayed. Every utterance is checked against Aristotle and St.

THE work of the Spanish School in the second half of the sixteenth century marked the St. Martin’s summer of scholasticism. Henceforth the medieval conception of learning as a small group of arts and sciences with theology at their head was to be discarded for ever. Knowledge branched out into innumerable disciplines which came to be more and more clearly separated and defined. The process was a slow one, and for a long time there was confusion and overlapping.

CHAPTER 2

Of the Just Price

pp. xxvii–xxviii

EXTRACT from a Report drawn up in 1530 by the merchants of Antwerp and placed before the Doctors of the University of Paris, in which the merchants ask for guidance on certain cases of conscience concerning the exchanges. The full Report is printed by J. A. Goris, Études sur les colonies marchandes méridionales à Anvers de 1488 à 1567 (1925), pp. 510-45.

Extract from a royal pragmatic of 1598 condemning dry exchange

… And we likewise condemn as dry exchange subject to the said penalties all transactions in which the party who takes the money in exchange has no money, credit, or correspondent of his own in the markets and places outside our realm for which he takes the money, and in which it is agreed at the time of the contract that the money may be retained for the period of several fairs ahead to the prejudice of the party who takes it, and that the interest falling due at the first fair be added to the principal

THE older writers in the following list will be found useful for the history of both facts and doctrines. The titles of the more recent works will in most cases show clearly enough to which aspect of our subject they refer. I have therefore not distinguished between books on economic history and books on the history of ideas.

BARTOLOMÉ DE ALBORNOZ. Arte de los contratos. Valencia, 1573.

LUIS DE ALCALÁ. Tratado de los préstamos que passan entre mercaderes y tractantes. Toledo, 1543.

Abornoz, Bartolomé de, 46, 49, 57.

Albertus Magnus, 26, 30.

Alcalá, Luís de, 4 n.

Alphonsus, St. (of Liguori), 71.

Angell, J. W., 53 n.

Antonino, St. (of Florence), 37–38.

Aristotle, on origin and functions of money, 19–22 ; on value, 25, 26; 35, 61, 65.

Augustine, St., 25, 65, 71.

Averroes, 22.

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