this doctrine from the standpoint of economic thought or, conceivably,
also from the standpoint of a philosophical interpretation of analytic
procedures, there is nothing in it that concerns these analytic procedures
themselves: the rest of the book will establish this point. Just now we are
interested merely in showing that Universalism and Individualism have
nothing to do with scholastic Realism and Nominalism. Universalism as
opposed to Individualism means that ‘social collectives,’ such as society,
nation, church, and the like, are conceptually prior to their individual
members; that the former are the really relevant entities with which the
social sciences have to deal; that the latter are but the products of the
former; hence that analysis must work from the collectives and not from
individual behavior. If, then, we choose to call these collectives
sociological universals, then the doctrine in question may indeed be said
to oppose universals to individuals. But scholastic Realism opposed
universals to individuals in quite a different sense. If I were to adopt
scholastic Realism, then my idea of, say, society would claim logical
precedence over any individual empirical society that I observe but not
over individual men; the idea of these men would be another universal in
the scholastic sense, claiming logical precedence over the empirical indi-
viduals. Manifestly, this would imply nothing about either the relation
between the two scholastic universals or the relation between any
empirical society (a universal in the sense of universalist doctrine) and the
empirical individuals comprising it. In particular, I could in this case still
be as strong an individualist, politically or in any other sense, as I please.
The opposite opinion is thus seen to rest on nothing but an error induced
by the double meaning attached to ‘universal’ and ‘individual.’
5

II. In surveying the history of civilizations, we sometimes speak of
objective and subjective cases. By an objective civilization we mean the
civilization of a society in which every individual stands in his appointed

niche and is subject, without reference to his tastes, to superindividual
rules; a society that recognizes as universally binding a given ethical and
religious code; a society in which art is standardized and all creative
activity both expresses and serves superindividual ideals. By a subjective
civilization we mean a civilization that displays the opposite
characteristics; in which society serves the individual and not the other
way round; in short, a society that turns upon, and implements, subjective
tastes and allows everyone to build his own system of cultural values. We




5
By the same token, we must not label Abelard as individualist on the ground that
he seems to have coined the phrase: nihil est praeter individuum.



History of economic analysis 82


need not enter into the general question of the analytic standing of such
schemes. But we are concerned with the sweeping assertion so often met
with that, in the sense explained, medieval civilization was objective and
modern civilization is (or until recently was) subjective or individualist,
because this touches, or may be supposed to touch, upon the ‘spirit’ in
which people conducted or conduct their economic analysis. There cannot
be any doubt that some of the characteristics fit—religious life in the age
of ‘One God, One Church,’ as compared to religious life in the age of
hundreds of denominations, is the standard example. But neither can there

be any doubt that as a whole those abstract pictures are ludicrously
inadequate. Is it possible to imagine a fiercer individualist than a knight?
Did not the whole trouble that medieval civilization experienced with
military and political management (and which largely accounts for its
failures) arise precisely from this fact? And is the member of a modern
labor union or the mechanized farmer of today really so much more of an
individualist than was the medieval member of a craft guild or the
medieval peasant? Therefore, the reader should not be shocked to learn
that the individualist streak in medieval thought also was much stronger
than is commonly supposed. This is true, both in the sense that opinion
was much more differentiated individually and in the sense that the
individual phenomenon and (in speculations about society) the individual
man were much more carefully attended to than we are apt to think.
Scholastic sociology and economics, in particular, are strictly
individualist, if we understand this to mean that the doctors, so far as they
aimed at description and explanation of economic facts, started invariably
from the indi-vidual’s tastes and behavior. That they applied
superindividual canons of justice to these facts is not relevant to the
logical nature of their analysis; but even these canons were derived from a
moral schema in which the individual was an end in himself and the
central idea of which was the salvation of individual souls.
[(b) The Thirteenth Century.]
Our second period, speaking roughly, covers the thirteenth century. There is justification
for calling it the classic period of scholasticism so far as theology and philosophy are
concerned. Theological and philosophical thought was indeed not only revolutionized but
also consolidated into a new system that was all that the term Classic implies. Chiefly,
this revolution was the work of Grosseteste, Alexander of Hales, St. Bonaventura, and
Duns Scotus (Franciscan school) on the one hand, and of Albertus Magnus and his
disciple, St. Thomas (Dominican school), on the other. The consolidation, that is, the
creation of the classic system, was the towering achievement of St. Thomas alone. But in

other respects, there was only revolution and no consolidation. That century, indeed, gave
birth to scholastic science as distinguished from theology and philosophy; it produced
work that initiated and laid the foundations for further work, but it did not establish
The scholastic doctors and the philosophers 83
anything beyond starting points. This holds for the social as well as for the physical
sciences. It should be particularly noticed that, as the example of Grosseteste shows,
interest in mathematical and physical research was widespread even among men who did
no such research themselves. Roger Bacon was a peak, but not a solitary peak; and plenty
of men, without and within the Franciscan order, stood ready to go on in his line of
advance. The reason why this does not stand out as it should is that the scholastic
physicists and mathematicians of the subsequent four centuries tended to become
specialists in their particular fields and their scholastic background is easily lost from
sight. For instance, we look upon Francesco Cavalieri (1598–1647) simply as a great
mathematician. It does not occur to us to associate the origins of the integral calculus
with scholasticism in general or with the Jesuit order in particular, though as a matter of
fact Cavalieri was the product of both.
6

In itself, that theologico-philosophical revolution is no concern of ours. But one aspect
of it is of considerable importance for the history of sociological and economic analysis,
namely, the resurrection of Aristotelian thought. During the twelfth century more
complete knowledge of Aristotle’s writings filtered slowly into the intellectual world of
western Christianity, partly through Semite mediation, Arab and Jewish.
7
To the
scholastic doctors this meant two things. First, Arab mediation meant Arab interpretation,
which was unacceptable to them in some matters of epistemology as well as of theology.
Second, access to Aristotle’s thought immensely facilitated the gigantic task before them
not only in metaphysics, where they had to break new paths, but also in the physical and
social sciences, where they had to start from little or nothing.

The reader will observe that I do not assign to the recovery of Aristotle’s
writings the role of chief cause of thirteenth-century developments. Such
developments are never induced solely by an influence from outside.
Aristotle came in, as a powerful ally, to help and to provide implements.
But perception of the task and the will to rush forward were, of course,
there independently of him. An analogy will clear up this point. We have
had occasion to refer to the partial adoption or ‘reception’ of the Corpus
juris civilis in the later Middle Ages and the Renaissance. This
phenomenon cannot be causally explained by a lucky discovery of a few
old volumes coupled with the naïve belief of uncritical minds that these
volumes contained legal material that was still in force. The economic
process was evolving patterns of life that called for legal forms, especially
for a system of contracts, of the type that the Roman jurists had worked
out. There can be no doubt but that the lawyers of the Middle Ages would
6
Roger Bacon (1214?–92), the doctor mirabilis of scholastic tradition, affords another case that
illustrates the nature and the causes of the troubles that were experienced by some eminent
physicists. He was still more aggressive than was Galileo 400 years later. In all ages people react
unfavorably to being called fools. In rough ages they react roughly.
7
Avicenna (Ibn Sina, 980–1037), the Arab physician-philosopher, and Averroës (Ibn Rushd, 1126–
98), the lawyer-philosopher of Cordoba, and Moses Maimonides (1135–1204) the Hebrew
theologian-philosopher (especially his Guide of the Perplexed, English trans. by Friedländer, 1881–
5) should be mentioned in this connection. The problem of reconciling Aristotle’s teaching with
History of economic analysis 84
Hebrew theology presented itself to Maimonides in much the same manner as the analogous
problem presented itself to the Christian doctors.

have eventually worked out similar forms for themselves. The Roman law
came in usefully, not because it brought something that was foreign to the

spirit and needs of the age—so far as it did this, its reception was in fact
an unmitigated nuisance—but precisely because it presented, ready made,
what without it would have had to be produced laboriously. Similarly, the
‘reception’ of Aristotle’s teaching was principally a most important time-
and labor-saving device, particularly in those fields that were as yet waste
lands. It is in this light—and not in the light of the theory that there was
passive acceptance of a lucky discovery—that we must see the relation
between Aristotelism and scholasticism.
But so soon as the scholastic doctors realized that in Aristotle’s
writings they had all, or nearly all, they could hope for at the moment and
that with the help of his doctrines they might accomplish what it would
have cost them a century’s work to do by themselves, they naturally made
the most of this opportunity. Aristotle became for them the philosopher,
the universal teacher, and most of their work took the form of expounding
him to students and to the public at large, and of commenting upon him.
Moreover, his writings served admirably for didactic purposes since they
were in fact summarizing and systematizing textbooks. In consequence, it
was in the role of expounders of, and commentators on, Aristotelian
doctrine that Grosseteste, Albertus Magnus, and the other leaders
mentioned above appeared to the public of their own and of later times.
St. Thomas himself became, for many people, simply the man who had
succeeded in harnessing Aristotle for the service of the Church. This
misconception of the revolution of the thirteenth century and, in
particular, of St. Thomas’ performance was not corrected but, on the
contrary, was fostered by the scientific practice of the next 300 years. For
Aristotle’s work continued to provide the systematic frame for the
growing scientific material and to supply the need for nicely pedestrian
texts; everything, therefore, continued to be cast in the Aristotelian
mold—nothing so completely as scholastic economics, which also
illustrates the way in which, by this convenient practice, the scholastic

doctors were likely to lose the credit for their original contributions.
This explains not only the otherwise quite incomprehensible success of Aristotelian
teaching through these 300 years but also the penalty the ancient sage was eventually to
pay for this success. We may just as well complete the story which is so full of interest to
the student of the tortuous ways of the human mind. We have seen that there was nothing
in the scholastic system to bar new developments within it or even developments away

The scholastic doctors and the philosophers 85
from the ground taken by its classic works. Descartes’ philosophy may exemplify such a
development.
8
He displayed no hostility to the old scholastic philosophy and, among
other things, accepted St. Anselm’s proof of the existence of God—rejected by St.
Thomas—as the basis of his own theory of the cogito. There is plenty of room for doubt
as to how much this amounts to. But it certainly suffices for speaking of peaceful
evolution from scholastic backgrounds. We have also seen, however, that scholasticism
became a bugbear, as the influence of laical intellectuals asserted itself. And wherever
hostility to scholasticism asserted itself, hostility to Aristotle asserted itself also: because
Aristotelism was the vessel of scholastic thought, hostility to Aristotelism became the
vessel of hostility to the doctors. There were even anti-scholastic and anti-Aristotelian
scholastics of whom Gassendi is the outstanding example.
9
His mathematical and
physical work, entirely neutral in itself, acquired a critical connotation by the way in
which he advocated the cause of experimental—‘empiricist’ or ‘inductive’—methods
rather than by this advocacy as such. In philosophy he replaced the Aristotelian basis
(substantially) by one essentially Epicurean. However, it was of course among the laical
enemies of the Catholic doctors that it became the fashion to represent Aristotle as the
incarnation of old dust and of futility. Paracelsus had Aristotelian books solemnly burned
before starting his medical lectures; Galileo, in the famous dialogue on the heliocentric

system that gave so much offense, made a comic figure of the inept Aristotelian objector;
Francis Bacon, in espousing the cause of ‘inductive’ science, contrasted it with both
scholastic and Aristotelian speculation. All this was unfair to the scholastic doctors. But it
was still more unfair to the old sage. For if there is any general message at all that speaks
to us from his pages, it is surely the message of empirical research.
10
So true is it that, in
science as elsewhere, we fight for and against not men and things as they are, but for and
against the caricatures we make of them.
11
However, let us return to the classic period,
the thirteenth century, in order to search for elements of sociological and economic
analysis.
8
René Descartes (1596–1650). For the purpose in hand, only his Essais philosophiques (1637) is
relevant. He was the mediator between medieval and modern philosophy, and was the product of
Jesuit education.
9
Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655) was a philosopher, mathematician, and physicist, a professor in holy
orders whom, on his actual work, nobody would think of excluding from the scholastic circle. But
he went out of his way to distance himself from it. Of his works those most important for us are:
Exercitationes paradoxicae adversus Aristoteleos (1624); Syntagma philosophiae Epicuri, 1649
(works ed. by Montmort, 1658); see also G.S.Brett, The Philosophy of Gassendi (1908).
10
Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, who called himself Paracelsus (1490?– 1541), was a
physician and chemist of eminence though not without an element of charlatanism. Francis Bacon
(1561–1626; works ed. by Spedding, Ellis, and Heath, 1857–62) presumably needs no introduction.
The tremendous success of his writings—not so much in his day but during the Enlightenment and
then during the nineteenth century—is amply accounted for by the fact that he expressed with
supreme ability what a rapidly increasing number of people actually came to believe. He was the

very type of a ‘representative man.’ But precisely because he was and because in consequence his
figure stands out so clearly, his ideas now seem much more novel and much less in keeping with
previous developments than they were. Therefore, his writings inculcated into the public mind the
unreal contraposition of inductive research and scholasticism in which, along with his
contemporaries, he himself was so fond of believing, the more so because he probably knew very
History of economic analysis 86
little about the work of the scholastics. More than any other individual, he helped to foster the
delusion that to this day distorts the history of thought.
11
Outstanding examples from the history of economics are A.Smith’s criticism of the
‘mercantilists’ and Schmoller’s criticism of the English ‘classics.’ Both cases will be discussed in
their places.

We find small beginnings only—little of sociology, still less of economics. In part this
was doubtless due to lack of interest. St. Thomas, in particular, was indeed interested in
political sociology but all the economic questions put together mattered less to him than
did the smallest point of theological or philosophical doctrine, and it is only where
economic phenomena raise questions of moral theology that he touches upon them at all.
Even where he does we do not feel, as we do elsewhere, that his powerful intellect is all
there, passionately resolved to penetrate into the core of things but rather that he is
writing in obedience to the requirements of systematic completeness. More or less, this
applies to all his contemporaries. In consequence, Aristotle’s teaching sufficed for them
and they hardly ever went beyond it. There was indeed a difference in moral tone and
cultural vision and also a shift of emphasis that is accounted for by the different social
patterns they beheld. But neither is so important as we might have expected. Since these
things are of no great moment in a history of economic analysis, it will suffice to note
that the scholastic doctors looked upon physical labor as a discipline favorable to
Christian virtue and as a means of keeping men from sinning, which implies an attitude
entirely unlike that of Aristotle; that with them slavery was no longer a normal, let alone
fundamental, institution; that they gave their blessings to charity and to voluntary

poverty; that their ideal of a vita contemplativa carried, of course, a meaning that was
quite foreign to Aristotle’s corresponding ideal of life, though there are important
similarities between the two; that they repeated but qualified Aristotle’s views on
commerce and commercial gain.
While all the other points apply to scholastic doctrine of all ages, the one mentioned last
holds fully only for the classic period. After the thirteenth century a significant change
occurred in the attitude of the scholastic doctors to commercial activity. But the
thirteenth-century scholastics undoubtedly held the opinion expressed by St. Thomas,
namely, that there is ‘something base’ about commerce in itself (negotiatio secundum se
considerata quandam turpitudinem habet, Summa II, 2, quaest. LXXVII, art. 4), though
commercial gain might be justified (a) by the necessity of making one’s living; or (b) by
a wish to acquire means for charitable purposes; or (c) by a wish to serve publicam
utilitatem, provided that the lucre be moderate and can be considered as a reward of work
(stipendium laboris); or (d) by an improvement of the thing traded; or (e) by
intertemporal or interlocal differences in its value; or (f) by risk (propter periculum). St.
Thomas’ wording leaves some room for doubt about the conditions in which he was
prepared to admit considerations (d)–(f), and it may be true that others, especially Duns
Scotus (1266–1308) and a doctor whom I have not mentioned so far, Richard of
Middleton (1249–1306), went somewhat further, especially as regards justifying the
social usefulness of the practice of buying in a cheaper market and selling in a dearer one.
However, even qualifications (b) and (c) go beyond Aristotle’s teaching. The emphasis
all these authors place upon the element of remuneration of some socially useful activity
has given rise, on the one hand, to the opinion, which may be correct, that the source of
The scholastic doctors and the philosophers 87
the (moral) ‘right to the produce of one’s labor’ may be found in the scholastic literature,
and, on the other hand, to the error that the scholastic doctors held a (analytic) labor
theory of value, that is, that they explained the phenomenon of value by the fact that
(most) commodities cost labor. For the moment, the reader should only notice that there
is no logical relation between mere emphasis upon the necessity, moral or economic, of
remunerating labor (no matter whether we translate the Latin word by the English ‘labor’

or by ‘activity’ or ‘effort’ or ‘trouble’) and what is technically known as the labor theory
of value.
St. Thomas’ sociology of institutions,
12
political and other, is not what readers will expect
who are in the habit of tracing the political and social doctrines of the nineteenth century
to Locke or to the writers of the French Enlightenment or to the English utilitarians.
Considering that, in this respect, the teaching of St. Thomas not only was representative
of that of his contemporaries but also was accepted by all the scholastic doctors of later
times, its main points should be briefly indicated. There was the sacred precinct of the
Catholic Church. But for the rest, society was treated as a thoroughly human affair, and
moreover, as a mere agglomeration of individuals brought together by their mundane
needs. Government, too, was thought of as arising from and existing for nothing but those
utilitarian purposes that the individuals cannot realize without such an organization. Its
raison d’être was the Public Good. The ruler’s power was derived from the people, as we
may say, by delegation. The people are the sovereign and an unworthy ruler may be
deposed. Duns Scotus came still nearer to adopting a social-contract theory of the state.
13

This mixture of sociological analysis and normative argument is remarkably
individualist, utilitarian, and (in a sense) rationalist, a fact that it is important to
remember in view of the attempt we are going to make to link this body of ideas with the
laical and anti-Catholic political philosophies of the eighteenth century. There is nothing
metaphysical about this part of scholastic doctrine. Nor did the Catholic doctors
countenance political authoritarianism. The divine right of monarchs, in particular, and
the concept of the omnipotent state are creations of the Protestant sponsors of the
absolutist tendencies that were to assert themselves in the national states.
12
Our main source for St. Thomas’ political sociology is a tract entitled De regimine principum,
widely used throughout the Middle Ages, and a letter to a Duchess of Brabant. But only part of the

former is certainly by St. Thomas himself; the rest may be the work of another Dominican, Ptolemy
of Lucca (d. 1327).
13
This theory was not, of course, applied to the government of the Catholic Church. When this was
done by Marsilius of Padua (c. 1270–1342; Defensor pacis, 1326), it spelled heresy. From our
standpoint two observations suggest themselves: first, the case illustrates how implicit acceptance
of supermundane authority in some respects may in practice be complemented by extreme freedom
of thought and action in other respects; second, the case also shows why the question of the
influence of supermundane authority upon analysis cannot be answered once for all, but must be
answered separately for every individual argument. Since too much care cannot be expended on
clearing up this point, let us, by way of supplementing previous argument, introduce the following
tripartite distinction which applies to all authorities that ever did or do attempt to direct opinion.
First, as the case in hand shows, there were matters in which the Catholic Church prescribed
opinion and barred analysis that led to any other results. Second, there were many matters in which,
being indifferent to both opinion and analysis, it did not interfere in any way. Third, there were
History of economic analysis 88
matters (such as interest) in which it prescribed opinion in the sense of moral judgment but did not
bar analysis of facts.


The individualist and utilitarian streak and the emphasis upon a rationally perceived
Public Good run through the whole sociology of St. Thomas. One example will suffice:
the most important one, the theory of property. Having disposed of the theological
aspects of the matter, St. Thomas simply argues that property is not against natural law
but an invention of the human reason,
14
which is justifiable because people will take
better care of what they possess for themselves than of what belongs to many or all;
because they will exert themselves more strenuously on their own account than on
account of others; because the social order will be better preserved if possessions are

distinct, so that there is no occasion for quarreling about the use of things possessed in
common—considerations that attempt to define the social ‘function’ of private property
much as Aristotle had defined them before and much as the nineteenth-century textbook
was to define them afterward. And since he found in Aristotle all he wished to say, he
referred to him and accepted his formulations.
This holds with added force for St. Thomas’ ‘pure economics’ (oeconomia with him
means, however, simply household management). It was embryonic and really consists of
only part of his argument on Just Price (Summa II, 2, quaest. LXXVII, art. 1) and on
Interest (Summa II, 2, quaest. LXXVIII). The relevant part of the argument on just
price—the price that assures the ‘equivalence’ of commutative justice—is strictly
Aristotelian and should be interpreted exactly as we have interpreted Aristotle’s. St.
Thomas was as far as was Aristotle from postulating the existence of a metaphysical or
immutable ‘objective value.’ His quantitas valoris is not something different from price
but is simply normal competitive price. The distinction he seems to make between price
and value is not a distinction between price and some value that is not a price, but a
distinction between the price paid in an individual transaction and the price that
‘consists’ in the public’s evaluation of the commodity (justum pretium…in quadam
aestimatione consistit), which can only mean normal competitive price, or value in the
sense of normal competitive price, where such a price exists.
15
In cases where no such
price exists, St. Thomas recognized, as coming within his concept of just price, the
element of the subjective value of an object to the seller, though not the element of the
subjective value of the object for the buyer—a point that is important for scholastic
treatment of interest. Beyond this he did not go in the article referred to. But other
passages, perhaps, support the opinion that, by implication at least, he did take a step

14 Summa II, 2, quaest. LXVI, art. 2: proprietas possessionum non est contra jus naturale, sed juri
naturali superadditur per adinventionem rationis humanae. On the meaning to be attached to jus
naturale, see next section.

15 This interpretation is supported by the fact that the quaestio, in which the theory of just price is
presented (quaest LXXVII of II, 2) is entitled De fraudulentia and, in fact, mainly deals with frauds
perpetrated by sellers. If the just price were something else than the normal competitive price,
practices other than fraud would be more important. But if St. Thomas was thinking of what we call
normal competitive price, fraud becomes the chief phenomenon to be dealt with. For if there exists
a competitive market price, individual deviations from it are hardly possible except through
fraudulent representations about the quantity and quality of the goods.
The scholastic doctors and the philosophers 89

beyond Aristotle which was more explicitly taken by Duns Scotus, Richard of
Middleton, and possibly others. Duns Scotus, at all events, may be credited with having
related just price to cost, that is, the producers’ or traders’ expenditure of money and
effort (expensae et labores). Though he presumably thought of nothing beyond providing
a more precise criterion of scholastic ‘commutative justice’—which was rightly rejected
by the later scholastics—we must nevertheless credit him with having discovered the
condition of competitive equilibrium which came to be known in the nineteenth century
as the Law of Cost. This is not imputing too much: for if we identify the just price of a
good with its competitive common value, as Duns Scotus certainly did, and if we further
equate that just price to the cost of the good (taking account of risk, as he did not fail to
observe), then we have ipso facto, at least by implication, stated the law of cost not only
as a normative but also as an analytic proposition.
Following Alexander of Hales and Albertus Magnus, St. Thomas condemned interest
as contrary to commutative justice on a ground that proved a conundrum for almost all
his scholastic successors: interest is a price paid for the use of money; but, viewed from
the standpoint of the individual holder, money is consumed in the act of being used;
therefore, like wine, it has no use that could be separated from its substance as has, for
example, a house; therefore charging for its use is charging for something that does not
exist, which is illegitimate (usurious). Whatever may be thought of this argument, which
among other things neglects the possibility that ‘pure’ interest might be an element of the
price of money itself—instead of being a charge for a separable use

16
—one thing is clear:
exactly like the somewhat different Aristotelian argument, it does not bear at all upon the
question why interest is actually paid. Since this question, the only one that is relevant to
economic analysis, was actually raised by the later scholastics, we defer the consideration
of the clues for an answer, which St. Thomas’ reasoning nevertheless suggests.
[(c) From the Fourteenth Century to the Seventeenth.]
The last of the three periods into which we have decided to divide the history of
scholasticism extends from the beginning of the fourteenth century to the first decades of
the seventeenth. It comprises practically the whole of the history of scholastic economics.
But, having already fully explained the setting and the nature of scholastic work, we can
now afford to be brief. In particular, no further explanation seems to be needed for the
ease with which the economics of the doctors absorbed all the phenomena of nascent
capitalism and, in consequence, for the fact that it served so well as a basis of the analytic
work of their successors, not excluding A.Smith.

16
The reason why St. Thomas did not consider this possibility was obviously that he placed
implicit confidence in the proposition that the price of any commodity that is chosen for the
standard of value is unity by definition. Reasoning on from this, we may easily arrive at the
conclusion that any ‘pure’ premium cannot be anything else but a fraudulent charge for a
nonexistent use, since the price of the substance or ‘capital’ must necessarily be equal to the capital
itself.


History of economic analysis 90
In order to achieve the maximum of economy, I shall mention only a very few
representative names and then attempt to draw a systematic sketch of what I conceive the
state of scholastic economics to have been about 1600. Other names, of course, would
have to be mentioned for other purposes; we are artificially narrowing down what was a

very broad and deep stream.
For the fourteenth century we choose Buridanus and Oresmius as representatives.
17

The latter’s treatise on money is usually described as the first
treatise entirely devoted to an economic problem. But it is mainly legal and political in
nature and really does not contain much strictly economic material—in particular,
nothing that was not current doctrine among the scholastics of the time—its chief purpose
being to combat the prevalent practice of debasing money, a topic that was treated later
on in a copious literature to be briefly noticed presently. Our fifteenth-century
representatives will be St. Antonine of Florence, perhaps the first man to whom it is
possible to ascribe a comprehensive vision of the economic process in all its major
aspects, and Biel.
18
For the sixteenth century we select Mercado and, as representatives of
the literature on Justice and Law (De justitia et jure) that in the sixteenth century became
the main scholastic repository of economic material, the three great Jesuits whose works
have been recently analyzed by Professor Dempsey—Lessius, Molina, and de Lugo.
19


17
Joannes Buridanus (Jean Buridan, fl. 1328–58), professor in the University of Paris. Of his many
works, all drawn up on the Aristotelian frame, the most important for us are: Quaestiones in decem
libros Ethicorum Aristotelis (ed. used, 1637) and Quaestiones super octo libros Politocorum
Aristotelis (ed. used with notes by G.Baterel, 1513). His theory of volition (Summula de dialectica,
1487, and Compendium logicae, 1487) led up to the familiar paradox of the logic of choice that is
illustrated by the perfectly rational ass that starves between two equally attractive bundles of hay
owing to his inability to make up his mind which to consume first. Nicole Oresme (1320?–82),
Bishop of Lisieux, was a man of polyhistoric interests who also wrote on theology, mathematics,

and astronomy. The work in question, Tractatus de origine et jure nec nor et de mutationibus
monetarum, was written between 1350 and 1360 (ed. used 1605). An extract is included in
Monroe’s Early Economic Thought, pp. 79–102. After having met with great success in its own
time, it seems to have falllen into oblivion from which it was rescued by F.Meunier, Essai sur la
vie et les ouvrages de Nicole Oresme (1857) and especially by W.Roscher (‘Ein grosser
Nationalökonom des vierzehnten Jahrhunderts’ in Zeitschrift für die gesamte Staatswissenschaft,
1863), who extolled its merits, particularly its originality, beyond all reason, as discoverers of
forgotten worthies are apt to do—which naturally induced a reaction. There is quite a literature on
Oresme. Let us single out C.A.Conigliani, Le dottrine monetarie in Francia durante il medio evo
(1890).
18
St. Antonine (Antonio Pierozzi, also called Forciglioni; 1389–1459), Archbishop of Florence,
Summa theologica (ed. used: for the first and second parts, Lyons, 1516; for the third, Venice,
1477); also Summa moralis (Verona, 1740). See B.Jarrett, S.Antonino and Mediaeval Economics
(1914). Gabriel Biel (1425?–95), professor in the University of Tübingen, another discovery of
Roscher’s (Geschichte der Nationalökonomik in Deutschland, 1874). His Tractatus de potestate et
utilitate monetarum (1541; English trans., 1930) does not, however, contain anything that cannot be
found in earlier writers. Why he should have been called the last of the scholastics I am unable to
understand. But I have chosen him for reference because perusal of his work is particularly
effective in destroying prejudices concerning the spirit of scholasticism. Really more important
seems to be Panormitanus (Nicolaus dei Tedeschi or Tudeschi, Archbishop of Palermo, 1386–
1445) to judge from quotations in the later scholastic literature.
The scholastic doctors and the philosophers 91