Les Marchands et le Temple
Todeschini, G., Piketty, T., Giordano, I., & Arnoux, M. (2017). Les Marchands et le Temple: La société chrétienne et le cercle vertueux de la richesse du Moyen Âge à l’Époque moderne. Albin Michel. 466 pp.
Abstract
The Christian Middle Ages, hostile to money, is often believed to have had no economic thought, as such ideas could only emerge in the secularized world enabled by the Reformation. But what if this widely disseminated belief is false? What if economic processes were at the heart of medieval thought? Listening to monks, bishops, mendicant friars, and academics, Giacomo Todeschini explores the pathways of European thought from Antiquity to the modern era, uncovering an intellectual world deeply engaged with the spiritual, moral, and political questions posed by the circulation of wealth, its creation, distribution, use, and control. The Christian economy he reveals, with its controversies and consensuses, permeates the entire life of the community of the faithful and contributes to the dynamics of exclusion (of Jews, heretics, and the poor) that shaped European society, imbuing it with both solidarity and brutality. This work illuminates the deep connections that united religion and economy, material wealth and spirituality, in medieval societies. In doing so, it speaks to all those seeking to understand why and how an “economic science” was born.
CHSC library reference: 25-6 -32