Convergences of Private Self-Interest and the Common Good in Medieval Europe: An Overview of Economic Theories, c. 1150–c. 1500

Abstract

The Western Middle Ages witnessed the emergence of a wide array of economic theories of public life and the common good that emphasized the worthiness (indeed priority) of ensuring a satisfactory arrangement of economic goods primarily for the sake of meeting the physical, temporal needs of individuals from all classes and orders. The chapter surveys a plethora of texts, dating from the middle of the twelfth century up to the end of the fifteenth, that considered pragmatic issues related to how the material self-interest of human beings coincided with the augmentation of public wealth within a community, and especially how governmental policies promoted or hampered the goal of personal economic improvement. Despite the diversity of and occasional discordance among these writings, all of them fundamentally agree on two interrelated points: (1) the pursuit of material self-interest, rather than conflicting with or detracting from the common good, actually supports and enhances it; (2) the responsibility of government to promote the public welfare requires paying careful attention to the protection and promotion of private advantage.

1 Introduction

In modern liberal political discourse, the phrase “common good” is entirely anathema except perhaps as a short-hand designation for the sum total of individual interests. Anything more smacks of holistic foundationalism that grates against the value pluralism that liberal thinkers of all stripes embrace.¹ The priority of individuals renders the common good in any strong sense a threat to their dignity and autonomy.

By contrast, the idea of the common good permeated political thought throughout the European Middle Ages. Many years ago, I. Th. Eschmann documented 30 or so Latin words he identified in scholastic writings that convey the concept.² Addressing specifically the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, but enunciating a precept broadly applicable during the Middle Ages, Matthew Kempshall points to the subsumption of the individual to the community on moral grounds: “The more moral goodness is stressed, the more the common good of the political community is said to include the individual human being and the more the reservation of a private sphere of activity for the individual effectively disappears.”³ This might not entail the complete obliteration of the personal realm, but it certainly seems to confine it to a narrowly constrained sphere. Even if we acknowledge that these generalizations admit of occasional minor exceptions, the impression left by John Rawls’s insistence on the “authoritarian” nature of medieval Christianity and its consequent denial of individual liberty remains a steadfast mainstay of contemporary intellectual historiography.⁴

Drawing a stark contrast between the common good and private self-interest ill-comports, however, with the on-the-ground realities of the Middle Ages. Between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, European economic life underwent a dramatic transformation. The historical threshold crossed after 1100 may be characterized by three key factors. First, market relations became a central feature of the social structures of the Latin Middle Ages, generating what Robert Lopez many years ago proclaimed to be a “commercial revolution”.⁵ Among the tokens of this revolution were the increased circulation of coinage, the expansion of long-distance trade, the formation of national markets, the emergence of systems of credit and banking, and the rising prominence of cities. Second, the period witnessed an expansion of technological development and improved productivity without precedent in Europe, running parallel to patterns of demographic growth and the extension of arable land. Agricultural management yielded levels of fertility (and wealth) that were previously unimaginable.⁶ Finally, political and legal institutions capable of regulating and directing economic resources on a larger scale appeared rapidly after 1100. Government – whether in the form of kings and other territorial lords or of urban communes – received recognition as an important agent of economic administration and also as a beneficiary (through taxes, customs, and duties) of a vigorous economy.⁷ Although the emergence of these phenomena was by no means uniform or unilateral, Europe in 1600 was a very different place economically – and also politically, legally, and socially – than it had been 500 years earlier.

Such burgeoning economic circumstances might seem ripe for a backlash on the part of Christian moralists adopting a traditional viewpoint that the common good, spiritual as well as temporal, would be undermined by a newly enriched society. Grasping for personal profit would corrupt the priorities of moral virtue and piety that must guide the Respublica Christiana. Private interest in material improvement that impeded the salvation of souls ought to be discouraged at every turn.

Certainly, this position was widely disseminated. Canon lawyers expressed deep concern about the spiritual consequences of economic enterprise. Wherever the self-interested pursuit of private profit was deemed to endanger Christians’ focus on the heavenly life to come, canonists sought to legislate economic intercourse.⁸ Likewise, theologians and preachers, reacting to the currents of economic change, expressed similar concerns. They devoted considerable effort to advocating for the control of usury and attendant impermissible practices on the grounds that these constituted threats to the supernatural beatitude of those who engaged in them. Such teachings enjoyed wide currency among preachers, as revealed by a number of extant sermons that echo the prohibitions on identical bases.⁹ Moreover, princes were proffered advice concerning the fiscal management of their realms – including taxation and coinage – always with an eye to the impact of public conduct on personal salvation.¹⁰ The gist of the message was that the common good – both earthly and immortal – of Christians was profoundly imperiled by the pursuit of economic enterprise for the sake of private gain.

Whatever the plaints of canon lawyers, theologians, and preachers, however, it is a broad and inaccurate caricature to maintain that medieval thinkers were monolithically and implacably opposed to self-interest as an affront to virtue and piety and thus deleterious to the common good. In the present chapter, I identify the emergence of an approach to the study of economic questions during the European Middle Ages that we might term “political economy”. By political economy, I mean, most generally, the investigation of the “wealth of nations” as a pursuit that is worthy in itself. Adam Smith (1723–1790) defined political economy broadly in The Wealth of Nations as comprising “two distinct objects; first, to provide a plentiful revenue or subsistence for the people […] and secondly, to supply the state or commonwealth with a revenue sufficient for the publick services”.¹¹ Political economy, thus understood, “is policy oriented and hence political, designed to make recommendations for governmental action in respect to economic matters. It is concerned with the functions of state and government, conceived of either positively or negatively, in contributing to the wealth of nations”.¹² Political economy encompasses all issues raised by the relationship between the private accumulation of wealth and the public good, touching on topics ranging from taxation and government regulation of the economy to the promotion of economic opportunity within the marketplace. Its avowed purpose is to pinpoint policies most likely to encourage the greatest wealth among community members and to offer practical advice for its realization. In sum, the desire for material improvement need not conflict with – indeed, it enhances – the common good.

The origins of political economy are conventionally associated with the work of the French physiocrats and especially with Smith. Indeed, John Pocock reproves those who would apply the term “political economy” to designate any economic theory prior to the eighteenth century.¹³ Pocock’s admonition notwithstanding, I propose that political economy was not the invention of the early modern period at all. Rather, the Middle Ages witnessed the emergence of economic theories of public life of precisely the sort that meet all the criteria just stated. That is, one may find a discernible strain in medieval thought that emphasized the worthiness of ensuring a satisfactory arrangement of economic goods primarily for the sake of meeting the physical, temporal needs of individuals of all classes and orders. On this terrain may be located the primordial well-spring of political economy and of an economic approach to politics.

In this chapter, I support these general claims by surveying an array of authors and texts (presented in chronological order), stretching from the middle of the twelfth century to the end of the fifteenth. Some of the thinkers examined are churchmen (John of Salisbury, James of Viterbo), some are connected to government (Brunetto Latini, Christine de Pizan, John Fortescue), and some are academics (Marsiglio of Padua, Nicole Oresme). The discourses they employ are extremely divergent, and the conclusions they reach are often discordant. Nevertheless, all of them may plausibly be counted among contributors to the development of political economy during the Middle Ages, inasmuch as they bring together elements of the interplay between economics and politics.

2 John of Salisbury

John of Salisbury (1115/20–1180), an English churchman and philosopher, is best known for his Policraticus (completed in 1159), a philosophically pragmatic, wide-ranging meditation on the good life. Of importance here are the discussions contained therein of the body politic and of the government’s role in promoting its economic well-being. While earlier classical and Christian authors had reviled the mechanical arts (i.e., the production of goods) as demeaning and incompatible with wisdom and civic virtue, the 1100s witnessed the appearance of a definite strand of philosophical thought that acknowledged the honourable and uplifting effects of human labour on both social order and individual character. In the Policraticus, John of Salisbury articulates this appreciation by integrating the mechanical arts into his famous metaphor of the body politic: he compares the ruler to the head, the senate (counselors) to the heart, the judges and proconsuls to the senses, the hands and arms to tax collectors and soldiers, the royal household servants to the flanks, the fiscal officers to the stomach and intestines, and, notably, the peasants and artisans to the feet.¹⁴ (Because John analogizes the clergy to the soul, their economic role is limited to encouraging the king to rule in accordance with Christian virtue.) John then details the duties associated with these functions, each of which is deemed necessary for a healthy political community. He explains how these tasks stand in a necessary relation to the whole, stressing the reciprocal character of the well-ordered body.

John grounds his inclusive deployment of the organic metaphor by reference to the natural order, wherein many parts constitute a whole. He thus embraces the participation of all social classes in the life of the community, including

[…] the feet who discharge the humbler offices […] the husbandmen, […] the many species of cloth-making and the mechanical arts, which work in wood, iron, bronze, and the different metals; also the menial occupations, and the manifold forms of making a livelihood […] all of which […] are yet in the highest degree useful and advantageous to the corporate whole of the community.¹⁵

For John, peasants and artisans must be accounted as part of the political community because “it is they who raise, sustain, and move forward the weight of the entire body. Take away the support of the feet from the strongest body, and it cannot move forward by its own power […]”.¹⁶ Inasmuch as the practitioners of the mechanical arts confer dignity, not to mention material well-being, upon society, they deserve to be accorded a full place in it. The naturalism that supports John’s inclusive vision of community involves a profound normative dimension to the regulation of social order, including economic practice. Simply stated, nature has licensed the production and circulation of goods – the fruits of the mechanical arts – but only for the advantage of all the individual members of the communal body. The pointed omission of the merchant class from John’s ideal political body reflects his preference for a wholesale (direct) economy and his concomitant disdain for retail (indirect) enterprise (as well as for purely financial transactions).

At the same time, however, John accepts the realities of the monetized economy and of commerce that had taken root in Europe, particularly with regard to the role of government. He recognizes that the king’s interests are best served when the property of subjects is protected and their wealth augmented. This conclusion derives from the communal and reciprocal structure of property holding posited in the Policraticus: neither king nor subjects are true owners of their goods in the modern sense, that is, as individual, private, and independent proprietors. The king is merely a steward who “will not therefore regard as his own the wealth of which he has custody for the account of others, nor will he treat as private the property of the fisc, which is acknowledged to be public”.¹⁷ Hence, the royal charge is to respect and defend the rights and liberties of his subjects, such that “each receives on the basis of his worth the resources of nature and the product of his own labor and industry”.¹⁸ When every person possesses what nature has determined that he deserves, according to his contribution to the whole, justice is done and the health and welfare of the body are preserved.

John also realizes that the king’s position requires him to possess wealth adequate to his many vitally important tasks.¹⁹ His income is to be cheerfully provided by his subjects to meet his needs, since the members of the body require the protection that he uniquely provides. In this regard, the principle of reciprocity ensures that the ruler who defends his realm will have the resources at hand to perform his proper functions. Just as the king is a fiscal steward, so too

the provincials are like tenants by superfices – that is, their land is not their own, hence neither are the buildings and other improvements on it – and when the advantage of the ruling power requires, they are not so much owners of their possessions as mere custodians. But if there is no such pressure of necessity, then the goods of the provincials are their own […].²⁰

For the very reason, then, that the king must depend for his own income upon the economic health of his people, he must carefully guard against their maltreatment by magistrates. When the king fails to control his agents, he injures his own well-being by exhausting “the whole strength of the republic”, as well as eventually succumbing to poverty and rendering himself hateful to his subjects.²¹ Thus, in John’s conception, the reciprocal nature of the political community entails a reciprocal economic duty of care and distribution.

3 Brunetto Latini

Li Livres dou Tresor (The Books of Treasure) by Brunetto Latini (1220–1294), completed c. 1265, is a long and eclectic work that was widely read and adapted throughout the Middle Ages. Knitted together out of a diverse array of source materials, the topics covered include speculative wisdom, religion, human history and the natural world, ethics, and, most important for present concerns, the art of government. Latini himself was a Florentine civil servant who was driven to exile in France amid the cutthroat conflicts of the era. Given his background, his effusive praise for public affairs is perhaps not so surprising: “Politics […] without doubt is the highest wisdom and most noble profession that there is among men, for it teaches us to govern others […] according to reason and justice”.²² The “art of government” holds this special and vaunted place because, Latini contends, the main goal of politics must be to support and promote the peaceful flourishing of the disparate arts and trades that exist within a community. In Latini’s view, the diversity of human arts constitutes a crucial foundation for communal life.²³ He observes that both the natural inclination of men toward association and the common weal of citizens in a community require the production and exchange of myriad goods that aid in the material well-being of all. “If a man needs something another person has, he receives it and gives him his reward and his payment according to the quality of the thing”, Latini insists.²⁴

Latini’s paradigm of social order is consequently a fully functioning free and open market in which commercial activity facilitates the material benefit of all. Notice in this connection the extent to which he valorizes occupations that had customarily been reviled as demeaning, such as manual labourers (“mechanics”) and merchants. The rights of citizenship accrue by virtue of the contributions made to the physical improvement of the community.²⁵ The universal desire for profit cements the communal order: “There is a common thing that is loved, through which they arrange and confirm their business, and that is gold and silver.”²⁶ Seeking one’s self-interest is neither inherently antithetical to citizenship for Latini, nor is it necessarily destructive of the public welfare. Indeed, he appears to define the communal advantage at least partially in terms of expanding personal gain.

Yet Latini is by no means unmindful of the potentially deleterious effects of the pursuit of private advantage. He asserts that “if to obtain gain we are willing to despoil and use force against another, it follows that the company of men, which is according to nature, is dissolved”.²⁷ The greatest threat to communal order, somewhat ironically, stems from the very diversity of human capacities that makes civic life necessary and profitable. Since human beings possess divergent interests and pursue them in ways that may come into conflict, the great benefit that accrues to them when they share and cooperate always remains under threat. Latini accordingly stresses the need for a principle of justice to mediate between individuals who, left to their own devices, would injure one another. Without the mediating force of justice in economic intercourse, individuals who stand to profit from mutual service may nevertheless be tempted to cheat, steal, or otherwise take advantage of others and thus to destroy the bonds of social and political community.

Latini locates one source of justice, broadly speaking, in the self-regulatory functioning of the market itself, by means of the balancing he claims is performed by the medium of money.²⁸ He acknowledges, however, that commercial intercourse must be supplemented by a statutory system enforced by an efficient executor.²⁹ The origin of government, as of money, stems primarily from abuse on the part of otherwise unregulated proprietors, those who, motivated by “evil desires”, committed “evil deeds which went unpunished”, as a consequence of which “a governor was chosen for the people with several duties”.³⁰ Principal among a magistrate’s duties are to “watch over the common good, […] maintain both outsiders and insiders, and […] respect the property and persons of all people in such a way that justice would not decrease in our city”.³¹ Thus, the justice of a magistrate’s administration coordinates directly with the prosperity of the civic body.³²

In addition to the government’s law enforcement function, the Tresor enumerates various economic management duties of public officials that stem from the government’s direct effects on the productive and commercial condition of the populace. Not only must the ruler exercise care that the public treasury is not squandered,³³ as chief financial officer, he is also broadly charged with ensuring the maintenance of

the rights of the commune, the taxes, jurisdictions, lordships, castles, cities, houses, courts, officials, public squares, highways, roads […] in such a way that the honor and profit of the city are not diminished, but rather they should increase and grow better in time.³⁴

This equation of just government with sound fiscal management runs throughout Latini’s advice about the responsibilities of rulership. Toward this end, Latini offers numerous quite specific suggestions concerning communal facilities, infrastructure, and taxation.³⁵ The tools of public administration were beginning to emerge within the pages of medieval books advising rulers.

4 James of Viterbo

James of Viterbo (c. 1255–1308) flourished as a student, and then teacher, at Paris, probably as a protégé of the Augustinian friar Giles of Rome, who himself studied under Thomas Aquinas. Ultimately, James received preferment to the archbishoprics of Benevento and then Naples. His sole contribution to political thought, De regimine Christiano, was composed in the context of the conflict between Pope Boniface VIII and King Philip IV of France regarding the nature and extent of papal power. This quite lengthy work – it runs to 327 pages in the modern critical edition – represents one of the better-known attempts to justify the pope’s plentitude of power, the phrase employed to describe his absolute dominion over all temporalities (including property as well as political jurisdiction). De regimine is divided into two main sections. The first posits a careful analogy between the ordering of the Christian Church and that of an earthly kingdom. The second part, of far greater length, focuses on the character of power within the Church as well as the relationship between the spiritual and secular spheres.

At the beginning of Part one, James appeals to the classification of the natural forms of human association such as families, cities, and kingdoms, ultimately concluding that humans possess a strong inclination to come together that is driven by mutual recognition of how social order improves their physical conditions: “Man is by nature a social animal (animale sociale), and lives in multitudes, because this arises from natural necessity, inasmuch as one man cannot live adequately by himself, but needs to be helped by another.”³⁶ In order to grasp why James opens De regimine with such an adamant insistence on communal naturalism, we must have some sense of his overarching approach to the defence of papalism, ironic though this may seem. On the one hand, James recurrently proposes parallels between the proper organization of temporal and spiritual forms of government. In particular, he maintains that both kings and popes rule over multitudes of people, who nevertheless collectively constitute communities, whether designated by the words “kingdom” or “Church”.³⁷ On the other hand, James insists upon an important disanalogy between the two, inasmuch as royal authority rests purely upon nature, whereas papal power derives from grace. “The Church”, he says, “is not a community of nature, however, but of grace, […] having been called and brought together by God through grace.”³⁸ One consequence of this bifurcation is that some aspects of temporal social and political life are entirely unique to each, while other dimensions pertain to the Church and its system of government.

As medieval thinkers insisted, nature is ultimately God’s creation, but James consistently treats the human, natural world according to two standards: one by the direct divine authorization instantiated by the Church, the other by the efforts of men, reflecting their sociable nature, the maintenance of which constitutes the reason that temporal government is instituted. He concludes that “among men, therefore, to whom it is more natural to live in society than any animal, is there a natural inclination toward the institution of government; and government of this kind is said to exist by human law, which arises from nature”.³⁹ Government for James thus “perfects the inclination of nature; and so it is called a human and natural power”.⁴⁰ Several elements of this view need to be highlighted. Consistent with the point discussed above, organized political life is not natural per se in the strict Aristotelian sense that man is a political animal. Rather, earthly government is authorized in order to preserve the social disposition that is imbedded within human beings.

In the human multitude also there should be something by which the multitude may be ruled, especially because man is naturally a social and communal animal. For society and community would not be preserved but scattered if there were not someone having the care of the common good of the multitude and of the society.⁴¹

Government depends upon the conscious “cooperation of natural inclination and institution; for it was introduced among men by human law, which arises from nature”.⁴² So James envisions the foundation of government to be human in origination, yet consonant with the natural orientation inherent in mankind to live socially.

If men are at their core social beings, however, why would political rule become necessary at all? He answers that every human being possesses reason and intellect, by means of which he is capable of accessing natural law and of acting in accordance with it: “That which is natural is common to all who have a share in nature”, Gentiles and Jews no less than Christians.⁴³ Unfortunately, however, men’s application of their rational capacities does not occur evenly. Rather, many (perhaps most) men are frail; they refrain from employing their reason and are instead overwhelmed by their passions.

Because of the ignorance that is in human nature, reason alone is not sufficient for the government of man; and hence it is expedient that the society of men (hominum societas), as being in many respects not sufficient to govern themselves, should be ruled and directed by some person or persons more vigorous than others in intellectual prudence. Moreover, because of human malice, men do evil deeds and injure one another, and so it is expedient for some to be the rulers of others, by whom men may be restrained from wickedness.⁴⁴

James’s argument may be broken down as follows: (1) human beings possess the power of reason, which in principle permits them to live socially in the absence of government; (2) men are, however, impeded in the full utilization of their latent rational powers because they succumb to their self-love and desire for personal (material) advantage; (3) political authority is brought into existence in order to support and reinforce the sociability that is intrinsic to mankind but threatened by the failure to apply reason. Politics is not natural in and of itself. At the same time, the emergence of government is wholly consistent with human nature.

The foundation of earthly rulership thus converges with the very purpose of communal life for James, namely, the maintenance of the individual interests of those in its charge.

The good which is sought in each community is sufficient provision for this life. Every community is instituted for the sake of this good, because one man cannot by himself provide himself with a commodious way of life without the help of other men. […] For the greater the extent to which many men are united with one another, the more able they are to provide for themselves the means of life by mutual aid.⁴⁵

Any role whatsoever for the king as promoter of moral virtue and/or spiritual salvation – a claim that was a hallmark of medieval political philosophy in general – is unequivocally dismissed by James. At best, he admits that inasmuch as “external goods serve the virtuous life as instruments, it pertains to the king to procure and provide for the people a sufficiency of such goods as are necessary to this life”.⁴⁶ As a consequence, De regimine posits a strict division between the goals of temporal government and those of the Church, in such a manner that the most the former can contribute to the latter is the preservation of physical and material injury and the prevention of peace as an aide to the clergy’s performance of its holy duties.⁴⁷

Since James’s naturalism upholds the principle that temporal political authority is instituted by men, rather than conferred directly by God, he arrives at the conclusion that a ruler’s position must be assigned by means of the active assent of those over whom he exercises power. In his view, “someone achieves rulership rightly when he is appointed by the agreement and common consent of the multitude”.⁴⁸ This position runs throughout De regimine. When temporal political authority is conferred upon some person in a “natural” manner, this occurs solely as the result of the voluntary determination made by the human beings who will obey him.⁴⁹ The attribution of the foundation of earthly rulership to human choice converges with the very purpose of communal life for James, namely, the maintenance of the corporeal welfare of those in its charge. For this very reason, the authorization of the rulership of the “natural” social order may and should be left to the multitude who willingly submits to it. Their own legitimate interests are at stake. There is no antagonism or tension for James between the common good served by government, on the one hand, and the material advantage sought by – and indeed necessary to the survival of – individual humans, on the other.

5 Marsiglio of Padua

The ideological antithesis of James of Viterbo may be found in the Defensor pacis (Defender of Peace), composed by Marsiglio (or Marsilius) of Padua (1275/80–1342/43), which became one of the most incendiary and condemned texts of its age, primarily for its concerted attack on the powers claimed on behalf of the pope. Prefacing this controversial long portion (“Dictio II”) of the treatise is a much shorter discourse on the origins and nature of civil government. In some ways, Marsiglio’s theory resembles that of James, though the former derived his position from a quite different premise. Marsiglio contends that human beings are invariably driven to realize their own good: “Everyone is prone to pursue one’s own advantage and to avoid what is disadvantageous.”⁵⁰ Marsiglio judges this to be a natural condition, rather than a vice, of temporal life that follows directly from the principle of self-preservation. Since we are enjoined by nature to preserve our material existence, Marsiglio insists that “no one knowingly harms or wills injustice to oneself”.⁵¹ There is no moral content to the postulation of self-interest. Men are not inherently vicious or evil, they are merely driven by their natural instinct to survive.

If humans lived in isolation and their activities were entirely self-directed, it would be unnecessary to set limits on behaviour, since each person is best qualified to determine what is required for self-preservation. But Marsiglio recognizes that the self-interest of individuals is achieved most fully and “naturally” under conditions of human cooperation in the context of an ordered and organized community. Marsiglio holds that “human beings came together in the civil community in order to pursue advantage and a sufficient life and to avoid the opposite”.⁵² What he terms the “perfected community” emerges along with the differentiation of the functions (defined by the various arts created by humankind) necessary for a materially sufficient existence.⁵³ “Yet since these arts cannot be exercised except by a large number of people through their association with one another”, he remarks, “it was necessary for human beings to assemble together to obtain advantage from them and to avoid disadvantage”.⁵⁴ Social engagement thus arises naturally from the human imperative to assure one’s own survival.

Marsiglio’s perfected community, based on the differentiation of function, is nothing short of a fully developed commercial society. Such a “perfected” civil association requires

the mutual association of citizens, their intercommunication of their functions with one another, their mutual aid and assistance and, in general, the power, unimpeded from without, of exercising their particular and common functions, and also the participation in common benefits and burdens according to the measure appropriate to each.⁵⁵

Marsiglio specifies these functions in terms of the occupations necessary to maintain the community’s physical well-being: farmers, merchants, craftsmen, and warriors.⁵⁶ All of these occupations are necessary, and none are to be denigrated. Citizenship is consequently conferred on a strictly functional basis, judged according to the usefulness of various activities for meeting material needs. What is especially distinctive of such a civil society is that each person within it may profit individually, while all benefit together, except that “disputes and quarrels” unregulated by “a norm of justice” may arise.⁵⁷ Marsiglio fears that, without the existence of some authority to uphold the peace according to a fair standard of behaviour, the community will crumble.

Marsiglio proposes an ingenious solution to bridge the potential conflict between individual and communal advantage. First, all whose interests are served or affected by a community must be conceded full membership in it and must consent to the conditions of association (i.e., law and rulership). Second, having so consented, all such citizens are absolutely bound to obey the law and the determinations made by rulers in accordance with it. The Defensor pacis holds that the legitimacy of both laws and their enforcers depends wholly upon their “voluntary” character, that is, the extent to which those citizens who are subject to their jurisdiction have publicly and overtly consented to their authority.⁵⁸ For Marsiglio, this involves an extensive privilege on the part of each individual citizen to examine prospective laws and rulers. In the Defensor pacis, he details a method to express such approval or disapproval. “The common utility of all is better noticed by the whole community because no one knowingly harms himself”, he observes. “Anyone can look to see whether a proposed law leans toward the advantage of one or a few citizens more than the rest of the community and can protest loudly in opposition.”⁵⁹ By aggregating these individual determinations, Marsiglio provides a plausible solution to the problem of acknowledging a common interest that does not violate the fundamental principle of self-interest.⁶⁰ Thus, the government and legal system will necessarily always serve to bolster the commercially based system of exchange required for people to live a “sufficient life”.

6 Nicole Oresme

Among the earliest medieval tracts to concentrate explicitly on a specific economic topic was a work titled Tractatus de origine et natura, jure et mutationibus monetarum, better known as De moneta (On Money), composed in the late 1350s by Nicole Oresme (1320/25–1382), a University of Paris-trained philosopher, theologian, and churchman who was closely associated with the French royal court. Oresme probably wrote this treatise in the context of an ongoing debate concerning the further debasement of the French coinage, a procedure from which the crown had profited for many years. De moneta made a powerful case in favour of the stabilization of the value of money over the royal temptation to raise revenue through reminting or coin clipping. However, De moneta should not be read simply as a contribution to technical economics. Rather, Oresme expressly states that the work has two purposes: to identify the underlying political nature of the problem of currency manipulation, and to advise his countrymen in a pragmatic fashion about a matter of public policy. His specialized economic analysis is prefatory to his effort to bring economic concerns to bear on the duties of rulers and the needs of their subjects.

Central to this project is Oresme’s contention that money “is well-suited for intercourse among a large number of human beings and the use of it is good in itself”.⁶¹ Economic enterprise makes key contributions to the public welfare, which is the intended purpose of exchange relations. Since, for Oresme, trade and commerce markedly impact any community, he insists that the enabling medium of money must be common property, rather than owned by the ruler. Oresme stresses this principle throughout De moneta. Although the ruler is assigned responsibility for the actual minting and regulating of the money supply, he does so as an executive agent of the community, deputed to realize the public good of sound currency and equitable exchange. The dominant theme of Oresme’s treatise is the communal ownership, and thus ultimate control, of money. From this precept follows the advice of De moneta about the debasement of coinage as a political phenomenon. Since the community requires money in order to engage in a full range of economic activities, and hence to promote the good of its individual members, the very idea that a ruler would exert private control over coinage is excluded from the start. As a result, the crown is strictly prohibited from manipulating the coinage in order to profit itself or its intimates.

Implicit in the ascription of money’s ownership to the community is an economic conception of proper governance. Oresme employs the traditional distinction between “true kingship” and “tyranny” in explicating the difference between well-ordered and evil government.⁶² Unlike his predecessors, Oresme’s examples of just and unjust rule are invariably couched in terms of the economic impact of a government’s actions. In explaining why manipulation of the value of currency by a ruler is unjust, he draws an analogy to political interference in agricultural markets: “It would be like fixing a price for all the grain in his kingdom, buying it, and selling it again at a higher price. Everyone can clearly see that this would be an unjust exaction and indeed tyranny.”⁶³ The value of the economic goods within a community can only be established in the first instance by voluntary exchanges among individuals. Tyranny thus occurs when legitimate economic choices are countermanded for the self-interest of those who hold political power. By contrast, good government or kingship has a decidedly economic overtone: The king reigns, one might say, not in order to make people “better” in a moral sense, but instead to make them “better off”. Consequently, royal judgements about public policy ought to rest on determinations about the economic welfare of the community. The government that supports and enhances the material advantage of its subjects is counted by Oresme as good.

Oresme highlights the fact that currency debasement is nonconsensual and therefore constitutes an act of force committed by the ruler upon the community. The volitional standard, one of the hallmarks of just economic exchange, disappears in the manipulation of currency, rendering the king-community relation an unequal and coercive one. The community becomes instead “enslaved” economically to the private interest of its government as well as impoverished to the extent that “the amount of the ruler’s profit is necessarily the same as the community’s loss”.⁶⁴ Debasement precipitates the economic decline of the republic in a number of ways, which Oresme describes in careful detail, based on his observations of events that “have lately been seen to occur in the kingdom of France”.⁶⁵ First, an unstable currency is ruinous for all manner of trade. Imports cease since “merchants ceteris paribus prefer to travel to those locales in which they may obtain good and certain money”. In similar fashion, “the business of internal commerce in such a kingdom is disturbed and impeded by such changes” of currency, while fixed incomes are thrown into flux and “cannot be properly and justly valuated and taxed”. Moreover, debased currency destroys the system of credit upon which commercial activity relies. In sum, inasmuch as “merchants and everything else mentioned are either necessary or extremely useful to human nature”, alterations of coinage “are prejudicial and harmful to the whole civil community”.⁶⁶ Monetary manipulation has a debilitating effect upon the good order of the community. Oresme even darkly hints that the ruler who introduces the many evils associated with monetary manipulation endangers his dynastic hold on the kingdom. Referring explicitly to the situation in his own nation, Oresme observes that the “free hearts of Frenchmen” will not stand to have economic slavery thrust upon them; and the French royal house, “bereft of its ancient virtue, will without doubt forfeit the kingdom”.⁶⁷ Debasement is ultimately no less dangerous to the king than to his subjects.

7 Christine de Pizan

Christine de Pizan (1364–c. 1430), a French poet-author and Valois court intimate, should be counted among the most prolific political authors in medieval Europe. Among her many such treatises, the best-known are Le Livre de la Cité des Dames (The Book of the City of Ladies), Le Livre des Trois Vertus (The Book of the Three Virtues), and Le Livre de Corps de Policie (The Book of the Body Politic), all composed in the first decade of the fifteenth century. Writing from the self-identified perspective of a non-noble émigré widow who had become learned in French-language as well as (probably) Latin texts, she demonstrates considerable acquaintance with classical as well medieval sources.⁶⁸ Christine confidently critiques contemporary mores and practices and formulates pragmatic advice for a range of situations and persons. In particular, her writings display both sensitivity to the financial pressures facing Europe’s monarchic governments and deep concern for the needs of the larger populace, including women, city-dwellers, and the poor. The fulcrum on which she balanced these potentially competing interests is her insistence on an inescapably reciprocal relationship between the French people and the royal regime.

Christine approached the social complexity that characterized the late medieval landscape from the conventional model of the organic metaphor. As had some of her predecessors, Christine’s theory of the body politic incorporated an inclusive, reciprocal, and interdependent conception of community.

Just as the human body is not whole, but defective and deformed, when it lacks any of its members, so the body politic cannot be perfect, whole, or healthy if all the estates of which we speak are not well joined and united together. Thus, they can aid and help each other, each exercising its own office, which diverse offices ought to serve only for the conservation of the whole community, just as [with] the members of the body.⁶⁹

For Christine, communal order ensues when the health of the entire public unit is preserved through the mutual coordination of the tasks necessary for its existence.⁷⁰ To despise any of the members, or to reduce any to a state of servitude, constitutes an attack on the well-being of the whole.

Christine extends medieval precedents by imputing to the discussion concerning the body politic a noticeably secular orientation. Unlike her source, John of Salisbury’s Policraticus, the clergy in Christine’s model are not the body’s “soul”, but simply one of the three branches of the common people.⁷¹ Thus, for example, Christine expects the king, when necessary, to correct the errant “prelate, priest, or cleric”.⁷² Because Christine conceives of the king as the ordainer and regulator of all estates within the realm, the church does not exercise supremacy over the temporal sphere. The overtly secular bearing of Christine’ body politic informs her discussion of economic issues. Christine’s insistence on the importance of all members’ physical well-being and material improvement motivates her mandate that the ruler must orient his policies toward “increas[ing] and multiply[ing] the virtue, strength, power, and wealth of his country”.⁷³ This explicit articulation of an economic goal as among government’s central aims is unique. Accordingly, Christine promotes the general societal acquisition and accumulation of wealth – although not conspicuous consumption – as a worthy pursuit, and she recognizes government’s crucial role in its achievement.

Christine’s strikingly economic conception of community and governance is especially evident in the detailed attention she pays to the lives of merchants, artisans, and laborers, as well as to their relations with the king. Not only does Christine argue that men of commerce are not to be disdained, she insists that without “the merchant class […] neither the estate of kings and princes nor even the polities of cities and countries could exist. […] By the[ir] industry […] all kinds of people are provided for without having to make everything themselves.”⁷⁴ A nation can only reap the rewards of increased labour efficiencies when there is “trade and an abundance of merchants”.⁷⁵ In an archetypical example of organic reciprocity, Christine holds that all classes benefit when commercial society is encouraged to flourish.

Christine likewise praises craftsmen and peasants, without whose labour “the republic […] could not sustain itself”.⁷⁶ Because the goods produced and activities performed by such workers are necessary for meeting quotidian human needs, their contribution must be accorded value. While judgements may be made about how well individuals perform in their diverse offices, no office that contributes to the community’s material welfare may be demeaned or disdained. The prince, therefore, must maintain and enhance the economic condition of the realm, oversee the efficient coordination of all necessary tasks, and protect against financial force and fraud. These central duties entail that the ruler first be familiar with the myriad activities necessary to the realm and “ought to hear sometimes about the common people, labourers, and merchants, how they make their profit”.⁷⁷ Thus will the prince, fully appreciating the contributions of the lower orders, govern knowledgeably and competently.

Most importantly, the king must understand how his own policies impact the economic conditions of his realm. Poorly compensated soldiers, Christine explains, “pillage and despoil the country”, exacerbating the economic hardships of the rural poor, whereas well-paid troops bolster the rural economy by purchasing “everything that they needed economically and plentifully”.⁷⁸ Similarly, royal taxation policies ought to be “reasonable”, to affect rich and poor equitably, and to not “gnaw […] poor commoners […] to the bone”.⁷⁹ Christine’s conclusion, that wise “princes would rather be poor in a rich country, than to be rich and have plenty in a poor country”, is less a moral principle and more an economic doctrine that naturally follows from an organic conception of communal interdependence.⁸⁰

Christine’s thought extends to the inclusion of women in the realm’s economic and socio-political life. Her distinctive adaptation of Cicero’s account of social origination (found in his De inventione 1.1–3) provides the justification for women’s visibility in Christine’s body politic. In her telling, Ceres and Isis “taught [the people] to build cities and towns”,⁸¹ within which women developed most of the arts and civilized forms of behaviour, including weaving, olive oil extraction, cart construction, metal working, cultivation, tool-making, and gardening.⁸² Without women’s innovations and contributions, Christine asserts, humanity would have remained in a “bestial” state. Those who believe that mankind would be better off in this primitive condition blaspheme against the God-given skills and abilities that Ceres and Isis first discovered.

Moreover, women of all estates, Christine maintains, have the necessary (perhaps even unique) capabilities to contribute to the tasks associated with the maintenance of earthly well-being. While Christine surely knew Aristotle’s argument for the exclusion of women from public life, which was a mainstay of medieval political literature, she challenged this claim directly, envisioning, for example, the princess as a sort of ombudsperson.⁸³ Construed in organic terms, the princess furthers bodily inter-communication by serving as a mediating force between king and populace.⁸⁴ Toward this end, she must occasionally meet with burghers, merchants, and artisans in order to facilitate “love and good will”, thereby strengthening public order and unity. Christine also recognizes that women of the commercial and labouring classes face special burdens. She warns merchants’ wives, for example, to “avoid ostentation” in dress, as such conspicuous display “can cause new taxes for their husbands”.⁸⁵ Christine’s close attention to the complex intersections of gender and social class manifests in pragmatic counsel to women of various stations, aimed at sustaining a harmonious and cooperative body politic. Just as merchants, artisans, and the poor each have a legitimate and important role within Christine’s organic system, so, too, are women integral at all levels.

8 Sir John Fortescue

The fifteenth-century English jurist and legal theorist Sir John Fortescue (c. 1394–1479) is something of an enigma in the history of Western political thought: He has been viewed both as a culmination of medieval trends and as a forerunner of modern developments. In a series of legal-political treatises composed in the 1460s and 1470s, Fortescue used as his intellectual framework two categories of constitutional regime that he appropriated from scholasticism: dominium regale (royal lordship, or the rule of a single man according to his own will) and dominium politicum (political lordship, namely, a mixed constitution based on consensual law and the sharing of power – in sum, a republic). Fortescue’s innovation was a proposed synthesis of these systems into a single, superior, and all-embracing form of government, namely, dominium regale et politicum. This type of hybrid regime, in Fortescue’s view, is no mere theoretical construct. Rather, it is embodied by the English constitution. In his two major works, De laudibus legum Anglie (In Praise of the Laws of England) (1468–1471) and The Governance of England (1471), Fortescue sets out a detailed argument for the superiority of dominium regale et politicum. He emphasizes throughout that there are clear and tangible economic benefits for those who are governed by a mixed political and royal system.

Fortescue posits a direct connection between regime type and the physical welfare of the people. In The Governance of England, he demonstrates the failings of royal government, as contrasted with a mixture of royal and political systems, by comparing the circumstances of France with those of England. Because the French royal regime taxes subjects arbitrarily and heavily, its populace lives “in the most extreme poverty and misery, and yet they dwell in one of the most fertile realms of the world”.⁸⁶ After describing in great detail the abysmal diet, clothing, and working conditions of the French people, Fortescue lays the blame squarely on the royal system of rule through which France is governed.⁸⁷ Just as the purely royal king causes such poverty, so he must constantly be on his guard, lest his subjects muster the courage to rise up and oppose him, contributing to the general instability of the realm.⁸⁸

The contrast Fortescue offers of England, with its “mixed” royal and political system, is striking:

This land is ruled under a better law; and therefore the people are not in such penury, nor thereby hurt in their persons, but they are wealthy and have all things necessary to the sustenance of nature. Wherefore, they are mighty and able to resist the adversaries of this realm […]. Lo, this is the fruit of ‘political and royal law,’ under which we live.⁸⁹

The major reason for this, says Fortescue, is that the English king is restrained in his ability to lay claim to the goods of subjects, should he ever desire to do so. The royal and political ruler takes it as integral to his office not to drain income away from his subjects into his own coffers, but to enact policies that enhance the wealth of the entire nation. “It is the king’s honor”, Fortescue remarks, “and also his duty, to make his realm rich; and it is a dishonor when he has but a poor realm. Yet it would be a much greater dishonor, if he found his realm rich, and then made it poor.”⁹⁰

In turn, the material satisfaction enjoyed by subjects that arises from royal and political rule acts as an assurance of public order. Inhabitants who enjoy physical well-being are, in Fortescue’s estimation, more willing and able to fight for their realm; they are less likely to engage in rebellious and seditious activities; and they possess the resources, not to mention the good will, to subsidize the government in times of particular need.

Fortescue’s view, in short, seems to be that the public bearing of the governed is strictly determined by the measurable impact of government upon their private benefit: If they are content with their physical lot, they will gladly subject themselves to the king and will perform their roles; but, if their ruler adopts policies that impoverish them, they will express their displeasure directly and violently. “The greatest safety, truly, and also the most honor that may come to the king is that his realm should be rich in every estate”, Fortescue observes.⁹¹ The material benefits that accrue to those who submit to dominium regale et politicum are also underscored by Fortescue in De laudibus legum Anglie. Again, he stresses the economic misery that results from the royal regime of France. By contrast, the English king, who rules royally and politically, can in no way impose “tallages, subsides, or any other burdens whatsoever on his subjects, nor change their laws, nor make new ones, without the concession and assent of his whole realm expressed in his parliament”.⁹² Thus, the English people harvest the fruits of the earth in all their abundance, without fear of confiscation. Because it is by their own consent that subjects of a royal and political king are ruled, they cannot be involuntarily denied their goods and abused in their persons.

On Fortescue’s account, the immediate result of such government renders England a sort of earthly Garden of Paradise.⁹³ As in The Governance of England, the criteria employed by Fortescue to judge the impact of regime type on citizens are fundamentally economic and physical. Individuals are satisfied to leave the conduct of the daily affairs of government to the king and his ministers, so long as their material well-being is not imperiled. In turn, as private persons, they are encouraged (indeed, expected) to contribute to the public good by seeking their personal advantage in economic activity. Thus, a nation that possesses large numbers of merchants engaging in commerce is one, Fortescue insists, that has been truly blessed by God.⁹⁴

9 Conclusion

It should be evident that very few generalizations concerning public management of the economy, and its consequences for the relation between the common good and self-interest, may be drawn from the texts I have surveyed. Some authors relied on a form of the organic analogy to construct their positions, others a concept of self-government, still others a theory of natural order – or some combination thereof. A couple of broad observations, however, seem apt.

First, the theorists whom I have examined here share the view that the pursuit of self-interest in a material sense poses no threat to the common good as they understand it. In fact, they adopt the opposite view that the well-being of individuals contributes to the public welfare. Moreover, the proper role of government is to provide the conditions to encourage and protect the quest for economic gain on account of its promotion of the common good. A community may be adjudged well-governed when the lot of its members improve. I do not mean to suggest that considerations of virtue and piety are entirely set aside, as we have seen. Concepts of justice, for example, continue to be invoked by many of the thinkers whose ideas have been scrutinized in the foregoing. But justice loses its purely moral overtones in favour of a more capacious understanding that involves the economic interactions between private persons aimed at their mutual advantage. The narrow moralism of canon lawyers, theologians and preachers discussed at the beginning of this chapter meets with a wide range of criticisms, some overt, some implicit.

A second feature that we find among these otherwise diverse medieval political economists involves a commitment to some form of limitation on the powers of government that correlate to the material interests of members of the community. Some version of consent was perhaps the most often invoked means to accomplish this end. Without exception, however, deep fears were expressed about any political system in which leaders, administrators, or judges could act with impunity. From John of Salisbury to John Fortescue, the best sort of government required its officials to be constrained in some fashion in the exercise of their ability to engage in economic extraction – such as taxation or corruption – in order to line their own pockets. Of course, the two Johns proposed radically different ways of achieving this goal – the former through the control of magistrates as a function of the king’s duty to serve God, the latter as a result of the specific responsibilities that uniquely pertained to parliamentary institutions. Without any such mechanisms, however, the “natural” pursual of material interests that benefits the entire community is disturbed, if not entirely destroyed.

The ideas that communal goods are not inherently antithetical to private ones and that governmental conduct is subject to fixed limits vis-à-vis individuals are not insubstantial contributions to the history of Western thought. In my estimation, both are outgrowths of the effort by medieval political economists to redefine the common good in such a fashion that individual interests could be accommodated into a larger vision of social and political order. This ties into a theme that the historian Joel Kaye has highlighted, namely, the fourteenth-century emphasis among some scholastic authors on harmony and balance as integral economic and political concepts.⁹⁵ From my perspective, Kaye’s interpretation is far too constrained, inasmuch as he confines it to a small number of schoolmen working in a narrow timeframe (although he does include Oresme among the figures he investigates). But Kaye affirms one key aspect of the convergence of political and economic factors during the Middle Ages, namely, how the common good need not – ought not – be understood as the mortal enemy of the material interests of members of the community. Precisely this conclusion encapsulates the primary goal of medieval political economists from the mid-twelfth until the late fifteenth centuries. If for no other reason, the theorists surveyed in this chapter who pioneered economic ideas during the European Middle Ages merit our serious consideration.