Agricultural History Review, Volume 51 Part 1 (2003), p. 128

Diana Wood’s introduction to the economic thought of medieval Europe is the latest volume to appear in the excellent CUP Cambridge Medieval Textbook series. Although the book traces the origin of medieval economic thought in the work of Aristotle, the Bible, the Church Fathers and Roman law, it particularly concentrates on the period from the twelfth to the fifteenth century. One of its main aims is to relate the fundamental aspects of pre-Reformation economic thought to the actual economic practice of the day. To explore this relationship between theory and practice, Dr Wood draws on examples from all over western Europe although her main focus is on English and Italian developments. The book begins with a discussion of how medieval thinkers were able to reconcile the existence of private property with the common possession of the earth laid down in natural law. It then moves on to attitudes to poverty and charity; looks at views of money as a measure of value and as a commodity with its own value; examines the regulation of weights, measures and coinage; surveys opinions of trade and identifies the early development of mercantilist thought; analyses the doctrine of the just price and the just wage; and finally offers two chapters tracing the history of medieval attitudes to usury.

The book has a useful appendix with notes on key authors and works referred to in the text, provides a glossary of technical terms and includes a valuable bibliography of primary and secondary sources. Its argument is clearly signposted and its varied subject-matter is given a coherence by its stress on recurrent themes such as the need for justice in economic relations, justice being defined in terms of the Aristotelian virtuous ‘mean’ between two extremes. Student readers of the book will be grateful for the clarity and logical structure with which it puts across some extremely technical aspects of medieval law and theology whilst their teachers will profit from its learning and scholarship. Particularly valuable is Dr Wood’s emphasis on the wide range of conflicting economic opinions which were put forward by theologians and lawyers in the middle ages as is her discussion of the economic attitudes implicit in contemporary legislation and everyday life.

Surprisingly, perhaps, given the importance of the church as a landowner within medieval society, it seems from Dr Wood’s account that medieval economic thinkers had little to say about actual agricultural production since most of her discussion centres on of issues related to commerce and money. However, the emphasis placed by recent scholars on the impact of commercialization on medieval agriculture means that these are now matters of prime interest to readers of this journal. In her preface, Dr Wood notes how, following advice from readers of her first draft, she had to abandon the assumption that it would be possible to ‘write about economic thought in isolation from economic practice’ (p. ix). Nevertheless, it is likely to be this aspect of her work which readers of this journal would have liked to have seen developed in even more detail. Of course, this matter raises questions which have been debated since the time of Max Weber’s ‘Protestant ethic’ thesis and beyond. As Dr Wood says, the medieval church’s otherworldly teachings would, if they had been put into practice, have ‘put a firm brake on economic development’ and would have inhibited the growth of the ‘commercial or entrepreneurial attitude necessary for economic take-off’ (pp.3–4). Yet, in reality, this does not seem to have been the case. Rather, the economy changed and the attitude of scholastics changed with it. As Dr Wood concludes, whereas political ideas often anticipate actual practice, in the economic realm, ideas tend to trail behind reality (p.208). Yet, in that case, it seems that the scholastic theories and attitudes set out in such detail here would have had little real economic impact and become chiefly an aspect of the history of ideas. Thus, if we hypothesized a counterfactual situation in which there was no scholastic economic theory, would the medieval economy have been significantly different apart, perhaps, from the extent of its production of parchment and ink? Similarly, whilst one of the strengths of Dr Wood’s book is its insistence that there was no single economic teaching amongst medieval thinkers, the fact that medieval scholars and lawyers could not agree on what kind of economic behaviour was moral or licit seems to make the gap between theory and practice all the more marked. Was it, therefore, the attitudes implicit in everyday economic practice and in contemporary legislation, rather than the explicit theorizing of theologians, which had the greatest impact on economic reality? Of course, a definitive resolution to the debate which has raged for the century since Weber’s work is unlikely. Nevertheless, flagging up these issues and the historiography which goes with them might have strengthened Dr Wood’s book even further.

However, it would be wrong to end on a negative note. In its range and clarity, Medieval economic thought is an excellent introduction to its topic. If Dr Wood’s volume encourages historians of the medieval economy to turn their attention to the impact of contemporary teachings and economic attitudes, it will more than have served its purpose.