E. Social Control of Industrial Activity

See also 378. Conscious and Unconscious Social Control.

57. THE POWER OF THE CHURCH AS AN AGENCY OF

CONTROL

We must now consider the mediaeval Church as a completed institution at the height of its power in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

The mediaeval Church was very different from modern churches, whether Catholic or Protestant.

1. In the first place, every one was required to belong to it, just as we all must belong to the state today. One was not born into the Church, it is true, but he was ordinarily baptized into it before he had any opinion in the matter. All western Europe formed a single religious association, from which it was a crime to revolt. To refuse allegiance to the Church or to question its authority or teachings was reputed treason against God and was punishable with death.

2. The mediaeval Church did not rely for its support, as churches usually must today, upon the voluntary contributions of its members. It enjoyed, in addition to the revenue from its vast tracts of lands and a great variety of fees, the income from a regular tax, the tithe. Those upon whom this fell were forced to pay it, just as all must now pay taxes imposed by the government.

3. It is obvious, moreover, that the mediaeval Church was not merely a religious body, as churches are today. Of course, it maintained places of worship, conducted devotional exercises, and cultivated the spiritual life; but it did far more. It was, in a way, a state, for it had an elaborate system of law and its own courts, in which it tried many cases which are now settled in our ordinary tribunals. It had also its prisons, to which it might sentence offenders to lifelong detention.

4. The Church not only performed the functions of a state; it had the organization of a state. Unlike the Protestant ministers of today, all churchmen and religious associations of mediaeval Europe were under one supreme head, who made laws for all and controlled every church officer, wherever he might be, whether in Italy or Germany, Spain or Ireland. The whole Church had one official language,

Adapted by permission from J. H. Robinson, An Introduction to the History of Western Europe, pp. 201-2. (Ginn & Co., 1903.)

Latin, in which all communications were dispatched and in which its services were everywhere conducted.

58. THE CHURCH AND BUSINESS ACTIVITY1

The teaching of the Gospel as to worldly goods had been unmistakable. It had repeatedly warned men against the pursuit of wealth, which would alienate them from the service of God and choke the good seed. It had in one striking instance associated spiritual perfection with the selling of all that a man had that he might give it to the poor. It had declared the poor and hungry blessed, and had prophesied woes to the rich. Instead of anxious thought for the food and raiment of the morrow, it had taught trust in God; instead of selfish appropriation of whatever a man could obtain, a charity which gave freely to all who asked. And in the members of the earliest Christian Church it presented an example of men who gave up their individual possessions and had all things in common.

We cannot wonder that, with such lessons before them, a salutary reaction from the self-seeking of the pagan world should have led the early Christian Fathers to totally condemn the pursuit of gain. It took them further to the denial to the individual of the right to do what he liked with his own, even to enjoy in luxury the wealth he possessed. The highest moral and legal philosophy of the ancient world strengthened this purely religious feeling by bringing to its aid the doctrine of a "law of nature."

If, however, to seek to enrich one's self was sinful, was trade itself justifiable? This was a question which troubled many consciences during the Middle Ages. On the one hand, the benefits which trade conferred on society could not be altogether overlooked, nor the fact that with many traders the object was only to obtain what sufficed for their own maintenance. On the other hand, they saw that trade was usually carried on by men who had enough already, and whose chief object was their own gain. "If covetousness is removed," argues Tertullian, "there is no reason for gain, and, if there is no reason for gain, there is no need of trade." Moreover, as the trader did not seem himself to add to the value of his wares, if he gained more for them than he had paid, his gain, said S. Jerome, must be another's loss; and, in any case, trade was dangerous to the

'Adapted by permission from W. J. Ashley, An Introduction to English Economic History and Theory: The Middle Ages, pp. 126-32, 155-63. (Longmans, Green, & Co., 1892.)

soul, since it was scarcely possible for a merchant not sometimes to act deceitfully.

To all these reasons was added, by many of the more saintly churchmen, yet another, which, had it been listened to, would have put an end to secular activity altogether. The thought of the supreme importance of saving the individual soul and of communion with God drove thousands into the hermit life of the wilderness or into monasteries; and it led even such a man as Augustine to say that "business" was in itself an evil, for "it turns men from seeking true rest, which is God."

Such was the general character of the teaching of the Church on economic matters during the early Middle Ages. The condition of western Europe long after the establishment of the Teutonic kingdoms was such that it could do but little harm, and probably did great good. It could do little harm, because there was scarcely any commerce, and such commerce as there was, was directed to the supply of articles of luxury for princes and nobles. The condemnation of trade, therefore, if indeed the clergy continued to repeat it, might weigh hardly upon individuals, but did not impede any useful circulation of goods. And by stimulating the clergy to rebuke the greed and violence of the powerful, by creating a public opinion on the side of contentment and charity, the teaching of the Church on worldly goods could not fail to be beneficial.

In the eleventh century began a great moving of the stagnant waters. The growth of towns, the formation of merchant bodies, the establishment of markets, even if they did no more than furnish the peasant and the lord of the manor with a market for their surplus produce, brought men face to face with one another as buyer and seller in a way they had not been before. But they did more; they prepared the way for the growth of a new class, a class of craftsmen, who could exist only on condition that they were able to sell their manufactures. At the same time new needs for money appeared both in crusades and in the passion for churchbuilding, which the religious revival of the tenth century brought with it. Hence, economic questions, especially such as concerned the relations of seller and buyer, of creditor and debtor, became of the first importance.

With these new dangers before them, churchmen began once more to turn their attention to economic matters and to meet what they regarded as the evil tendencies of the Roman law, "the principle of the world," by a fresh application of Christian principles. On two

doctrines especially did they insist-that wares should be sold at a just price, and that the taking of interest was sinful. They enforced them from the pulpit, in the confessional, in the ecclesiastical courts; and we shall find that by the time that the period begins of legislative activity on the part of the secular power, these two rules had been so impressed on the consciences of men that Parliament, municipality, and gild endeavored of their own motion to secure obedience to them.

Now, speaking generally, it may be said that during the period from the eleventh to the fourteenth century there was but a very small field for the investment of capital. In the trading centres there were, indeed, during the later part of the period, occasional opportunities for a man to take part in a commercial venture, and no obstacle was put by the Church or public opinion to a man's investing his money in this way when no definite interest was stipulated for, but he became a bona fide partner in the risk as well as the gain. But such opportunities were very rare. We must not forget that England was, almost entirely, an agricultural country and that its agriculture was carried on under a customary system which gave little opportunity for the investment of capital. Even in the rising manufactures of the time there was little room for "enterprise" or "extension of business"; the demand was too small, the available workmen too few, for any such rapid increase in production as we are nowadays familiar with. Under such circumstances, when money was borrowed, it was usually to meet some sudden stress of misfortune or for "unproductive" expenditure, e.g., by a knight to go on crusade or by a monastery to build a church.

In some cases like these it seemed unjust that a person possessing money which he could put to no productive use himself should make gain out of the necessities or piety of another. Ample security was usually given for the return of the money lent; and as the alternative to lending was that the money remained idle in the hands of its possessor, he was in just the same position when his money came back to him as if he had never parted with it. Surely, under these circumstances, we cannot blame the moralists who thought that the evils of usury were so great that they did well to prohibit the payment of interest altogether. And such an opinion was likely to be strengthened by the grievous results before their eyes of such usury as was permitted that exercised by the Jews. The Jews of history were not cringing cowards, but too often merciless bullies, confident of the royal protection. We can hardly blame them. They were shut out

by law or prejudice in almost every country from engaging in agriculture, industry, or commerce, and were thus almost driven to trade in money.

It is scarcely denied by competent modern critics that, at some period at any rate, during the Middle Ages there was such an absence. of opportunities for productive investment as relatively to justify this strong prejudice against interest; the only difference of opinion is as to how late that period reaches. One writer is of opinion that even before the twelfth century the economic condition of things was such that the papal decrees could not possibly meet with obedience: he can only regard the effort of the Church as a vain struggle against irresistible tendencies. To another the prohibition seems justifiable far into the fifteenth century. On the one hand, it is clear that the growth of commerce from the thirteenth century onward must, by widening the field for profitable investment, have lessened the injustice of taking interest.

We must, however, notice the application of the prohibition to cases other than money loans. The repayment of a loan together with interest in money had, of course, been the first subject of prohibition, but even the Fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries had rebuked those who pretended that usury consisted only in taking money interest. If you lend money to a man, expecting to receive from him more than you have given, whether it is in money or in corn, wine, oil, or anything else, you are a usurer, says S. Augustine.

The transition was easy from usury, strictly so called, to usurious practices in ordinary trade. Thus all payment of money in return for the giving of credit-all bargains in which goods were sold at a price higer than their real value in consideration of the seller's having to wait some time before he was paid-were deemed usurious. For it was the same as if the seller were to charge interest for lending the goods themselves, or the amount of money which was the just price of the goods, to the buyer for the period during which the seller waited for payment.

It is easy to see how the theory of usury, when it had once been developed to this point, would come to be interwoven with the theory of just price, until the one could in many doubtful cases be brought to strengthen the other. It will be worth while to conclude this section with two quotations which show how the teaching was presented in a popular form. The following is taken from the Ayenbite of Inwyt, a sort of manual for confessors, of wide use in the later Middle Ages,