There was a time when economics was born not in banks or trading houses, but in cloisters and lecture halls lit by candlelight.
When prices were debated beside doctrines of sin and salvation.
When the question of value was not what the market would bear — but what the conscience could.
This was the age of the Scholastics.
Emerging between the 12th and 16th centuries — from the vaulted schools of Paris to the seminaries of Salamanca — the Scholastic thinkers gave birth to one of the first sustained efforts to understand economic life within a moral framework.
They did not call themselves economists.
They were theologians, jurists, philosophers.
But they were also keen observers of commerce, property, trade, and justice. And from within their deep religious convictions, they asked questions that still haunt our markets today.
In The Wealth of Ideas, Alessandro Roncaglia returns us to their world — not to canonize, but to listen.
To hear how these early thinkers struggled with the tension between growing economic complexity and eternal moral law.
And to rediscover what happens when ethics walks hand-in-hand with exchange.
The Soul of Exchange: The Scholastic Mindset
The Scholastics were heirs to Aristotle and Augustine. They believed that reason and faith could work together to illuminate truth — not just in heaven, but on Earth. So when trade began to expand across medieval Europe, they did not look away.
They turned toward it — to ask: How can a Christian engage with wealth without endangering the soul?
At the center of their inquiry stood the just price — a concept both practical and profound.
It was not simply the market price.
Nor was it a fixed rate dictated by authority.
It was a moral equilibrium — a price that reflected fairness, necessity, and mutual benefit, without exploitation.
To find the just price, the Scholastics considered cost of production, effort, scarcity, and community needs. They did not deny the market. But they refused to let it be the final judge.
For them, the question was not, “What will someone pay?”
It was, “What is owed, in justice, in charity, in truth?”
Usury and the Price of Time
Among their fiercest debates was the issue of usury — charging interest on loans.
Why should money, a barren thing, beget more money?
Following Aristotle and early Church teachings, most Scholastics condemned usury as unnatural. Money, in their eyes, was a medium, not a commodity. Lending for gain exploited the needy, commodified time, and corrupted the social bond.
And yet, as economies evolved, so did their reasoning.
Thinkers like Thomas Aquinas upheld the usury ban, yet allowed for certain compensation — for loss, risk, or opportunity cost.
Later Scholastics, especially the School of Salamanca, went further. As trade routes widened and credit systems grew, theologians like Luis de Molina and Domingo de Soto began to refine the idea: could interest be just if it accounted for uncertainty, inflation, or legitimate business risk?
Here, we see the Scholastics wrestling — not with doctrine alone, but with the real pressures of a changing world. They did not abandon morality. They reworked it. They adapted without surrendering their ethical core.
The Market as Moral Arena
Contrary to stereotype, the Scholastics did not hate the market. They did not call for its destruction.
They understood that trade could serve the common good — when governed by virtue.
They emphasized intention in transactions. Fraud, deceit, and coercion were not just economic missteps — they were sins. Honest exchange, by contrast, was a form of service. Labor had dignity. Mutual gain was blessed.
In this way, they saw the market not as a neutral space of calculation, but as a moral arena — where virtues like justice, prudence, and charity were tested.
They did not ask, “What is efficient?”
They asked, “What is fair?”
And sometimes, those are very different questions.
The Salamanca Turning Point
By the 16th century, with the rise of global trade and new forms of currency, the School of Salamanca began to blend Scholastic ethics with more empirical observations.
Figures like Francisco de Vitoria, Juan de Mariana, and MartÃn de Azpilcueta started to anticipate ideas we now associate with modern economics:
– The role of supply and demand in price formation.
– The value of money as shaped by quantity and confidence.
– The legitimacy of profit under uncertainty.
But even as they moved closer to economic “science,” they never severed the link to moral theology.
Their questions were sharper.
Their models more developed.
But the soul remained intact.
What We Forgot
Modern economics often begins its story with Adam Smith. But the Scholastics remind us that the conversation is older — and deeper.
They show us that there was a time when economic reasoning was not abstracted from life, but grounded in values.
Where dignity, not only data, mattered.
Where justice, not just equilibrium, guided decision-making.
Where the poor were not variables, but neighbors — and the economy was not an end, but a means to a moral life.
We did not outgrow the Scholastics.
We outpaced them.
And in doing so, perhaps we lost something vital.
A Return, Not a Regression
To recover the voice of the Scholastics is not to return to medieval times.
It is to remember that economic life is not just about wealth. It is about relationship.
That prices are not only mechanisms. They are signals of value — both material and moral.
That every act of exchange is also an act of trust — and that trust is built not only on rules, but on virtues.
In a world that measures more but means less, the Scholastics offer us something rare:
A vision of the market that still has a heart.
A vision of economics where the soul still matters.
A vision where justice is not the exception, but the expectation.
In their world, to think about money was to think about mercy.
To study trade was to study temptation.
And to pursue wealth was to ask: for whom, at what cost, and to what end?
Maybe we need those questions again.
Not just to understand our past.
But to reimagine our future.