The Merchant in the Confessional: Trade and Price in the Pre-Reformation Penitential Handbooks

This volume deals with norms relating to trade and price expressed in handbooks designed for the education of confessors or as aids in the confessional. Parts 1 and 2 trace the development of such norms from the earliest times to the Reformation. Some 90 penitential handbooks are analyzed, with biographical sketches of the authors. Part 3 provides a general overview of penitential trade and price doctrine with emphasis on the late major Italian summas and compares this doctrine with secular economic thought in the Renaissance and later. The main contribution of this book to the history of thought is its examination of economic activity from the point of view of sin and penance as taught by the mediaeval Church.