Risky Business: Theological and Canonical Thought on Insurance from the Thirteenth to the Seventeenth Century

Abstract

�� More than forty years ago Lucien Febvre, in a brief but rich article, claimed that a proper history of insurance should not only cope with economy but also with conceptions of religion and nature. Discussing the problem within the wider framework of “besoin de securite,” a need for security that characterizes every society, he suggests a fascinating parallel between material safety (insurance) and spiritual safety (salvation). Febvre claims that the development within western European society of this need for security into a juridical institute, such as insurance, has to be accompanied by a parallel “transfert de ciel a terre”; it was necessary that, during the Middle Ages, an idea of nature in which God controls all future events be replaced by new conceptions in which mankind could play a relevant role in governing natural events. The French historian, echoing Weberian theories, sees in the emerging spirit of capitalism the main cause of this shift. In his view, money is the medium by which Western society seeks to protect itself from the constant threats of an otherwise unpredictable nature. Security can be bought and sold. 1 Ten years later Jacques Le Goff offered another fundamental contribution to the understanding of the interaction among religion, economy, and the conception of nature in the Middle Ages. The development, from the twelfth to the fifteenth century, of a new idea of Time strictly follows the “transfert de ciel a terre” paradigm suggested by Febvre. From an attitude of superstition and passive submission to God’s will, Western society moves to the new ideology of homo faber, to a different conception of the relationship between mankind and nature. In Le Goff ’s view this shift is closely connected to the culture of merchants, a culture that, due to the stimulus of the circulation of money, is dominated by quantification: Time is rationalized because it can be bought and sold. Although the French his