The Merchant and the Church in the Middle Ages

Abstract

Two realities are intertwined in the context of the Middle Ages: affirmation of the idea of Christianity and the Commercial Revolution. From the middle of the 11th century, the European West presents a process of fragmentation of political power with the rise of the feudal regime, in which local landowners have a higher power than the monarchic authorities (FRANCO JR, 2001), creating a vacuum of political unity and making the Church the only strong and centralized institution in the midst of fragmentation (FOSSIER, POLLY and VAUCHEZ, 2001It is in this context that Christianity takes command of medieval society and begins to dictate rules and conduct for various activities, seeking to link the principles of Jesus with earthly life (PERNOUD, 1997). Concurrently with the strengthening of the power of the Church, the merchants started to be notorious figures in the European West of the XIII century (LE GOFF, 1991), leading the phenomenon of Commercial Revolution, that is, new ways of practicing trade, such as the creation of trading companies, professionalization of the sedentary merchants, emergence of money, bills of exchange, navigation insurance and accounting techniques (LOPEZ, 1986). The emergence of merchants caught the attention of Church intellectuals (NOGUEIRA, 2019) and the new commercial agents were the target of a Christian moralization. The aim of this paper is to present two attempts to regulate commerce in the European West: the first described in the Decree of Gratian – elaborated in the 12th century by the monk and jurist Gratian - and the second in Question 77 of Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica.