Franciscan Wealth: From Voluntary Poverty to Market Society

1. A Time of Development and Organization

a Time oF deVeloPmenT and orGanizaTion 1. The new wealth: merchants and usurers From 1000 to 1200, Western europe grew in many ways. the inhabitants of cities and countryside multiplied, more land was cultivated, the income of landowners grew and the amount of goods in circulation increased. at the same time, there were more centers of power, courts, estate holders, landowners, city assemblies , unions of archbishops and monks. conflicts, quarrels, and competition grew at the same pace. Peasants claimed the rights of citizens for themselves. in the cities, families strong enough to command grew in number, while the territorial aristocrats looked for any way to turn their de facto power into a perpetual government . struggles for power – small and large – became a daily practice . everything grew and multiplied, starting with the prices of consumable goods and aristocrats’ income. after all “the european population, while increasing in absolute number, was basically sufficient with respect to the demand for labor due to the cultivation of new lands and the expansion of agricultural and non-agricultural investments.” the cost of labor, the cost of work, could, as a consequence , “maintain itself at a good level, and this accentuated and diversified the rhythms of consumption, expanding also towards non-food products,”1 hence allowing those who did not belong to the aristocracy to recognize new possibilities for wealth. the small europe that emerged from the breakup of the carolingian empire is surrounded by a larger and larger number of enemies, real or presumed , or by many untrustworthy strangers. From the perspective 1 l. Palermo, Sviluppo economico e società preindustriali (rome: Viella, 1997), 213. 12 FRANCISCAN WEALTH of christian europe, italy (with the Pope in rome), France and england (with their sovereigns), and Germany (with its weak emperor), the dangers are countless: Muslims in the south and southwest, hungarians, russians, and Balkans (who were not catholic and maybe not even christian) to the east, the little-known people of the north who were the subject of legends and whose incomplete christianity was feared, and then the ocean, the african desert, an unending sequence of unknown lands and people. economic growth, increase of the population, the multiplication of conflicts and of enemies now made counting, numbering and evaluating a new way of being aware. Between 1000 and 1200, numbers and money truly became an everyday reality, a way of thinking as political as it was economic. evaluating a price, calculating the value of goods, the extent of one’s own land, and how much it produced or could, counting one’s own enemies: these are all at the center of the culture of those who rule and those who want to rule. Monasteries, bishops and lords started to record, whether it was good or bad, what they thought was worthwhile, annotating years, months and days of their history, and hence of their power, calculating the extent of their wealth and how to keep it, increase it and not waste it. suger, abbot of saint Denis, around 1150 remembers with pride the growth of his monastery’s wealth and he describes himself as a saint because he was able to multiply it.2 Bernard of clairvaux, eminent cistercian monk, distinguished politician and theorist of papal power as sovereign power per excellence , writing to Pope eugene iii insists on the administrative capacity that must distinguish a good papacy.3 One of the writings attributed to Bernard, addressed to a territorial aristocrat of the Milanese region, warns him to keep good accounts and not dissipate his patrimony of money and property by squandering it on revelry and useless lavishness. “if the expenses and the incomes are the same in your house,” he said, “an unlucky event will be enough to 2 suger de saint Denis, Écrits, ed. F. Gasparri (Paris: les Belles lettres, 1996). 3 Bernard of clairvaux, “De Consideratione ad Eugenium papam,” in Opere di San Bernardo, vol. 1, ed. F. Gastaldelli (Milan: città nuova, 1984). A TIME OF DEVELOPMENT AND ORGANIZATION 13 ruin it.”4 later, in the same letter, he notes that it is much better tosell than to accumulate, that the multiplication of luxurious clothes, avidity of rare food, and the hereditary division of properties are the origins not only of economic but also moral ruin of a noble family. therefore a good lord, as well as a good merchant, must be able to count and, hence, to manage.5 to educated ecclesiastics...