Money and capital

Many historians now feel that treating the past as a foreign country is a luxury we can no longer afford. The organizers of this year’s International Medieval Congress, Europe’s largest gathering of medievalist scholars, chose the theme “Crisis”. At a time of political upheaval, yawning inequality and climate breakdown, even scholars whose period is far removed from the present feel they should have something to say on the most pressing issues of the day

One way in which historians of the Middle Ages have argued for the relevance of their discipline is by mining the period for moral lessons. So too Annette Kehnel, whose wide-ranging and highly accessible polemic on medieval sustainability is newly translated from the German by Gesche Ipsen. Kehnel, a distinguished professor at the University of Mannheim, aims “to inspire, to awaken our sense for the possibilities out there and help us think outside now defunct thought patterns”. Drawing on examples from across Europe, whether the urban gardens of women’s communes in the Low Countries or Basle’s financial market in microloans, the author suggests that the Middle Ages can offer new solutions to intractable problems in the present day.

It wasn’t always thus. To be present-centred was called anachronism; to frame our questions about the past in terms of today’s concerns, we were taught, would prevent us from seeing the past through the eyes of those who lived through it. But the postmodernist assertion that such a goal is impossible, coupled with the urgency of current crises, has put paid to that.

So here, for example, Franciscan monks are framed as medieval “influencers”, promoting microfinance schemes and minimalism. St Francis might not have appreciated being compared to the celebrity home organizer Marie Kondo, but the friars’ role as cheerleaders for the monti di pietà – charitable providers of low-interest loans – does have something in common with YouTubers. When mendicants’ sermons promoting these funds went viral, they could boost the monti’s fundraising; when they blamed Jewish moneylenders for a host of evils, they incited persecution to match any online rabble-rousing.

Financial sustainability is at the heart of Kehnel’s account. Through lists of items pledged to pawnbrokers in Perugia and other Italian cities, she shows how people in the fifteenth century bought everyday items with one eye on their potential value as collateral for a loan. In exchange for some pennies or florins, debtors could offer clothes, jewellery, tableware – and in one case even an oven door. Livestock, too, was a movable asset. Cows could be rented for use as dairy or draught animals; or farmers might mortgage their stable, receiving cash up front in exchange for a percentage of the progeny. Some urban entrepreneurs invested in livestock for large-scale leasing to rural farmers – though, as the author notes, such leasing may be seen as exploitation of poorer districts by wealthier, akin, perhaps, to the issue of second-home ownership.

In case we might assume that such measures were ad hoc, poorly understood solutions to particular issues, Kehnel supplies an accessible account of medieval advances in economic theory through the story of another Franciscan, the thirteenth-century contrarian Pierre de Jean Olivi (1248–98). A pioneer in theories of price and value, who sought to establish the parameters of an item’s “just price” and helped to establish the distinction between money and capital (namely, that capital is money used to generate profit), he personified the scholastic rigour of the newly founded universities. Scholasticism later became associated with hair-splitting pedantry, but Olivi’s story shows how creative an endeavour intellectual disputation could be.

In terms of environmental sustainability, Kehnel shows how medieval people could carefully manage natural resources – whether forests or fish – to avoid depletion. Practices of reuse, repair and recycling, too, were commonplace. Before modern industry vastly reduced (or outsourced) the cost of raw materials, these practices were largely financially driven, but the natural world benefited. One might quibble that the benefits were uneven. The conservation of some forests was outweighed by extensive clearances in other areas; and while fish were in some cases protected, the same can hardly be said for bears or beavers. Nevertheless, the lessons that Kehnel draws still stand: the Middle Ages offer clear examples of the success of collaborative decision-making in preserving natural resources. On the other hand, when efficiency is the sole goal and natural resources are cheap, destruction inevitably follows.

Kehnel ranges widely in time and space to pick the best examples in support of her argument, even venturing out of the medieval period, back to ancient Greece and up to the eighteenth century. One might point to counter-examples. Yes, monasteries got rich by sharing – but also by cultivating aristocratic donors and often extorting local populations. Yes, Franciscans abhorred conspicuous consumption – but their sole motivation was to imitate Christ and the Apostles. Still, the author has assembled a fascinating series of snapshots of medieval life, including specific details of social and economic history that readers can, if they wish, appreciate without reference to the present day. Anyone wondering which tradesmen and women were likely to need loans, what they used that money for and how the loans were recorded (including with little mnemonic pictograms) can enjoy such vignettes without having to get involved in peer-to-peer lending themselves.

In her conclusion Kehnel wonders whether medieval people would be impressed by us. They would surely be wowed by the comforts and speed of modern life, but would they be appalled by our greed (not to mention our godlessness)? Would they shake their heads at our stubborn sluggishness in dealing with rampant inequality and the destruction of the planet, and think we were just as narrow-minded as we think them?

In their introduction to the International Medieval Congress programme the organizers expressed their hope that the theme of “Crisis” would present “an excellent opportunity [for medievalists] to contribute to wider society”. Annette Kehnel, in a book she dedicates to future generations, is certainly doing her bit. By immersing us in the practicalities of Pyrenean herdsmen and the imperial court of Charlemagne, she inculcates some of the empathy that historians have always sought to foster in students and readers, whether or not we choose to imitate medieval responses to crisis. If empathy for people who lived a thousand years ago can translate into empathy for people living a thousand miles away, medieval history can still find its purpose.

Seb Falk is a Fellow of Girton College, University of Cambridge, and author of The Light Ages: A medieval journey of discovery, 2020

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