INTRODUCTION

The mathematics of the soul and the tendency to view sacred things in terms of economic exchange were reflections of the progressive dominance of the market-place and its dynamics in late medieval society. At the heart of this was money. Money bought and maintained property of all types; it was increasingly coming to buy status; it was the stuff of charitable handouts to the destitute and disabled, and it might be the means through which paradise was purchased. These roles have already been discussed. Those remaining, to be discussed in future chapters, were more complex, such as its role as price or wage, as commodity or investment, or as loan or credit. The nature and properties of money – the question of what it was and was not – were basic to much of the discussion about these functions, especially on credit and loans, and therefore form the main subject of this chapter.

Money, however, meant different things to different people, and the scholastic view was not the only one. Some simply worshipped it as a god. John Bromyard was following a long and hostile tradition of ‘venality satire’, when he described how