Introduction

One of the most difficult problems confronting the historian of economic policy in the Middle Ages is to decide what constituted in those days the field of ‘economic policy’. We might define ‘economic policy’ today as ‘public policy in respect of the economic life of a country’; but, although this definition is so wide and elastic as to be almost elusive, it still remains difficult to adapt to it the remote reality of the Middle Ages.

Thus the fact that by economic policy we commonly mean a public policy is a source of uncertainty when we transfer such a concept to the medieval period. In dealing with the centuries preceding our millennium, it is often difficult to say whether the monarchs of that time in taking certain measures were acting as public authorities or as individuals. It is also difficult to decide whether a study of ‘economic policy’ in those centuries should take into consideration the provisions made and the programmes carried out by ecclesiastical or secular lords in the administration of their own manors, since we cannot disregard the fact that feudal lords were no less public authorities than the kings or emperors. The very distinction between public and private was blurred in the minds of men before the year 1000.

Even after that time, the distinction was not at once apparent. In fields like that of finance princes and monarchs continued to behave in such a way that it is difficult to say whether they acted as public bodies or as private individuals. On the other hand, it would be difficult to deny the appellation of ‘public’ to institutions like the gilds and similar corporations merely because we today do not recognize certain associations of workers and entrepreneurs as public bodies. To take an example, the corporations of merchants or merchant gilds in the Italian medieval towns were empowered and obliged to supervise and maintain the thoroughfares, to scrutinize prices and wages, to deal directly with foreign governments, drawing up actual commercial treaties in the name of their own cities.