Religious Poverty and the Profit Economy in Medieval Europe by Lester K. Little
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Here Leter K Little traces the development of the profit economy from a gift economy. He highlights how the legend of the usurious Jew comes about when the main stream culture through the wealth of the church comes to occupy the scapegoat of greed so that the church’s tides system and the emerging banking system in Europe can be free to operate. As money comes to take the center stage in organizing culture we see a revival through the various groups within and associated with the church as a twist from living well to purposefully making poverty a choice in order to maintain moral purity necessary to mark themselves as being alienated from the “dirty” emerging money economy.
Despite the promise of a dry book this was actually very interesting. Little’s writing is clear. I would have liked a little more background on the money economy’s emergence but I suppose that is beyond the scope of the book. The emergence of poverty as a religious asset is a reflection of the emergence of money as the central organizing principle. Religion fights to maintain a suprasensible hold on organizing human activity above and beyond money. And this seems to work, at least, in the middle Medieval ages.
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