Benjamin A. SaltzmanProfessor Maureen MillerHistory 275B.003

Little, Lester K. Religious Poverty and the Profit Economy in Medieval Europe. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993.

By transposing his study upon the cultural and historical period of Bloch’s second feudal age (c. 1000-1300), Little argues that the culture of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries experienced a “spiritual crisis” in which religious poverty developed as a viable and morally superior alternative to the newly minted industries of the profit economy. This profit economy develops out of the earlier gift-giving economies. And out of it comes two primary results. On the one hand, the friars became the champions of poverty within the urban setting. On the other, the Jews (as “the only ‘outsiders’ near at hand” and as the people associated with money and money lending) were persecuted in acts of “old fashioned pillaging raids” that functioned as a release for the new tensions between morality and economic behavior.

Initially, there were two distinct modes of reconciling Christian spirituality with the new urban profit economy of the second feudal age: escape from it (monks) or confront it (canons, laity, and friars). Monasteries encountered the growing profit economy as they began to accumulate increased wealth from benefactors and economic (land-owning) endeavors. This trend was countered by monastic reforms based in part on a return to the principles of eremitic monasticism, leading to stricter establishments of coenobitic communities such as the Cistercians and the Carthusians, which stayed as far away from the turbulence of urban life as possible. Within the bounds of the urban economic setting, canons regular refused to own property. And the growing lay population, eager to participate in religious practices, formed several lay spiritual organizations around the voluntary ideals of poverty and morality. But the growing presence of these organizations posed institutional problems (e.g. why is the clergy even necessary if the Waldensians are more devout?). To the rescue come the friars. The establishment of the Franciscans and the Dominicans successfully combined the aspects of their forerunners into a “coherent and workable spiritual programme,” inheriting and synthesizing the principles of the Humiliati and the Waldensians along with the eremitical tradition as well. As the orders of friars became established, their intellectual and pastoral effect on the social circumstances of the thirteenth century expanded, creating a place for private property (if employed in moral transactions and by moral men) alongside their new conception of spirituality. The work of the friars thus functioned in parallel with the dominant work of the period (of merchants, lawyers, etc.) as they engaged in art of persuasion. Ultimately, to quote Little, “The leading practitioners of voluntary poverty, themselves city dwellers, formulated an ethic that justified the principal activities of the dominant groups in urban society” and St. Francis of Assisi became the patron saint of merchants (216-17). The friars took on the primary religious life of the city and of European society by the late thirteenth century.

Gerhoh, for example, held that clerics must not own any property. He saw avarice as the primary trouble of his age and saw poverty as the only solution. During the second feudal age, the laity became more involved in the practices of Christianity than every before.

Little’s thesis centers on urban development.

Money was equated with the devil, excrement, and corruption (change from pride to avarice as the worst vice).

Monks The life of st. Alexis recounts how one could react to this negative monetary sentiment by abandoning any attempt to make money. (p. 40).

“Together these elements suggest the tension that developed between the innovative sectors of the second feudal age and the morality inherited from the earlier age. So uncompromising was that morality that virtually any participation in the upper levels of the commercial economy involved the dangers of sin and conjured up visions of appalling punishments” (41).

“It was both inaccurate and unfair to regard commercial activity, especially moneylending, as the exclusive preserve of Jews, for the Jews always formed a tiny minority of the people so engaged. And yet the main function of the Jews in the Commercial Revolution was to bear the burden of Christian guilt for participation in activities not yet deemed morally worthy of Christians. Christians attacked in the Jews those things about themselves that they found inadmissible and that they therefore projected on to the Jews. Guilt led to hostility, and hostility to violence, which led to a need for rationalizing the violence, and this rationalization led to a deeper hostility. . .” (56).

2 types of religious responses to the new profit economy: Become a monk or hermit and separate oneself from it or live life as a Canon, Layman, or Friar and. This distinction between classes of religious also corresponds to the

Where monasteries prior to the tenth century could and did function apart from the urban economic structures, by the eleventh and twelfth centuries monasteries—as huge land owners, for example—progressively became more incorporated into the threads of urban exchange and accumulated great wealth in doing so. They used the wealth to decorate the abbey churches for the sake of the liturgy. Prior to the Commercial Revolution monks saw themselves as Christ’s poor, but this poverty had a different meaning. The monks were not the financially poor to whom they gave charity, instead they were weak in relation to the powerful, they were once knights, for instance, who gave up their arms (68). There was thus no contradition between monastic wealth and povery.

5 questions:

What role and under what circumstances do specialized industries begin to develop and what role does this play in the birth of the profit economy? How does Little’s characterization differ from that of Duby or

Compare the timelines of urban development to Nicholas. Does Little use the same markers? Nicholas sees much more of the development happening earlier. Only spends one paragraph on the mendicant orders to say that they typically were not large land owners and only were able to own central plots of land through donations or private land deals. They did not, according to Nicholas, play any kind of role in developing the nature of the medieval city.

Describe the cyclical nature of the treatment of Jews in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. How did guilt factor into the treatment of the Jews? And what role did this treatment play in the development of Religious poverty? – They became associated with commerce, p. 56.

How was the eremitic life used as a vehicle of reform in the eleventh and twelfth centuries? Who were the key figures? What did they accomplish: Carthusians, Cistercians, Premonstratensians? Why didn’t they succeed (why did Little culminate his study with friars and not them?

What were some of the organized lay reactions to the urban profit economy? Humiliati, Waldensians, Beuines, and Cathars. Were they effective? Aside from the fact that they were made up of laity, how does their response differ from that of canons or of friars? And what were some of the reactions to these lay organizations? (Waldensians threatened the existence of priests, because people saw them as being perfect men of faith who functioned without clerical help. . . why do we need priests?). Challenge on the clergy’s monopoly on religious life. => new religious orders (Franciscians and Dominicans)

What are some of the critical differences between the Franciscians and the Dominicans in terms of their orientation towards wealth?