Religion And the Rise of Capitalism

RELIGION AND THE RISE OF CAPITALISM- A HISTORICAL STUDY by R. H. TAWNEY. Originally published in 1922. From The Holland Memorial Lectures. PREFATORY NOTE: THE friends of the late Henry Scott Holland founded alectureship in his memory, the Deed of Foundation laying it down that a course of lectures, to be called the Holland Memorial Lectures, are to be delivered triennially, having for their subject the religion of theIncarnation in its bearing on the social and economiclife of man The first course of these lectures was delivered by Mr, R. H, Tawney at Kings College,London, in March and April 1922, but it is only now,more than three years later, that the work of preparing them for publication has been completed, andthat I have been called upon, as the chairman of the Holland Trustees, to introduce our first series of lectures to the public. They are a historical study ofthe religion of the Reformation in its bearing on socialand economic thought. We have been for many yearsfeeling our want of such a study, sufficiently documentedand grounded upon an adequate knowledge of the literature of the period, as we have watched the modernbattle between zealous medievalists impugning the Reformation as deeply responsible for the sins ofmodern industrialism, and no less zealous Protestantsrebutting the charge or throwing it back. At last, Ibelieve, we have got what is required, and that manybesides myself will find in the book a permanentsource of enlightenment and a just and well grounded judgment, I am thankful to feel that the first seriesof Holland lectures is a worthy tribute to the memory of a man who set his brilliant faculties to work in noix