The Medieval Debate on Money and Interest: A Comparative Perspective on Ethics and Economics

This book examines the medieval debate on the role of money and credit in the Islamic and Western Christian worlds.

Starting from Aristotle's vision of the ethical and egalitarian use of wealth, fundamental to both Islamic and Christian thinkers, it highlights how the two visions of money and credit share a strong ethical-religious foundation. However, thinking on monetary and credit matters in the Western Christian and Islamic worlds has developed differently, partly due to the different evolution of the two economic systems. In Islamic economic thought, particular attention has been paid to the prohibition of paying interest on loans, the main basis for which lies in the Qur'an and the Sunnah. This has had interesting repercussions both on the development of the socio-economic system and on theoretical thinking. In the Western Christian world, too, this prohibition was based on ethical and religious grounds. Taking an Aristotelian perspective, the writings of the Thomists and the Franciscan and Augustinian schools reiterated the need for an ethical assessment of credit and interest. This resulted in a significant contribution to the process of secularization of economic science and valuable theoretical support for important institutional developments.

This book will be of great interest to readers of Islamic and Christian ethics, the history of money and, more generally, the history of economic thought.

Guido Tortorella Esposito is Associate Professor of the History of Economic Thought at the University of Sannio and a member of the History of Economic Thought research group at Complutense University of Madrid.

Stefano Figuera is Associate Professor of Political Economy at the Department of Law of the University of Catania (Italy) where he teaches Political Economy and History of Political Economy.