vJ AJLli !>
the ppesence of this Book
thej.m. kelly
has Been made possiBle
thpouqh the qeneposity
Stephen B. Roman
From the Library of Daniel Binchy
MEDIAEVAL
SOCIALISM
BY BEDE JARRETT, O.P., M.A.
LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK
67 LONG ACRE, W.C., AND EDINBURGH
NEW YORK: DODGE PUBLISHING CO.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAQE
I. INTRODUCTION 5
II. SOCIAL CONDITIONS 17
HI. THE COMMUNISTS 29
IV. THE SCHOOLMEN ...... 41
V. THE LAWYERS 55
VI. THE SOCIAL REFORMERS .... 68
VII. THE THEORY OF ALMS-GIVING ... 80
BIBLIOGRAPHY 91
93
iii
MEDIAEVAL SOCIALISM
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
THE title of this book may not unnaturally provoke
suspicion. After all, howsoever we define it, socialism
is a modern thing, and dependent almost wholly on
modern conditions. It is an economic theory which
has been evolved under pressure of circumstances wiiich
are admittedly of no very long standing. How then,
it may be asked, is it possible to find any real corre
spondence between theories of old time and those which
have grown out of present-day conditions of life ?
Surely whatever analogy may be drawn between them
must be based on likenesses which cannot be more than
superficial.
The point of view implied in this question is being
increasingly adopted by all scientific students of social
and political opinions, and is most certainly correct.
Speculation that is purely philosophic may indeed turn
round upon itself. The views of Grecian metaphysi
cians may continue for ever to find enthusiastic adher^
ents ; though even here, in the realm of purely abstract
reasoning, the progressive development of science, of
psychology, and kindred branches of knowledge cannot
6 MEDIAEVAL SOCIALISM
fail by its influence to modify the form and arrangement
of thought. But in those purely positive sciences (if
indeed sciences they can properly be called) which deal
with the life of man and its organisation, the very
principles and postulates will be found to need con
tinual readjustment. For with man s life, social,
political, economic, we are in contact with forces which
are of necessity always in a state of flux. For example,
the predominance of agriculture, or of manufacture, or
of commerce in the life of the social group must materi
ally alter the attitude of the statesman who is respon
sible for its fortunes ; and the progress of the nation
from one to another stage of her development often
entails (by altering from one class to another the
dominant position of power) the complete reversal of
her traditional maxims of government. Human life is
not static, but dynamic. Hence the theories weaved
round it must themselves be subject to the law of con
tinuous development.
It is obvious that this argument cannot be gainsaid ;
and yet at the same time we may not be in any way
illogical in venturing on an inquiry as to whether, in
centuries not wholly dissimilar from our own, the mind
of man worked itself out along lines parallel in some
degree to contemporary systems of thought. Man s
life differs, yet are the categories which mould his ideas
eternally the same.
But before we go on to consider some early aspects
of socialism, we must first ascertain what socialism itself
essentially implies. Already within the lifetime of the
present generation the word has greatly enlarged the
scope of its significance. Many who ten years ago
would have objected to it as a name of ill-omen see in
it now nothing which may not be harmonised with the
INTRODUCTION 7
most ordinary of political and social doctrines. It is
hardly any longer the badge of a school. Yet it does
retain at any rate the bias of a tendency. It suggests
chiefly the transference of ownership in land and capital
from private hands into their possession in some form
or other by the society. The means of this transfer
ence, and the manner in which this social possession
is to be maintained, are very widely debated, and need
not here be determined ; it is sufficient for the matter
of this book to have it granted that in this lies the germ
of the socialistic theory of the State.
Once more it must be admitted that the meaning of
" private ownership " and " social possession will vary
exceedingly in each age. When private dominion has
become exceedingly individual and practically absolute,
the opposition between the two terms will necessarily
be very sharp. But in those earlier stages of national
and social evolution, when the community was still
regarded as composed, not of persons, but of groups,
the antagonism might be, in point of theory, extremely
limited ; and in concrete cases it might possibly be
difficult to determine where one ended and the other
began. Yet it is undeniable that socialism in itself
need mean no more than the central principle of State-
ownership of capital and land. Such a conception is
consistent with much private property in other forms
than land and capital, and will be worked out in detail
differently by different minds. But it is the principle,
the essence of it, which justifies any claims made to the
use of the name. We may therefore fairly call those
theories socialistic which are covered by this central
doctrine, and disregard, as irrelevant to the nature of
the term, all added peculiarities contributed by indi
viduals who have joined their forces to the movement.
8 MEDIAEVAL SOCIALISM
By socialistic theories of the Middle Ages, therefore,
we mean no more than those theories which from time
to time came to the surface of political and social specu
lation in the form of communism, or of some other way
of bringing about the transference which we have just
indicated. But before plunging into the tanglement of
these rather complicated problems, it will make for
clearness if we consider quite briefly the philosophic
heritage of social teaching to which the Middle Ages
succeeded.
The Fathers of the Church had found themselves
confronted with difficulties of no mean subtlety. On
the one hand, the teaching of the Scriptures forced upon
them the religious truth of the essential equality of all
human nature. Christianity was a standing protest
against the exclusiveness of the Jewish faith, and de
manded through the attendance at one altar the recog
nition of an absolute oneness of all its members. The
Epistles of St. Paul, which were the most scientific defence
of Christian doctrine, were continually insisting on the
fact that for the new faith there was no real division
between Greek or barbarian, bond or free. Yet, on the
other hand, there were equally unequivocal expressions
concerning the reverence and respect due to authority
and governance. St. Peter had taught that honour
should be paid to Caesar, when Caesar was no other than
Nero. St. Paul had as clearly preached subjection to
the higher powers. Yet at the same time we know that
the Christian truth of the essential equality of the whole
human race was by some so construed as to be incompat
ible with the notion of civil authority. How, then, was
this paradox to be explained ? If all were equal, what
justification would there be for civil authority ? If
civil authority was to be upheld, wherein lay the meaning
INTRODUCTION 9
of St. Paul s many boasts of the new levelling spirit of
the Christian religion ? The paradox was further com
plicated by two other problems. The question of the
authority of the Imperial Government was found to
be cognate with the questions of the institution of
slavery and of private property. Here were three con
crete facts on which the Empire seemed to be based.
What was to be the Christian attitude towards
them?
After many attempted explanations, which were
largely personal, and, therefore, may be neglected here,
a general agreement was come to by the leading Chris
tian teachers of East and West. This was based on a
theological distinction between human nature as it ex
isted on its first creation, and then as it became in the
state to which it was reduced after the fall of Adam.
Created in original justice, as the phrase ran, the powers
of man s soul were in perfect harmony. His sensitive
nature, i.e. his passions, were in subjection to his will,
his will to his reason, his reason to God. Had man con
tinued in this state of innocence, government, slavery,
and private property would never have been required.
But Adam fell, and in his fall, said these Christian
doctors, the whole conditions of his being were disturbed.
The passions broke loose, and by their violence not
unfrequently subjected the will to their dictatorship ;
together with the will they obscured and prejudiced the
reason, which under their compulsion was no longer
content to follow the Divine Reason or the Eternal Law
of God. In a word, where order had previously reigned,
a state of lawlessness now set in. Greed, lust for power,
the spirit of insubordination, weakness of will, feeble
ness of mind, ignorance, all swarmed into the soul of
man, and disturbed not merely the internal economy
10 MEDIAEVAL SOCIALISM
of his being, but his relations also to his fellows. The
sin of Cain is the social result of this personal upheaval.
Society then felt the evils which attended this new
condition of things, and it was driven, according to this
patristic idea, to search about for remedies in order to re
strain the anarchy which threatened to overwhelm the
very existence of the race. Hence was introduced first of
all the notion of a civil authority. It was found that
without it, to use a phrase which Hobbes indeed has
immortalised, but which can be easily paralleled from
the writings of St. Ambrose or St. Augustine, " life
was nasty, brutish, and short. 2 To this idea of authority,
there was quickly added the kindred ideas of private
property and slavery. These two were found equally
necessary for the well-being of human society. For the
family became a determined group in which the patri
arch wielded absolute power ; his authority could be
effective only when it could be employed not only over
his own household, but also against other households,
and thus in defence of his own. Hence the family must
have the exclusive right to certain things. If others
objected, the sole arbitrament was an appeal to force,
and then the vanquished not only relinquished their
claims to the objects in dispute, but became the slaves
of those to whom they had previously stood in the
position of equality and rivalry.
Thus do the Fathers of the Church justify these three
institutions. They are all the result of the Fall, and
result from sin. Incidentally it may be added that
much of the language in which Hildebrand and others
spoke of the civil power as " from the devil is trace
able to this theological concept of the history of its
origin, and much of their hard language means no more
than this. Private property, therefore, is due to the
INTRODUCTION 11
Fall, and becomes a necessity because of the presence
of sin in the world.
But it is not only from the Fathers of the Church that
the mediaeval tradition drew its force. For parallel
with this patristic explanation came another, which was
inherited from the imperial legalists. It was based
upon a curious fact in the evolution X>f Roman law,
which must now be shortly described.
For the administration of justice in Rome two officials
were chosen, who between them disposed of all the cases
in dispute. One, the Praetor Urbanus, concerned him
self in all litigation between Roman citizens ; the other,
the Praetor Peregrinus, had his power limited to those
matters only in which foreigners were involved ; for
the growth of the Roman Imperium had meant the in
clusion of many under its suzerainty who could not
boast technical citizenship. The Praetor Urbanus was
guided in his decisions by the codified law of Rome ;
but the Praetor Peregrinus was in a very different posi
tion. He was left almost entirely to his own resources.
Hence it was customary for him, on his assumption of
office, to publish a list of the principles by which he
intended to settle all the disputes between foreigners
that were brought to his court. But on what founda
tion could his declaratory act be based ? He was sup
posed to have previously consulted the particular laws
of as many foreign nations as was possible, and to have
selected from among them those which were found to
be held in common by a number of tribes. The fact of
this consensus to certain laws on the part of different
races was supposed to imply that these were fragments
of some larger whole, which came eventually to be
called indifferently the Law of Nature, or the Law of
Nations. For at almost the very date when this Law
12 MEDIAEVAL SOCIALISM
of Nations was beginning thus to be built up, the Greek
notion of one supreme law, which governed the whole
race and dated from the lost Golden Age, came to the
knowledge of the lawyers of Home. They proceeded
to identify the two really different concepts, and evolved
for themselves the final notion of a fundamental rule,
essential to all moral action. In time, therefore, this
supposed Natural Law, from its venerable antiquity and
universal acceptance, acquired an added sanction and
actually began to be held in greater respect than even
the declared law of Rome. The very name of Nature
seemed to bring with it greater dignity. But at the
same time it was carefully explained that this Lex
Naturae was not absolutely inviolable, for its more
accurate description was Lex or Jus Gentium. That is
to say, it was not to be considered as a primitive law
which lay embedded like first principles in human
nature ; but that it was what the nations had derived
from primitive principles, not by any force of logic,
but by the simple evolution of life. The human race
had found by experience that the observance of the
natural law entailed as a direct consequence the estab
lishment of certain institutions. The authority, there
fore, which these could boast was due to nothing more
than the simple struggle for existence. Among these
institutions were those same three (civil authority,
slavery, private property), which the Fathers had come
to justify by so different a method of argument. Thus,
by the late Roman lawyers private property was upheld
on the grounds that it had been found necessary by
the human race in its advance along the road of life.
To our modern ways of thinking it seems as though they
had almost stumbled upon the theory of evolution, the
gradual unfolding of social and moral perfection due to
INTRODUCTION 13
the constant pressure of circumstances, and the ultimate
survival of what was most fit to survive. It was almost
by a principle of natural selection that mankind was
supposed to have determined the necessity of civil
authority, slavery, private property, and the rest. The
pragmatic test of life had been applied and had proved
their need.
A third powerful influence in the development of
Christian social teaching must be added to the others
in order the better to grasp the mental attitude of the
mediaeval thinkers. This was the rise and growth of
monasticism. Its early history has been obscured by
much legendary detail ; but there is sufficient evidence
to trace it back far into the beginnings of Christianity.
Later there had come the stampede into the Thebaid,
where both hermit life and the gathering together of
many into a community seem to have been equally
allowed as methods of asceticism. But by the fifth
century, in the East and the West the movement had
been effectively organised. First there was the canonical
theory of life, introduced by St. Augustine. Then St.
Basil and St. Benedict composed their Rules of Life,
though St. Benedict disclaimed any idea of being original
or of having begun something new. Yet, as a matter of
fact, he, even more efficiently than St. Basil, had really
introduced a new force into Christendom, and thereby
became the undoubted father of Western monasticism.
Now this monasticism had for its primary intention
the contemplation of God. In order to attain this object
more perfectly, certain subsidiary observances were
considered necessary. Their declared purpose was
only to make contemplation easier ; and they were
never looked upon as essential to the monastic pro
fession, but only as helps to its better working. Among
14 MEDIAEVAL SOCIALISM
these safeguards of monastic peace was included the
removal of all anxieties concerning material well-being.
Personal poverty that is, the surrender of all personal
claim to things the care of which might break in upon
the fixed contemplation of God was regarded as equally
important for this purpose as obedience, chastity, and
the continued residence in a certain spot. It had
indeed been preached as a counsel of perfection by
Christ Himself in His advice to the rich young man,
and its significance was now very powerfully set forth
by the Benedictine and other monastic establishments.
It is obvious that the existence of institutions of this
kind was bound to exercise an influence upon Christian
thought. It could not but be noticed that certain
individual characters, many of whom claimed the respect
of their generation, treated material possessions as hin
drances to spiritual perfection. Through their example
private property was forsworn, and community of
possession became prominently put forward as being
more in accordance with the spirit of Christ, who had
lived with His Apostles, it was declared, out of the
proceeds of a common purse. The result, from the
point of view of the social theorists of the day, was
to confirm the impression that private property was
not a thing of much sanctity. Already, as we have
seen, the Fathers had been brought to look at it as
something sinful in its origin, in that the need of it was
due entirely to the fall of our first parents. Then the
legalists of Rome had brought to this the further con
sideration that mere expedience, universal indeed, but
of no moral sanction, had dictated its institution as the
only way to avoid continual strife among neighbours.
And now the whole force of the religious ideals of the
time was thrown in the same balance. Eastern and
INTRODUCTION 15
Western monasticism seemed to teach the same lesson,
that private property was not in any sense a sacred
thing. Rather it seemed to be an obstacle to the perfect
devotion of man s being to God ; and community of
possession and life began to boast itself to be the more
excellent following of Christ.
Finally it may be asserted that the social concept of
feudalism lent itself to the teaching of the same lesson.
For by it society was organised upon a system of land
tenure whereby each held what was his of one higher
than he, and was himself responsible for those beneath
him in the social scale. Landowners, therefore, in the
modern sense of the term, had no existence there were
only landholders. The idea of absolute dominion with
out condition and without definite duties could have
occurred to none. Each lord held his estate in feud,
and with a definite arrangement for participating in the
administration of justice, in the deliberative assembly,
and in the war bands of his chief, who in turn owed the
same duties to the lord above him. Even the king, who
stood at the apex of this pyramid, was supposed to be
merely holding his power and his territorial domain as
representing the nation. At his coronation he bound
himself to observe certain duties as the condition of
his royalty, and he had to proclaim his own acceptance of
these conditions before he could be anointed and crowned
as king. Did he break through his coronation-oath,
then the pledge of loyalty made by the people was con
sidered to be in consequence without any binding force,
and his subjects were released from their obedience.
In this way, then, also private property was not likely
to be deemed equivalent to absolute possession. It was
held conditionally, and was not unfrequently forfeited
for offences against the feudal code. It carried with it
16 MEDIAEVAL SOCIALISM
burdens which made its holding irksome, especially for
all those who stood at the bottom of the scale, and
found that the terms of their possession were rigorously
enforced against them. The death of the tenant and
the inheriting of his effects by his eldest son was made
the occasion for exactions by the superior lord ; for to
him belonged certain of the dead man s military accoutre
ments as pledges, open and manifest, of the continued
supremacy to be exercised over the successor.
Thus the extremely individual ideas as regards the
holding of land which are to-day so prevalent would
then have been hardly understood. Every external
authority, the whole trend of public opinion, the teach
ing of the Christian Fathers, the example of religious
bodies, the inherited views that had come down to the
later legalists from the digests of the imperial era, the
basis of social order, all deflected the scale against the
predominance of any view of land tenure or holding which
made it an absolute and unrestricted possession. Yet
at the same time, and for the same cause, the modern
revolt against all individual possession would have been
for the mediaeval theorists equally hard to understand.
Absolute communism, or the idea of a State which under
the magic of that abstract title could interfere with the
whole social order, was too utterly foreign to their ways
of thinking to have found a defender. The king they
knew, and the people, and the Church ; but the State
(which the modern socialist invokes) would have been
an unimaginable thing.
In that age, therefore, we must not expect to find
any fully-pledged Socialism. We must be content to
notice theories which are socialistic rather than socialist.
SOCIAL CONDITIONS 17
CHAPTER II
SOCIAL CONDITIONS
So long as a man is in perfect health, the movements
of his life-organs are hardly perceptible to him. He
becomes conscious of their existence only when some
thing has happened to obstruct their free play. So,
again, is it with the body politic, for just so long as
things move easily and without friction, hardly are any
one s thoughts stimulated in the direction of social reform.
But directly distress or disturbance begin to be felt,
public attention is awakened, and directed to the con
sideration of actual conditions. Schemes are suggested,
new ideas broached. Hence, that there were at all in
the Middle Ages men with remedies to be applied to
" the open sores of the world, 51 makes us realise that
there must have been in mediaeval life much matter
for discontent. Perhaps not altogether unfortunately,
the seeds of unrest never need much care in sowing, for
the human heart would else advance but little towards
" the perfect day." The rebels of history have been as
necessary as the theorists and the statesmen ; indeed,
but for the rebels, the statesmen would probably have
remained mere politicians.
Upon the ruins of the late Empire the Germanic races
built up their State. Out of the fragments of the older
villa they erected the manor. No doubt this new social
unit contained the strata of many civilisations ; but it
will suffice here to recognise that, while it is perhaps
impossible to apportion out to each its own particular
contribution to the whole result, the manor must have
been affected quite considerably by Roman, Celt, and
B
18 MEDIAEVAL SOCIALISM
Teuton. The chief difference which we notice between
this older system and the conditions of modern agri
cultural life for the manor was pre-eminently a rural
organism lies in the enormous part then played in
the organisation of society by the idea of Tenure. For,
through all Western civilisation, from the seventh cen
tury to the fourteenth, the personal equation was
largely merged in the territorial. One and all, master
and man, lord and tenant, were " tied to the soil."
Within the manor there was first the land held in demesne,
the in-land this was the perquisite of the lord himself ;
it was farmed by him directly. Only when modern
methods began to push out the old feudal concepts do we
find this portion of the estate regularly let out to tenants,
though there are evidences of its occasionally having
been done even in the twelfth century. But besides
what belonged thus exclusively to the lord of the manor,
there was a great deal more that was legally described
as held in villeinage. That is to say, it was in the hands
of others, who had conditional use of it. In England
these tenants were chiefly of three kinds the villeins,
the cottiers, the serfs. The first held a house and yard
in the village street, and had in the great arable fields
that surrounded them strips of land amounting some
times to thirty acres. To their lord they owed work
for three days each week ; they also provided oxen for
the plough. But more than half of their time could
be devoted to the farming of their property. Then
next in order came the cottiers, whose holding probably
ran to not more than five acres. They had no plough-
work, and did more of the manual labour of the farm,
such as hedging, nut-collecting, &c. A much greater
portion of their time than was the case with the villeins
was at the disposal of their master, nor indeed, owing
SOCIAL CONDITIONS 19
to the lesser extent of their property, did they need so
much opportunity for working their own land. Lowest
in the scale of all (according to the Domesday Book of
William I, the first great land- value survey of all
England, they numbered not more than sixteen per
cent, of the whole population) came the slaves or serfs.
These had almost exclusively the live stock to look after,
being engaged as foresters, shepherds, swineherds, and
servants of the household. They either lived under
the lord s own roof, or might even have their cottage
in the village with its strip of land about it, sufficient,
with the provisions and cloth provided them, to eke
out a scanty livelihood. Distinct from these three
classes and their officials (bailiffs, seneschals, reeves,
&c.) were the free tenants, who did no regular work for
the manor, but could not leave or part with their land.
Their services were requisitioned at certain periods like
harvest-time, when there came a demand for more than
the ordinary number of hands. This sort of labour
was known as boon- work.
It is clear at once that, theoretically at least, there
was no room in such a community for the modern
landless labourer. Where all the workers were paid by
their tenancy of land, where, in other words, fixity and
stability of possession were the very basis of social life,
the fluidity of labour was impossible. Men could not
wander from place to place offering to employers the
hire of their toil. Yet we feel sure that, in actual fact,
wherever the population increased, there must have
grown up in the process of time a number of persons
who could find neither work nor maintenance on their
father s property. Younger sons, or more remote de
scendants, must gradually have found that there was
no scope for them, unless, like an artisan class, they
20 MEDIAEVAL SOCIALISM
worked for wages. Exactly at what date began the
rise of this agricultural and industrial class of fee
labourers we cannot very clearly tell. But in England
and probably the same holds good elsewhere between
1200 and 1350 there are traces of its great development.
There is evidence, which each year becomes more ample
and more definite, that during that period there was
an increasingly large number of people pressing on the
means of subsistence. Though the land itself might
be capable of supporting a far greater number of inhabit
ants, the part under cultivation could only just have been
enough to keep the actually existing population from
the margin of destitution. The statutes in English
law which protest against a wholesale occupation of
the common-land by individuals were not directed
merely against the practices of a landlord class, for the
makers of the law were themselves landlords. It is
far more likely that this invasion of village rights was
due to the action of these " landless men," who could
not otherwise be accommodated. The superfluous
population was endeavouring to find for itself local
maintenance.
Precisely at this time, too, in England where the
steps in the evolution from mediaeval to modern con
ditions have been more clearly worked out than else
where increase of trade helped to further the same
development. Money, species, in greater abundance
was coming into circulation. The traders were be
ginning to take their place in the national life. The
Guilds were springing into power, and endeavouring to
capture the machinery of municipal government. As
a result of all this commercial activity money payments
became more frequent. The villein was able to pay
his lord instead of working for him, and by the sale of
SOCIAL CONDITIONS 21
the produce from his own yard-land was put in a posi
tion to hire helpers for himself, and to develop his own
agricultural resources. Nor was it the tenant alone
who stood to gain by this arrangement. The lord, too,
was glad of being possessed of money. He, too, needed
it as a substitute for his duty of military service to
the king, for scutage (the payment of a tax graduated
according to the number of knights, which each baron
had to lead personally in time of war as a condition of
holding land at all) had taken the place of the old feudal
levy. Moreover, he was probably glad to obtain hired
labour in exchange for the forced labour which the
system of tenure made general ; just as later the aboli
tion of slavery was due largely to the fact that, in the
long run, it did not pay to have the plantations worked
by men whose every advantage it was to shirk as much
toil as possible.
But in most cases, as far as can be judged now, the
lord was methodical in releasing services due to him.
The week-work was first and freely commuted, for
regular hired labour was easy to obtain ; but the boon-
work the work, that is, which was required for unusual
circumstances of a purely temporary character (such as
harvesting, &c.) was, owing to the obvious difficulty of
its being otherwise supplied, only arranged for in the
last resort. Thus, by one of the many paradoxes of
history, the freest of all tenants were the last to achieve
freedom. When the serfs had been set at liberty by
manumission, the socage-tenants or free-tenants, as
they were called, were still bound by their fixed agree
ments of tenure. It is evident, however, that such
emancipation as did take place was conditioned by the
supply of free labour, primarily, that is, by the rising
surplus of population. Not until he was certain of
22 MEDIAEVAL SOCIALISM
being able to hire other labourers would a landholder
let his own tenants slip off the burdens of their service.
But this process, by which labour was rendered less
stationary, was immeasurably hastened by the advent of
a terrible catastrophe. In 1347 the Black Death arrived
from the East. Across Europe it moved, striking fear
by the inevitableness of its coming. It travelled at a
steady rate, so that its arrival could be easily foretold.
Then, too, the unmistakable nature of its symptoms
and the suddenness of the death it caused also added
to the horror of its approach.
On August 15, 1349, it got to Bristol, and by Michael
mas had reached London. For a year or more it ravaged
the countryside, so that whole villages were left without
inhabitants. Seeing England so stunned by the blow,
the Scots prepared to attack, thinking the moment
propitious for paying off old scores ; but their army,
too, was smitten by the pestilence, and their forces
broke up. Into every glen of Wales it worked its havoc ;
in Ireland only the English were affected the "wild
Irish were immune. But in 1357 even these began
to suffer. Curiously enough, Geoffrey Baker in his
Chronicle (which, written in his own hand, after six
hundred years yet remains in the Bodleian at Oxford)
tells us that none fell till they were afraid of it. Still
more curiously, Chaucer, Langland, and Wycliff, who
all witnessed it, hardly mention it at all. There could
not be any more eloquent tribute to the nameless
horror that it caused than this hushed silence on the
part of three of England s greatest writers.
Henry Knighton of Leicester Abbey, canon and
chronicler, tells us some of the consequences following
on the plague, and shows us very clearly the social up
heaval it effected. The population had now so much
SOCIAL CONDITIONS 23
diminished that prices of live stock went down, an ox
costing 4s., a cow I2d., and a sheep 3d. But for the same
reason wages went up, for labour had suddenly grown
scarce. For want of hands to bring in the harvest, whole
crops rotted in the fields. Many a manor had lost a third
of its inhabitants, and it was difficult, under the fixed
services of land tenure, to see what remedy could be ap
plied. In despair the feudal system was set aside, and
lord competed with lord to obtain landless labourers, or to
entice within their jurisdiction those whose own masters
ill-treated them in any way. The villeins themselves
sought to procure enfranchisement, and the right to hire
themselves out to their lords, or to any master they might
choose. Commutation was not particularly in evidence as
the legal method of redress ; though it too was no doubt
here and there arranged for. But for the most part the
villein took the law into his own hands, left his manor,
and openly sold his labour to the highest bidder.
But at once the governing class took fright. In
their eyes it seemed as though their tenants were taking
an unfair advantage of the disorganisation of the
national life. Even before Parliament could meet, in
1349 an ordnance was issued by the King (Edward III),
which compelled all servants, whether bond or free, to
take up again the customary services, and forced work
on all who had no income in land, or were not otherwise
engaged. The lord on whose manor the tenant had
heretofore dwelt had preferential claim to his labour,
and could threaten with imprisonment every refractory
villein. Within two years a statute had been enacted
by Parliament which was far more detailed in its opera
tion, fixing wages at the rate they had been in the
twentieth year of the King s reign (i.e. at a period
before the plague, when labour was plentiful), and also
24 MEDIAEVAL SOCIALISM
with all appearance of justice determining the prices
of agricultural produce. It was the first of a very long
series of Acts of Parliament that, with every right in
tention, but with a really obvious futility, endeavoured
to reduce everything to what it had been in the past,
to put back the hands of the clock, and keep them back.
But one strange fact is noticeable.
Whether unconsciously or not, the framers of these
statutes were themselves striking the hardest blow at the
old system of tenure. From 1351 the masters pre
ferential claim to the villeins of their own manor dis
appears, or is greatly limited. Henceforth the labourers
are to appear in the market place with their tools, and
(reminiscent of scriptural conditions) wait till some man
hired them. The State, not the lord, is now regulating
labour. Labour itself has passed from being " tied to
the soil, ! and has become fluid. It is no longer a
personal obligation, but a commodity.
Even Parliament recognised that in many respects at
least the old order had passed away. The statute of
1351 allows " men of the counties of Stafford, Lancaster,
Derby, the borders of Wales and Scotland, &c., to come
in August time to labour in other counties, and to
return in safety, as they were heretofore wont to do."
It is the legalisation of what had been looked at, up till
then, askance. The long, silent revolution had become
conscious. But the lords were, as we have said, not
altogether sorry for the turn things had taken. Groaning
under pressure from the King s heavy war taxation,
and under the demands which the advance of new
standards of comfort (especially between 1370 and 1400)
entailed, they let off on lease even the demesne land, and
became to a very great extent mere rent-collectors.
Commutation proceeded steadily, with much haggling
SOCIAL CONDITIONS 25
so as to obtain the highest price from the eager tenant.
Wages rose slowly, it is true, but rose all the same ; and
rent, though still high, was becoming, on the whole,
less intolerable.
But the drain of the French war, and the peculation
in public funds brought about the final upheaval which
completed what the Black Death had begun. The
capricious and unfairly graduated poll-tax of 1381 came
as a climax, and roused the Great Revolt of that year,
a revolt carefully engineered and cleverly organised,
which yet for the demands it made is a striking testi
mony to the moderation, the good sense, and also the
oppressed state of the English peasant.
The fourfold petition presented to the King by the
rebels was :
(1) The abolition of serfdom.
(2) The reduction of rent to 4d. per acre.
(3) The liberty to buy and sell in market.
(4) A free pardon.
Compare the studiously restrained tone of these
articles with the terrible atrocities and vengeance
wreaked by the Jacquerie in France, and the no less
awful mob violence perpetrated in. Florence by the
Ciompi. While it shows no doubt in a kindly light the
more equitable rule of the English landholder, it remains
a monument, also, of the fair-mindedness of the English
worker.
In the towns much the same sort of struggle had
been going on ; for the towns themselves, more often
than not, sprang up on the demesne of some lord, whether
king, Church, or baron. But here the difficulties were
complicated still further by the interference of the
Guilds, which in the various trades regulated the hours
26 MEDIAEVAL SOCIALISM
of labour, the quality of the work, and the rate of
remuneration. Yet, on the other hand, it is undoubted
that, once the squalor of the earlier stages of urban life
had been removed or at least improved, the social con
dition of the poor, from the fourteenth century onwards,
was immeasurably superior in the towns to what it
w r as in the country districts.
The quickening influence of trade was making itself
felt everywhere. In 1331 the cloth trade was intro
duced at Bristol, and settled down then definitely in
the west of England. In the north we notice the be
ginnings of the coal trade. Licence was given to the
burgesses of Newcastle to dig for coal in 1351 ; and
in 1368 two merchants of the same city had applied for
and obtained royal permission to send that precious
commodity " to any part of the kingdom, either by
land or water. 5 Even vast speculations were opening
up for English commercial enterprise, when, by corner
ing the wool and bribing the King, a ring of merchants
were able to break the Italian banking houses, and
disorganise the European money market, for on the
Continent all this energy in trade was already old. The
house of Anjou, for example, had made the kingdom of
Naples a great trading centre. Its corn and cattle
were famous the world over. But in Naples it was the
sovereigns (like Edward III and Edward IV in England)
who patronised the commercial instincts of their people.
By the indefatigable genius of the royal house, industry
was stimulated, and private enterprise encouraged. By
wise legislation the interests of the merchants were
safeguarded ; and by the personal supervision of Govern
ment, fiscal duties were moderated, the currency kept
pure and stable, weights and measures reduced to uni
formity, the ease and security of communications secured.
SOCIAL CONDITIONS 27
No doubt trade not seldom, even in that age, led to
much evil. Parliament in England raised its voice
against the trickery and deceit practised by the greater
merchants towards the small shopkeepers, and com
plained bitterly of the growing custom of the King to
farm out to the wealthier among them the subsidies
and port-duties of the kingdom. For the whole force
of the break-up of feudal conditions was to turn the
direction of power into the hands of a small, but moneyed
class. Under Edward III there is a distinct appearance
of a set of nouveaux riches, who rise to great prominence
and take their places beside the old landed nobility.
De la Pole, the man who did most to establish the
prosperity of Hull, is an excellent example of what is
often thought to be a decidedly modern type. He intro
duced bricks from the Low Countries, and apparently
by this means and some curious banking speculations
of very doubtful honesty achieved a great fortune.
The King paid a visit to his country house, and made
him Chief Baron of the Exchequer, in which office he
was strongly suspected of not always passing to the
right quarter some of the royal moneys. His son became
Earl of Suffolk and Lord Chancellor ; and a marriage
with royalty made descendants of the family on more
than one occasion heirs-at-law of the Crown.
Even the peasant was beginning to feel the ameliora
tion of his lot, found life easy, and work something to
be shirked. In his food, he was starting to be delicate.
Says Langland in his " Vision of Piers Plowman 3 :
" Then labourers landless that lived by their hands,
"Would deign not to dine upon worts a day old.
No penny-ale pleased them, no piece of good bacon,
Only fresh flesh or fish, well-fried or well-baked,
Ever hot and still hotter to heat well their maw."
28 MEDIAEVAL SOCIALISM
And he speaks elsewhere of their laziness :
" Bewailing his lot as a workman to live,
He grumbles against God and grieves without reason,
And curses the king and his council after
Who licence the laws that the labourers grieve."
That the poor could thus become fastidious was a good
sign of the rising standard of comfort.
But for all that life was hard, and much at the mercy
of the weather, and of the assaults of man s own fellows.
The houses of the better folk were of brick and stone,
and glass windows were just becoming known, whereas
the substitute of oiled paper had been neither cheerful
nor of very much protection. But the huts of the poor
were of plastered mud ; and even the walls of a quite
respectable man s abode, we know from one court
summons to have been pierced by arrows shot at him
by a pugnacious neighbour. The plaintiff offered to
take judge and jury then and there and show them
these " horrid weapons still sticking to the exterior.
In the larger houses the hall had branched off, by
the fourteenth century, into withdrawing-rooms, and
parlours, and bedrooms, such as the Paston Letters
describe with much curious wealth of detail. Lady
Milicent Falstolf, we are told, was the only one in her
father s household who had a ewer and washing-basin.
Yet with all the lack of the modern necessities of life,
human nature was still much the same. The antagonism
between rich and poor, which the collapse of feudal
relations had strained to breaking-point, was not perhaps
normally so intense as it is to-day ; yet there was
certainly much oppression and unnecessary hardships
to be suffered by the weak, even hi that age. The
Ancren Riwle, that quaint form of life for ankeresses
drawn up by a Dominican in the thirteenth century,
THE COMMUNISTS 29
shows that even then, despite the distance of years
and the passing of so many generations, the manners
and ways and mental attitudes of people depended very
much as to whether they were among those who had,
or who had not ; the pious author in one passage of
homely wit compares certain of the sisters to ; those
artful children of rich parents who purposely tear their
clothes that they may have new ones."
There have always been wanton waste and destitution
side by side ; and on the prophecy of the One to whom
all things were revealed, we know that the poor shall be
always with us. Yet we must honour those who, like
their Master, strive to smooth away the anxious wrinkles
of the world.
CHAPTER III
THE COMMUNISTS
THERE have always been religious teachers for whom all
material creation was a thing of evil. Through the
whole of the Middle Ages, under the various names of
Manicheans, Albigensians, Vaudois, &c., they became
exceedingly vigorous, though their importance was only
fitful. For them property was essentially unclean,
something to be avoided as carrying with it the in
dwelling of the spirit of evil. Etienne de Bourbon, a
Dominican preacher of the thirteenth century, who
got into communication with one of these strange re
ligionists, has left us a record, exceedingly unprejudiced,
of their beliefs. And amongst their other tenets, he
mentions this, that they condemned all who held landed
property. It will be here noticed that as regards these
Vaudois (or Poor Men of Lyons, as he informs us they
were called), there could have been no auestion of com-
30 MEDIAEVAL SOCIALISM
munism at all, for a common holding of property would
have been as objectionable as private property. To hold
material things either in community or severalty was
in either case to bind oneself to the evil principle. Yet
Etienne tells us that there was a sect among them which
did sanction communism ; they were called, in fact, the
Communati (Tractates de Diversis Materiis Predicdbilibus,
Paris, 1877, p. 281). How they were able to reconcile
this social state with their beliefs it is quite impossible
to say ; but the presumption is that the example of
the early Christians was cited as of sufficient authority
by some of these teachers. Certain it is that a sect
still lingered on into the thirteenth century, called the
Apostolici, who clung to the system which had been
in vogue among the Apostles. St. Thomas Aquinas
(Summa Theologica, 2a, 2ae, 66, 2) mentions them, and
quotes St. Augustine as one who had already refuted
them. But these were seemingly a Christian body,
whereas the Albigensians could hardly make any such
claim, since they repudiated any belief in Christ s hum
anity, for it conflicted with their most central dogma.
Still it is clear that there were in existence certain
obscure bodies which clung to communism. The pub
lished records of the Inquisition refer incessantly to
preachers of this kind who denied private property,
asserted that no rich man could get to heaven, and
attacked the practice of almsgiving as something utterly
immoral.
The relation between these teachers and the Orders
of friars has never been adequately investigated. We
know that the Dominicans and Franciscans were from
their earliest institution sent against them, and must
therefore have been well acquainted with their errors.
And, as a fact, we find rising among the friars a party
which seemed no little infected with the "spiritual 5
THE COMMUNISTS 31
tendency of these very Vaudois. The Franciscan
reverence for poverty, which the Poor Man of Assisi
had so strenuously advocated, had in fact become almost
a superstition. Instead of being, as the saint had in
tended it to be, merely a means to an end, it had in
process of time become looked upon as the essential of
religion. When, therefore, the excessive adoption of
it made religious life an almost impossible thing, an
influential party among the Franciscans endeavoured
to have certain modifications made which should limit
it within reasonable bounds. But opposed to them
was a determined, resolute minority, which vigorously
refused to have any part in such " relaxations." The
dispute between these two branches of the Order be
came at last so tempestuous that it was carried to the
Pope, who appointed a commission of cardinals and
theologians to adjudicate on the rival theories. Their
award was naturally in favour of those who, by their
reasonable interpretation of the meaning of poverty,
were fighting for the efficiency of their Order. But
this drove the extreme party into still further extremes.
They rejected at once all papal right to interfere with the
constitutions of the friars, and declared that only St.
Francis could undo what St. Francis himself had bound
up. Nor was this all, for in the pursuance of their zeal
for poverty they passed quickly from denunciations of
the Pope and the wealthy clergy (in which their rhetoric
found very effective matter for argument) into abstract
reasoning on the whole question of the private posses
sion of property. The treatises which they have left
in crabbed Latin and involved methods of argument
make wearisome and irritating reading. Most are ex
ceedingly prolix. After pages of profound disquisi
tions, the conclusions reached seem to have advanced
the problem no further. Yet the gist of the whole is
32 MEDIAEVAL SOCIALISM
certainly an attempt to deny to any Christian the right
to temporal possessions. Michael of Cesena, the most
logical and most effective of the whole group, who
eventually became the Minister-General of this portion
of the Order, does not hesitate to affirm the incompati
bility of Christianity and private property. From
being a question as to the teaching of St. Francis, the
matter had grown to one as to the teaching of Christ ;
and in order to prove satisfactorily that the practice
of poverty as inculcated by St. Francis was absolute
and inviolable, it was found necessary to hold that it
was equally the declared doctrine of Christ.
Even Ockham, a brilliant Oxford Franciscan, who,
together with Michael, defended the Emperor, Louis of
Bavaria, in his struggle against Pope John XXII, let
fall in the heat of controversy some sayings which must
have puzzled his august patron ; for Louis would have
been the very last person for whom communism had any
charms. Closely allied in spirit with these " Spiritual
Franciscans, 3 as they were called, or FraticelH, were
those curious mediaeval bodies of Beguins and Beghards.
Hopelessly pantheistic in their notion of the Divine
Being, and following most peculiar methods of reach
ing on earth the Beatific Vision, they took up with the
same doctrine of the religious duty of the communistic
life. They declared the practice of holding private
property to be contrary to the Divine Law.
Another preacher of communism, and one whose
name is well known for the active propaganda of his
opinions, and for his share in the English Peasant
Revolt of 1381, was John Ball, known to history as
" The Mad Priest of Kent." There is some difficulty
in finding out what his real theories were, for his
chroniclers were his enemies, who took no very elaborate
THE COMMUNISTS 33
Bteps to ascertain the exact truth about him. Of course
there is the famous couplet which is said to have been
the text of all his sermons :
" Whaune Adam dalf and Eve span,
Who was thane a gentilman 2" x
at least, so it is reported of him in the Chronicon Angliae,
the work of an unknown monk of St. Albans (Roll
Series, 1874, London, p. 321). Froissart, that pictur
esque journalist, who naturally, as a friend of the Court,
detested the levelling doctrines of this political rebel,
gives what he calls one of John Ball s customary ser
mons. He is evidently not attempting to report any
actual sermon, but rather to give a general summary
of what was supposed to be Ball s opinions. As such,
it is worth quoting in full.
c My good friends, things cannot go on well in Eng
land, nor ever will until everything shall be in common ;
when there shall be neither vassal nor lord, and ail dis
tinctions levelled ; when lords shall be no more masters
than ourselves. How ill have they used us ! and for
what reason do they thus hold us in bondage ? Are
we not all descended from the same parents Adam
and Eve ? And what can they show, and what reason
give, why they should be more the masters than our
selves ? Except, perhaps, in making us labour and work
for them to spend." Froissart goes on to say that for
speeches of this nature the Archbishop of Canterbury
put Ball in prison, and adds that for himself he considers
that "it would have been better if he had been confined
there all his life, or had been put to death. 1 However,
the Archbishop " set him at liberty, for he could not for
This rhyme is of course much older than John Ball ; c/.
Richard Rolle (1300-1349), i. 73, London, 1895.
O
34 MEDIAEVAL SOCIALISM
conscience sake have put him to death " (Froissart s
Chronicle, 1848, London, book ii. cap. 73, pp. 652-653).
From this extract all that can be gathered with cer
tainty is the popular idea of the opinions John Ball
held ; and it is instructive to find that in the Primate s
eyes there was nothing in the doctrine to warrant the
extreme penalty of the law. But in reality we have no
certainty as to what Ball actually taught, for in another
account we find that, preaching on Corpus Christi Day,
June 13, 1381, during the last days of the revolt, far
fiercer words are ascribed to him. He is made to appeal
to the people to destroy the evil lords and unjust judges,
who lurked like tares among the wheat. " For when the
great ones have been rooted up and cast away, all will
enjoy equal freedom all will have common nobility,
rank, and power. : Of course it may be that the war-
fever of the revolt had affected his language ; but the
sudden change of tone imputed in the later speeches
makes the reader somewhat suspicious of the au
thenticity.
The same difficulty which is experienced in discover
ing the real mind of Ball is encountered when dealing
with Wat Tyler and Jack Straw, who were, with him,
the leaders of the revolt. The confession of Jack Straw
quoted in the Chronicon Angliae, like nearly all mediaeval
" confessions," cannot be taken seriously. His accusers
and judges readily supplied what they considered he
should have himself admitted. Without any better
evidence we cannot with safety say along what lines he
pushed his theories, or whether, indeed, he had any
theories at all. Again, Wat Tyler is reported to have
spoken threateningly to the King on the morning of
his murder by Lord Mayor Walworth ; but the evidence
is once more entirely one-sided, contributed by those
THE COMMUNISTS 35
who were only too anxious to produce information
which should blacken the rebels in the minds of the
educated classes. As a matter of fact, the purely official
documents, in which we can probably put much more
reliance (such as the petitions that poured in from all
parts of the country on behalf of the peasants, and the
proclamations issued by Richard II, in which all their
demands were granted on condition of their immediate
withdrawal from the capital), do not leave the impres
sion that the people really advocated any communistic
doctrines ; oppression is complained of, the lawyers
execrated, the labour laws are denounced, and that is
practically all.
It may be, indeed, that the traditional view of Ball
and his followers, which makes them one with the
contemporaneous revolts of the Jacquerie in France,
the Ciompi in Florence, &c., has some basis in fact.
But at present we have no means of gauging the precise
amount of truth it contains.
But even better known than John Ball is one who is
commonly connected with the Peasant Revolt, and
whose social opinions are often grouped under the
same heading as that of the " Mad Priest of Kent,"
John Wycliff, Master of Balliol, and parson of Lutter-
worth. This Oxford professor has left us a number of
works from which to quarry material 3 to build up afresh
the edifice he intended to erect. His chief contribution
is contained in his De Civili Dominio, but its com
position extended over a long period of years, during
which time his views were evidently changing ; so that
the precise meaning of his famous theory on the Domi
nion of Grace is therefore difficult to ascertain.
But in the opening of his treatise he lays down the
two main "truths : upon which his whole system rests :
36 MEDIAEVAL SOCIALISM
I. No one in mortal sin has any right to the gifts of
God;
II. Whoever is in a state of grace has a right, not
indeed to possess the good things of God, but
to use them.
He seems to look upon the whole question from a
feudal point of view. Sin is treason, involving there
fore the forfeiture of all that is held of God. Grace, on
the other hand, makes us the liegemen of God, and gives
us the only possible right to all His good gifts. But,
he would seem to argue, it is incontestable that property
and power are from God, for so Scripture plainly assures
us. Therefore, he concludes, by grace, and grace alone,
are we put in dominion over all things ; once we are in
loyal subjection to God, we own all things, and hold
them by the only sure title. " Dominion by grace
is thus made to lead direct to communism. His con
clusion is quite clear : Omnia debent esse eommunia.
In one of his sermons (Oxford, 1869, vol. i. p. 260),
when he has proved this point with much complacent
argumentation, he poses himself with the obvious diffi
culty that in point of fact this is not true ; for many
who art? apparently in mortal sin do possess property
and have dominion. What, then, is to be done, for
" they be commonly mighty, and no man dare take
from them ? Hh answer is not very cheerful, for he
has to console his questioner with the barren scholastic
comfort that " nevertheless, he hath them not, but
occupieth things that be not his. : Emboldened by
the virtue of this dry logic, he breaks out into his gospel
of plain assertion that " the saints have now all things
that they would have. 1 His whole argument, accord
ingly, does not get very far, for he is still speaking
really (though he does not at times very clearly dis-
THE COMMUNISTS 37
tinguish between the two) much more about the right
to a thing than its actual possession. He does not really
defend the despoiling of the evil rich at all in his own
graphic phrase, " God must serve the Devil " ; and all
that the blameless poor can do is to say to themselves
that tl ough the rich " possess " or " occupy," the poor
" have." It seems a strange sort of " having " ; but he
is careful to note that, " as philosophers say, having is
in many manners.
Wycliff himself, perhaps, had not definitely made up
his mind as to the real significance of his teaching ; for
the system which he sketches does not seem to have
been clearly thought out. His words certainly appear
to bear a communistic sense ; but it is quite plain that
this was not the intention of the writer. He defends
Plato at some length against the criticism of Aristotle,
but only on the ground that the disciple misunderstood
the master : " for I do not think Socrates to have so
intended, but only to have had the true catholic idea
that each should have the use of what belongs to his
brother " (De Civili Dominio, London, 1884-1904, vol. i.
p. 99). And just a few lines farther on he adds, " But
whether Socrates understood this or not, I shall not
further question. This only I know, that by the law
of charity every Christian ought to have the just use
of what belongs to his neighbour." What else is this
really but the teaching of Aristotle that there should
be " private property and common use " ? It is, in fact,
the very antithesis of communism.
Some have thought that he was fettered in his
language by his academic position ; but no Oxford don
has ever said such hard things about his Alma Mater
as did this master of Balliol. " Universities," says he,
: houses of study, colleges, as well as degrees and
38 MEDIAEVAL SOCIALISM
masterships in them, are vanities introduced by the
heathen, and profit the Church as little and as much as
does Satan himself. " Surely it were impossible to
accuse such a man of economy of language, and of being
cowed by any University fetish.
His words, we have noted above, certainly can bear
the interpretation of a very levelling philosophy. Even
in his own generation he was accused through his
followers of having had a hand in instigating the revolt.
His reply was an angry expostulation (Trevelyan s
England in the Age, of Wycliff, 1909, London, p. 201).
Indeed, considering that John of Gaunt was his best
friend and protector, it would be foolish to connect
Wycliff with the Peasant Rising. The insurgents, in
their hatred of Gaunt, whom they looked upon as the
cause of their oppression, made all whom they met
swear to have no king named John (Chronicon Angliae,
p. 286). And John Ball, whom the author of the
Fasciculi Zizaniorum (p. 273, Roll Series, 1856, London)
calls the " darling follower " of Wycliff, can only be con
sidered as such in his doctrinal teaching on the dogma
of the Real Presence. It must be remembered that to
contemporary England Wycliff s fame came from two
of his opinions, viz. his denial of a real objective Presence
in the Mass (for Christ was there only by " ghostly wit "),
and his advice to King and Parliament to confiscate
Church lands. But whenever Ball or anyone else is
accused of being a follower of Wycliff, nothing else is
probably referred to than the professor s well-known
opinion on the sacrament of the Eucharist. Hence it
is that the Chronicon Angliae speaks of John Ball as
having been imprisoned earlier in life for his Wycliffite
errors, which it calls simply perversa dogmata. The
" Morning Star of the Reformation " being therefore
THE COMMUNISTS 39
declared innocent of complicity with the Peasant
Revolt, it is interesting to note to whom it is that he
ascribes the whole force of the rebellion. For him the
head and front of all offending was the hated friars.
Against this imputation the four Orders of friars
(the Dominicans, Franciscans, Augustinians, and Car
melites) issued a protest. Fortunately in their spirited
reply they give the reasons on account of which they
are supposed to have shared in the rising. These were
principally negative. Thus it was stated that their
influence with the people was so great that had they
ventured to oppose the spirit of revolt their words would
have been listened to (Fasciculi Zizaniorum, p. 293).
The chronicler of St. Albans is equally convinced of
their weakness in not preventing it, and declares that
the flattery which they used alike on rich and poor had
also no mean share in producing the social unrest
(Chronicon Angliae, p. 312). Langland also, in his
" Vision of Piers Plowman, 5 goes out of his way to
denounce them for their levelling doctrines :
" Envy heard this and bade friars go to school,
And learn logic and law and eke contemplation,
And preach men of Plato and prove it by Seneca
That all things under Heaven ought to be in common,
And yet he lieth, as I live, and to the lewd so preacheth
For God made to men a law and Moses it taught
Non concupisces rem proximi tui"
(Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour s goods).
Here then it is distinctly asserted that the spread of
communistic doctrines was due to the friars. Moreover,
the same popular opinion is reflected in the fabricated
confession of Jack Straw, for he is made to declare that
had the rebels been successful, all the monastic orders,
as well as the secular clergy, would have been put to
40 MEDIAEVAL SOCIALISM
death, and only the friars would have been allowed to
continue. Their numbers would have sufficed for the
spiritual needs of the whole kingdom (CJironicon Angliae,
p. 309). Moreover, it has been noticed that not a few
of them actually took part in the revolt, heading some
of the bands of countrymen who marched on London.
It will have been seen, therefore, that Communism
was a favourite rallying-cry throughout the Middle
Ages for all those on whom the oppression of the feudal
yoke bore heavily. It was partly also a religious ideal
for some of the strange gnostic sects which flourished
at that era. Moreover, it was an efficient weapon when
used as an accusation, for Wycliff and the friars alike
both dreaded its imputation. Perhaps of all that
period, John Ball alone held it consistently and without
shame. Eloquent in the way of popular appeal, he
manifestly endeavoured to force it as a social reform
on the peasantry, who were suffering under the in
tolerable grievance of the Statutes of Labourers. But
though he roused the countryside to his following, and
made the people for the first time a thing of dread to
nobles and King, it does not appear that his ideas spread
much beyond his immediate lieutenants. Just as in
their petitions the rebels made no doctrinal statements
against Church teaching, nor any capital out of heretical
attacks (except, singularly enough, to accuse the
Primate, whom they subsequently put to death, of
overmuch leniency to Lollards), so, too, they made no
reference to the central idea of Ball s social theories.
In fact, little abstract matter could well have appealed
to them. Concrete oppression was all they knew, and
were this done away with, it is evident that they would
have been well content.
The case of the friars is curious. For though their
THE SCHOOLMEN 41
superiors made many attempts to prove their hostility
to the rebels, it is evident that their actual teaching
was suspected by those in high places. It is the exact
reversal of the case of Wycliif. His views, which
sounded so favourable to communism, are found on
examination to be really nothing but a plea to leave
things alone, " for the saints have now all they would
have ; while on the other hand the theories of the
friars, in themselves so logical and consistent, and in
appearance obviously conservative to the fullest extent,
turn out to contain the germ of revolution.
Said Lord Acton with his sober wit : " Not the devil,
but St. Thomas Aquinas, was the first Whig. 1
CHAPTER IV
THE SCHOOLMEN
THE schoolmen in their adventurous quest after a com
plete harmony of all philosophic learning could not
neglect the great outstanding problems of social and
economic life. They flourished at the very period of
European history when commerce and manufacture
were coming back to the West, and their rise syn
chronises with the origin of the great houses of the
Italian and Jewish bankers. Yet there was very little
in the past learning of Christian teachers to guide them
in these matters, for the patristic theories, which we
have already described, and a few isolated passages
cited in the Decretals of Gratian, formed as yet almost
the only contribution to the study of these sciences.
However, this absence of any organised body of know
ledge was for them but one more stimulus towards the
42 MEDIAEVAL SOCIALISM
elaboration of a thorough synthesis of the moral aspect
of wealth. A few of the earlier masters made reference,
detached and personal, to the subject of dispute, but
it was rather in the form of a disorderly comment than
the definite statement of a theory.
Then came the translation of Aristotle s Politics, with
the keen criticism they contain of the views Plato had
advocated. Here at once the intellect of Europe found
an exact exposition of principles, and began immediately
to debate their excellence and their defect. St. Thomas
Aquinas set to work on a literal commentary, and at
his express desire an accurate translation was made
direct from the Greek by his fellow-Dominican, William
of Moerbeke. Later on, when all this had had time
to settle and find its place, St. Thomas worked out his
own theory of private property in two short articles in
his famous Summa Theologica. In his treatise on
Justice, which occupies a large proportion of the
Secund Secundae of the Summa, he found himself forced
to discuss the moral evil of theft ; and to do this ade
quately he had first to explain what he meant by private
possessions. Without these, of course, there could be
no theft at all.
He began, therefore, by a preliminary article on the
actual state of created things that is, the material, so
to say, out of which private property is evolved. Here
he notes that the nature of things, their constituent
essence, is in the hands of God, not man. The worker
can change the form, and, in consequence, the value of
a thing, but the substance which lies beneath all the
outward show is too subtle for him to affect it in any
way. To the Supreme Being alone can belong the power
of creation, annihilation, and absolute mutation. But
besides this tremendous force which God holds incom-
THE SCHOOLMEN 43
municably, there is another which He has given to man,
namely, the use of created things. For when man was
made, he was endowed with the lordship of the earth.
This lordship is obviously one without which he could
not live. The air, and the forces of nature, the beasts
of the field, the birds and fishes, the vegetation in fruit
and root, and the stretches of corn are necessary for
man s continued existence on the earth. Over them,
therefore, he has this limited dominion.
Moreover, St. Thomas goes on, man has not merely
the present moment to consider. He is a being pos
sessed of intelligence and will, powers which demand
and necessitate their own constant activity. Instinct,
the gift of brute creation, ensures the preservation of
life by its blind preparation for the morrow. Man has
no such ready-made and spontaneous faculty. His
powers depend for their effectiveness on their de
liberative and strenuous exertions. And because life
is a sacred thing, a lamp of which the once extinguished
light cannot be here re-enkindled, it carries with it,
when it is intelligent and volitional, the duty of self-
preservation. Accordingly the human animal is bound
by the law of his own being to provide against the
necessities of the future. He has, therefore, the right
to acquire not merely what will suffice for the instant,
but to look forward and arrange against the time when
his power of work shall have lessened, or the objects
which suffice for his personal needs become scarcer or
more difficult of attainment. Property, therefore, of
some kind or other, says Aquinas, is required by the
very nature of man. Individual possessions are not a
mere adventitious luxury which time has accustomed
him to imagine as something he can hardly do without,
nor are they the result of civilised culture, which by the
44 MEDIAEVAL SOCIALISM
law of its own development creates fresh needs for each
fresh demand supplied ; but in some form or other they
are an absolute and dire necessity, without which life
could not be lived at all. Not simply for his " well-
being, ! but for his very existence, man finds them to
be a sacred need. Thus as they follow directly from
the nature of creation, we can term them " natural. 55
St. Thomas then proceeds in his second article to
enter into the question of the rights of private property.
The logical result of his previous argument is only to
affirm the need man has of some property ; the practice
of actually dividing goods among individuals requires
further elaboration if it is to be reasonably defended.
Man must have the use of the fruits of the earth, but
why these rather than those should belong to him is
an entirely different problem. It is the problem of
Socialism. For every socialist must demand for each
member of the human race the right to some posses
sions, food and other such necessities. But why he
should have this particular thing, and why that other
thing should belong to someone else, is the question
which lies at the basis of all attempts to preserve or
destroy the present fabric of society. Now, the argu
ment which we have so far cited from St. Thomas is
simply based on the indefeasible right of the individual
to the maintenance of his life. Personality implies the
right of the individual to whatever is needful to him in
achieving his earthly purpose, but does not in itself
justify the right to private property.
" Two offices pertain to man with regard to exterior
things " (thus he continues). " The first is the power
if procuring and dispensing, and in respect to this, it is
lawful for man to hold things as his own." Here it is
well to note that St. Thomas in this single sentence
THE SCHOOLMEN 45
teaches that private property, or the individual occupa
tion of actual land or capital or instruments of wealth,
is not contrary to the moral law. Consequently he
would repudiate the famous epigram, " La Propriete
c est le vol." Man may hold and dispose of what be
longs to him, may have private property, and in no way
offend against the principles of justice, whether natural
or divine.
But in the rest of the article St. Thomas goes farther
still. Not merely does he hold the moral proposition
that private property is lawful, but he adds to it the
social proposition that private property is necessary.
" It is even necessary, 51 says he, " for human life, and
that for three reasons. Firstly, because everyone is
more solicitous about procuring what belongs to himself
alone than that which is common to all or many, since
each shunning labour leaves to another what is the
common burden of all, as happens with a multitude of
servants. Secondly, because human affairs are con
ducted in a more orderly fashion if each has his own
duty of procuring a certain thing, while there would be
confusion if each should procure things haphazard.
Thirdly, because in this way the peace of men is better
preserved, for each is content with his own. Whence
we see that strife more frequently arises among those
who hold a thing in common and individually. The
other office which is man s concerning exterior things,
is the use of them ; and with regard to this a man ought
not to hold exterior things as his own, but as common to
all, that he may portion them out to others readily in
time of need." (The translation is taken from New
Things and Old, by H. C. O Neill, 1909, London, pp.
253-4.) The wording and argument of this will bear,
and is well worth, careful analysis. For St. Thomas
46 MEDIAEVAL SOCIALISM
was a man, as Huxley witnesses, of unique intellectual
power, and, moreover, his theories on private property
were immediately accepted by all the schoolmen. Each
succeeding writer did little else than make more clear
and defined the outlines of the reasoning here elaborated.
We shall, therefore, make no further apology for an
attempt to set out the lines of thought sketched by
Aquinas.
It will be noticed at once that the principles on which
private property are here based are of an entirely differ
ent nature from those by which the need of property
itself was defended. For the latter we were led back
to the very nature of man himself and confronted with
his right and duty to preserve his own life. From this
necessity of procuring supply against the needs of the
morrow, and the needs of the actual hour, was deduced
immediately the conclusion that property of some kind
(i.e. the possession of some material things) was de
manded by the law of man s nature. It was intended
as an absolute justification of a sacred right. But in
this second article a completely different process is
observed. We are no longer considering man s essential
nature in the abstract, but are becoming involved in
arguments of concrete experience. The first was de
clared to be a sacred right, as it followed from a law of
nature ; the second is merely conditioned by the reasons
brought forward to support it. To repeat the whole
problem as it is put in the Summa, we can epitomise the
reasoning of St. Thomas in this easier way. The
question of property implies two main propositions :
(a) the right to property, i.e. to the use of material
creation ; (b) the right to private property, i.e. to the
actual division of material things among the determined
individuals of a social group. The former is a sacred,
THE SCHOOLMEN 47
inalienable right, which can never be destroyed, for it
springs from the roots of man s nature. If man exists,
and is responsible for his existence, then he must neces
sarily have the right to the means without which his
existence is made impossible. But the second proposi
tion must be determined quite differently. The kind
of property here spoken of is simply a matter not of
right, but of experienced necessity, and is to be argued
for on the distinct grounds that without it worse things
would follow : " it is even necessary for human life, and
that for three reasons." This is a purely conditional
necessity, and depends entirely on the practical effect
of the three reasons cited. Were a state of society to
exist in which the three reasons could no longer be
urged seriously, then the necessity which they occa
sioned would also cease to hold. In point of fact, St.
Thomas was perfectly familiar with a social group in
which these conditions did not exist, and the law of
individual possession did not therefore hold, namely,
the religious orders. As a Dominican, he had de
fended his own Order against the attacks of those who
would have suppressed it altogether ; and in his reply
to William of St. Amour he had been driven to uphold
the right to common life, and consequently to deny that
private property was inalienable.
Of course it was perfectly obvious that for St. Thomas
himself the idea of the Commune or the State owning
all the land and capital, and allowing to the individual
citizens simply the use of these common commodities,
was no doubt impracticable ; and the three reasons
which he gives are his sincere justification of the need
of individual ownership. Without this division of
property, he considered that national life would become
even more full of contention than it was already. Ac-
48 MEDIAEVAL SOCIALISM
eordingly, it was for its effectiveness in preventing a
great number of quarrels that he defended the in
dividual ownership of property.
Besides this article, there are many other expressions
and broken phrases in which Aquinas uses the same
phrase, asserting that the actual division of property
was due to human nature. " Each field considered in
itself cannot be looked upon as naturally belonging to
one rather than to another (2, 2, 57, 3) ; " distinction
of property is not inculcated by nature " (la, 2ae, 94, 5) ;
but again he is equally clear in insisting on the other
proposition, that there is no moral law winch forbids
the possession of land in severalty. " The common
claim upon things is traceable to the natural law, not
because the natural law dictates that all things should
be held in common, and nothing as belonging to any
individual person, but because according to the natural
law there is no distinction of possessions which comes
by human convention (2a, 2ae, 66, 2 ad 1m.).
To apprehend the full significance of this last remark,
reference must be made to the theories of the Roman
legal writers, which have been already explained. The
law of nature was looked upon as some primitive deter
mination of universal acceptance, and of venerable
sanction, which sprang from the roots of man s being.
This in its absolute form could never be altered or
changed ; but there was besides another law which had
no such compelling power, but which rested simply
on the experience of the human race. This was re
versible, for it depended on specific conditions and
stages of development. Thus nature dictated no
division of property, though it implied the necessity
of some property ; the need of the division was only
discovered when men set to work to live in social inter-
THE SCHOOLMEN 49
course. Then it was found that unless divisions were
made, existence was intolerable ; and so by human
convention, as St. Thomas sometimes says, or by the
law of nature, as he elsewhere expresses it, the division
into private property was agreed upon and took place.
This elaborate statement of St. Thomas was widely
accepted through all the Middle Ages. Wycliff alone,
and a few like him, ventured to oppose it ; but other
wise this extremely logical and moderate defence
of existing institutions received general adhesion.
Even Scotus, like Ockham, a brilliant Oxford scholar
whose hidden tomb at Cologne finds such few pil
grims kneeling in its shade, so hardy in his thought
and so eager to find a flaw in the arguments
of Aquinas, has no alternative to offer. Franciscan
though he was, and therefore, perhaps, more likely to
favour communistic teaching, his own theory is but a
repetition of what his rival had already propounded.
Thus, for example, he writes in a typical passage :
" Even supposing it as a principle of positive law that
life must be lived peaceably in a state of polity, it
does not straightway follow Therefore everyone must
have separate possessions. For peace could be ob
served even if all things were in common. Nor even
if we presuppose the wickedness of those who live
together is it a necessary consequence. Still a dis
tinction of property is decidedly in accord with a peaceful
social life. For the wicked rather take care of their
private possessions, and rather seek to appropriate to
themselves than to the community common goods.
Whence come strife and contention. Hence we find
it (division of property) admitted in almost every
positive law. And although there is a fundamental
principle from which all other laws and rights spring,
D
50 MEDIAEVAL SOCIALISM
still from that fundamental principle positive human
laws do not follow absolutely or immediately. Rather
it is as declarations or explanations in detail of that
general principle that they come into being, and must be
considered as evidently in accord with the universal
law of nature. 5 (Super Sententias Quaestiones, Bk. 4,
Dist. 15, q. 2. Venice, 1580.)
Here again, then, are the same salient points we have
already noticed in the Summa. There is the idea clearly
insisted on that the division of property is not a first
principle nor an immediate deduction from a first
principle, that in itself it is not dictated by the natural
law which leaves all things in common, that it is, how
ever, not contrary to natural law, but evidently in
accord with it, that its necessity and its introduction
were due entirely to the actual experience of the race.
Again, to follow the theory chronologically still
farther forward, St. Antonino, whose charitable institu
tions in Florence have stamped deeply with his personality
that scene of his life s labours, does little more than
repeat the words of St. Thomas, though the actual
phrase in which he here compresses many pages of
argument is reproduced from a work by the famous
Franciscan moralist John de Ripa. " It is by no means
right that here upon earth fallen humanity should
have all things in common, for the world would be turned
into a desert, the way to fraud and all manner of evils
would be opened, and the good would have always the
worse, and the bad always the better, and the most
effective means of destroying all peace would be estab
lished " (Summa Moralis, 3, 3, 2, 1). Hence he concludes
that " such a community of goods never could benefit
the State." These are none other arguments than
those already advanced by St. Thomas. His articles,
already quoted, are indeed the Locus Classicus for all
THE SCHOOLMEN 51
mediaeval theorists, and, though references in every
mediaeval work on social and economic questions are
freely made to Aristotle s Politics, it is evident that it is
really Aquinas who is intended.
Distinction of property, therefore, though declared
so necessary for peaceable social life, does not, for these
thinkers, rest on natural law, nor a divine law, but on
positive human law under the guidance of prudence
and authority. Communism is not something evil, but
rather an ideal too lofty to be ever here realised. It
implied so much generosity, and such a vigour of public
spirit, as to be utterly beyond the reach of fallen nature.
The Apostles alone could venture to live so high a life,
c for their state transcended that of every other mode
of living (Ptolomeo of Lucca, De Regimine Principio,
book iv., cap. 4, Parma, 1864, p. 273). However,
that form of communism which entailed an absolutely
even division of all wealth among all members of the
group, though it had come to them on the authority
of Phileas and Lycurgus, was indeed to be reprobated,
for it contradicted the prime feature of all creation.
God made all things in their proper number, weight,
and measure. Yet in spite of all this it must be in
sisted on at the risk of repetition that the socialist
theory of State ownership is never considered unjust,
never in itself contrary to the moral law. Albertus
Magnus, the master of Aquinas, and the leader in com
menting on Aristotle s Politics, freely asserts that com
munity of goods c is not impossible, especially among
those who are well disciplined by the virtue of philan
thropy that is, the common love of all ; for love, of its
own nature, is generous. 5: But to arrange it, the power
of the State must be called into play ; it cannot rest on
any private authority. " This is the proper task of the
legislator, for it is the duty of the legislator to arrange
52 MEDIAEVAL SOCIALISM
everything for the best advantage of the citizens 3 (In
Politicis, ii. 2, p. 70, Lyons, 1651). Such, too, is the
teaching of St. Antonino, who even goes so far as to
assert that " just as the division of property at the be
ginning of historic time was ma-de by the authority
of the State, it is evident that the same authority is
equally competent to reverse its decision and return
to its earlier social organisation 5 (Summa Moralis, ii.
3, 2, Verona, 1740, p. 182). He lays down, indeed, a
principle so broad that it is difficult to understand
where it could well end : " That can be justly deter
mined by the prince which is necessary for the peaceful
intercourse of the citizens." And in defence he points
triumphantly to the fact that the prince can set aside
a just claim to property, and transfer it to another who
happens to hold it by prescription, on the ground of
the numerous disputes which might otherwise be occa
sioned. That is to say, that the law of his time already
admitted that in certain circumstances the State could
take what belonged to one and give it to another,
without there being any fault on the part of the pre
vious owner to justify its forfeiture ; and he defends
this proceeding on the axiom just cited (ibid., pp.
182-3), namely, its necessity " for the peaceful inter
course of the citizens."
The Schoolmen can therefore be regarded as a con
sistent and logical school. They had an extreme dislike
to any broad generalisation, and preferred rather,
whenever the occasion could be discovered, to distin
guish rather than to concede or deny. Hence, con
fronted by the communistic theory of State ownership
which had been advanced by Plato, and by a curious
group of strange, heterodox teachers, and which had,
moreover, the actual support of many patristic sayings,
THE SCHOOLMEN 53
and the strong bias of monastic life, they set out joyfully
to resolve it into the simplest and most unassailable
series of propositions. They began, therefore, by ad
mitting that nature made no division of property,
and in that sense held all things in common ; that
in the early stages of human history, when man,
as yet unfallen, was conceived as living in the Garden
of Eden in perfect innocency, common property amply
satisfied his sinless and unselfish moral character ; that
by the Fall lust and greed overthrew this idyllic state,
and led to a continued condition of internecine
strife, and the supremacy of might; that experience
gradually brought men to realise that their only hope
towards peaceful intercourse lay in the actual division
of property, and the establishment of a system of private
ownership ; that this could only be set aside by men
who were themselves perfect, or had vowed themselves to
pursue perfection, namely, Our Lord, His Apostles, and
the members of religious orders. To this list of what
they held to be historic events they added another which
contained the moral deductions to be made from these
facts. This began by the assertion that private property
in itself was not in any sense contrary to the virtue of
justice ; that it was entirely lawful ; that it was even
necessary on account of certain evil conditions which
otherwise would prevail ; that the State, however, had
the right in extreme cases and for a just cause to trans
fer private property from one to another ; that it could,
when the needs of its citizens so demanded, reverse its
primitive decision, and re-establish its earlier form of
common ownership ; that this last system, however
possible, and however much it might be regretted as a
vanished and lost ideal, was decidedly now a violent
and impracticable proceeding.
54 MEDIAEVAL SOCIALISM
These theories, it is evident, though they furnish the
only arguments which are still in use among us to support
the present social organisation, are also patent of an
interpretation which might equally lead to the very
opposite conclusion. In his fear of any general con
tradiction to communism which should be open to dis
pute, and in his ever-constant memory of his own
religious life as a Dominican friar, Aquinas had to mark
with precision to what extent and in what sense private
property could be justified. But at the same time he
was forced by the honesty of his logical training to
concede what he could in favour of the other side. He
took up in this question, as in every other, a middle
course, in which neither extreme was admitted, but
both declared to contain an element of truth. It is
clear, too, that his scholastic followers, even to our own
date, in their elaborate commentaries can find no escape
from the relentless logic of his conclusions. Down the
channel that he dug flowed the whole torrent of mediaeval
and modern scholasticism. 1 But for those whose minds
were practical rather than abstract, one or other pro
position he advanced, isolated from the context of his
thought, could be quoted as of moment, and backed by
the greatness of his name. His assertion of the ab
solute impracticable nature of socialistic organisation,
as he knew it in his own age, was too good a weapon to
be neglected by those who sought about for means of
defence for their own individualistic theories ; whereas
others, like the friars of whom Wyclif? and Langland
spoke, and who headed bands of luckless peasants in
the revolt of 1381 against the oppression of an over-
legalised feudalism, were blind to this remarkable ex-
1 Of. Coutenson, Theologia Mentis et Cordis, iii. 388-389, Paris,
1875 ; and Billnart, De Justitia, i. 123-124, Ltege, 1746.
THE LAWYERS 55
pression of Aquinas opinion, and quoted him only when
he declared that " by nature all things were in common,"
and when he protested that the socialist theory of itself
contained nothing contrary to the teaching of the
gospel or the doctrines of the Church.
Truth is blinding in its brilliance. Half-truths are
easy to see, and still easier to explain. Hence the full
and detailed theory elaborated by the Schoolmen has
been tortured to fit first one and then another scheme
of political reform. Yet all the while its perfect ad
justment of every step in the argument remains a
wonderful monument of the intellectual delicacy and
hardihood of the Schoolmen.
CHAPTER V
THE LAWYERS
BESIDES the Schoolmen, by whom the problems of life
were viewed in the refracted light of theology and
philosophy, there was another important class in
mediaeval times which exercised itself over the same
social questions, but visaged them from an entirely
different angle. This was the great brotherhood of the
law, which, whether as civil or canonical, had its own
theories of the rights of private ownership. It must be
remembered, too, that just as the theologians supported
their views by an appeal to what were considered historic
facts in the origin of property, so, too, the legalists
depended for the material of their judgment on circum
stances which the common opinion of the time admitted
as authentic.
When the West drifted out from the clouds of barbaric
invasion, and had come into calm waters, society was
found to be organised on a basis of what has been called
56 MEDIAEVAL SOCIALISM
feudalism. That is to say, the natural and universal
result of an era of conquest by a wandering people is
that the new settlers hold their possessions from the
conqueror on terms essentially contractual. The actual
agreements have varied constantly in detail, but the
main principle has always been one of reciprocal rights
and duties. So at the early dawn of the Middle Ages,
after the period picturesquely styled the Wanderings
of the Nations, we find the subjugating races have en
camped in Europe, and hold it by a series of fiefs. The
action, for example, of William the Norman, as plainly
shown in Domesday Book, is typical of what had for
some three or four centuries been happening here and
on the Continent. Large tracts of land were parcelled
out among the invading host, and handed over to in
dividual barons to hold from the King on definite terms
of furnishing him with men in times of war, of ad
ministering justice within their domains, and of assist
ing at his Council Board when he should stand in need
of their advice. The barons, to suit their own con
venience, divided up these territories among their own
retainers on terms similar to those by which they held
their own. And thus the whole organisation of the
country was graduated from the King through the
greater barons to tenants who held their possessions,
whether a castle, or a farm, or a single hut, from another
to whom they owed suit and service.
This roughly (constantly varying, and never actually
quite so absolutely carried out) is the leading principle
of feudalism. It is clearly based upon a contract be
tween each man and his immediate lord ; but, and this
is of importance in the consideration of the feudal theory
of private property, whatever rights and duties held
good were not public, but private. There was not at
THE LAWYERS 57
the first, and in the days of what we may call pure
feudalism, 3 any concept of a national law or natural
right, but only a bundle of individual rights. Appeal
from injustice was not made at a supreme law-court,
but only to the courts of the barons to whom both
litigants owed allegiance. The action of the King was
quite naturally always directed towards breaking open
this enclosed sphere of influence, and endeavouring to
multiply the occasions on which his officials might
interfere in the courts of his subjects. Thus the idea
gradually grew up (and its growth is perhaps the most
important matter of remark in mediaeval history), by
which the King s law and the King s rights were looked
upon as dominating those of individuals or groups.
The courts baron and customary, and the sokes of
privileged townships were steadily emptied of their
more serious cases, and shorn of their primitive powers.
This, too, was undoubtedly the reason for the royal
interference in the courts Christian (the feudal name
for the clerical criminal court). The King looked on
the Church, as he looked on his barons and his exempted
townships, as outside his royal supremacy, and, in con
sequence, quarrelled over investiture and criminous
clerks, and every other point in which he had not as yet
secured that his writs and judgments should prevail.
There was a whole series of courts of law which were
absolutely independent of his officers and his decision.
His restless energy throughout this period had, therefore,
no other aim than to bring all these into a line with
his own, and either to capture them for himself, or to
reduce them to sheer impotence. But at the beginning
there was little notion of a royal judge who should have
power to determine cases in which barons not imme
diately holding their fiefs of the King were implicated.
58 MEDIAEVAL SOCIALISM
The concern of each was only with the lord next above
him. And the whole conception of legal rights was,
therefore, considered simply as private rights.
The growth of royal power consequently acted most
curiously on contemporary thinkers. It meant cen
tralisation, the setting up of a definite force which
should control the whole kingdom. It resulted in
absolutism increasing, with an ever-widening sphere of
royal control. It culminated in the Reformation, which
added religion to the other departments of State in
which royal interference held predominance. Till then
the Papacy, as in some sort " a foreign power," world
wide and many-weaponed, could treat on more than
equal terms with any European monarch, and secure
independence for the clergy. With the lopping off of
the national churches from the parent stem, this energis
ing force from a distant centre of life ceased. Each
separate clerical organisation could now depend only
on its own intrinsic efficiency. For most this meant
absolute surrender.
The civil law therefore which supplanted feudalism
entailed two seemingly contradicting principles which
are of importance in considering the ownership of land.
On the one hand, the supremacy of the King was assured.
The people became more and more heavily taxed, their
lands were subjected to closer inspection, their criminal
actions were viewed less as offences against individuals
than as against the peace of the King. It is an era in
which, therefore, as we have already stated, the power
of the individual sinks gradually more and more into
insignificance hi comparison with the rising force of the
King s dominion. Private rights are superseded by
public rights.
Yet, on the other hand, and by the development of
THE LAWYERS 59
identically the same principles, the individual gains.
His tenure of land becomes far less a matter of contract.
He himself escapes from his feudal chief, and his inferior
tenants slip also from his control. He is no longer one
in a pyramid of grouped social organisation, but stands
now as an individual answerable only to the head of
the State. He has duties still ; but no longer a personal
relationship to his lord. It is the King and that vague
abstraction called the State which now claim him as a
subject ; and by so doing are obliged to recognise his
individual status. This new and startling prominence
of the individual disturbed the whole concept of owner
ship. Originally under the influence of that pure
feudalism which nowhere existed in its absolute form,
the two great forces in the life of each member of the
social group were his own and that of his immediate
lord. These fitted together into an almost indissoluble
union ; and therefore absolute ownership of the soil
was theoretically impossible. Now, however, the in
dividual was emancipated from his lord. He was
still, it is true, subject to the King, whose power might
be a great deal more oppressive than the barons had
been. But the King was far off, whereas the baron had
been near, and nearly always in full evidence. Hence
the result was the emphasis of the individual s absolute
dominion. Not, indeed, as though it excluded the
dominion of the King, but precisely because the royal
predominance could only be recognised by the effective
shutting out of the interference of the lord. To exclude
the " middle-man, 3 the King was driven to recognise
the absolute dominion of the individual over his own
possessions.
This is brought out in English law by Bracton and
his school. Favourers as they were of the royal pre-
60 MEDIAEVAL SOCIALISM
rogative, they were driven to take up the paradoxical
ground that the King was not the sole owner of property.
To defend the King they were obliged to dispossess him.
To put his control on its most effective basis, they had
no other alternative left them than to admit the fullest
rights of the individual against the King. For only if
the individual had complete ownership, could there be
no interference on the part of the lord ; only if the
possessions of the tenants were his own, were they pre
vented from falling under the baronial jurisdiction.
Therefore by apparently denying the royal prerogative
the civil lawyers were in effect, as they perfectly well
recognised, really extending it and enabling it to find
its way into cases and courts where it could not else
well have entered.
Seemingly, therefore, all idea of socialism or nationalisa
tion of land (at that date the great means of produc
tion) was now excluded. The individualistic theory of
property had suddenly appeared ; and simultaneously
the old group forms, which implied collectivism in some
shape or other, ceased any longer to be recognised as
systems of tenure. Yet, at the same time, by a paradox
as evident as that by which the civilians exalted the
royal prerogative apparently at its own expense, or as
that by which WyclhTs communism is found to be in
reality a justification of the policy of leaving things as
they are, while St. Thomas s theory of property is dis
covered as far less oppressive and more adaptable
to progressive developments of national wealth, it is
noticed that, from the point of view of the socialist,
monarchical absolutism is the most favourable form
of a State s constitution. For wherever a very strictly
centralised system of government exists, it is clear
that a machinery, which needs little to turn it to the
THE LAWYERS 61
advantage of the absolute rule of a rebellious minority,
has been already constructed. In a country where, on
the other hand, local government has been enormously
encouraged, it is obviously far more difficult for socialism
to force an entrance into each little group. There are
all sorts of local conditions to be squared, vagaries of
law and administration to be reduced to order, con
necting bridges to be thrown from one portion of the
nation to the next, so as to form of it one single whole.
Were the socialists of to-day to seize on the machinery
of government in Germany and Russia, they could attain
their purposes easily and smoothly, and little difference
in constitutional forms would be observed in these
countries, for already the theory of State ownership and
State interference actually obtains. They would only
have to substitute a bloc for a man. But in France and
England, where the centralisation is far less complete,
the success of the socialistic party and its achievement
of supreme power would mean an almost entire subversal
of all established methods of administration, for all the
threads would have first to be gathered into a single hand.
Consequently feudalism, which turned the landowners
into petty sovereigns and insisted on local courts, &c.,
though seemingly communistic or socialistic, was really,
from its intense local colouring, far less easy of capture
by those who favoured State interference. It was in
dividualistic, based on private rights. But the new
royal prerogative led the way to the consideration of
the evident ease by which, once the machine was pos
sessed, the rest of the system could without difficulty
be brought into harmony with the new theories. To
make use of comparison, it was Cardinal Wolsey s
assumption of full legatine power by permission of the
Pope which first suggested to Henry VIII that he could
62 MEDIAEVAL SOCIALISM
dispense with His Holiness altogether. He saw that
the Cardinal wielded both spiritual and temporal
jurisdiction. He coveted his minister s position, and
eventually achieved it by ousting both Clement and
Wolsey, who had unwittingly shown him in which way
more power lay.
So, similarly, the royal despotism itself, by centralising
all power into the hands of a single prince, accustomed
men to the idea of the absolute supremacy of national
law, drove out of the field every defender of the rights of
minorities, and thus paved the way for the substitution
of the people for itself. The French Revolution was
the logical conclusion to be drawn from the theories of
Louis XIV. It needed only the fire of Rousseau to burn
out the adventitious ornamentation which in the shape
of that monarch s personal glorification still prevented
the naked structure from being seen in all its clearness.
UEtat c est moi can be as aptly the watchword of a
despotic oligarchy, or a levelling socialism, as of a kingly
tyranny, according as it passes from the lips of the one
to the few or the many. It is true that the last phase
was not completed till long after the Middle Ages had
closed, but the tendency towards it is evident in the
teachings of the civil lawyers.
Thus, for example, State absolutism is visible in the
various suggestions made by men like Pierre du Bois
and Wycliff (who, in the expression of their thoughts,
are both rather lawyers than schoolmen) to dispossess
the clergy of their temporalities. The principles urged,
for instance, by these two in justification of this spolia
tion could be applied equally well to the estates of lay
men. For the same principles put into the King s
hand the undetermined power of doing what was
THE LAWYERS 63
necessary for the well-being of the State. It is true
that Pierre du Bois (De Eecuperalione Terre Sancte,
pp. 39-41, 115-8) asserted that the royal authority was
limited to deal in this way with Church lands, and could
not touch what belonged to others. But this proviso
was obviously inserted so arbitrarily that its logical
force could not have had any effect. Political necessity
alone prevented it from being used against the nobility
and gentry.
Ockham, however, the clever Oxford Franciscan,
who formed one of the group of pamphleteers that de
fended Louis of Bavaria against Pope John XXII,
quite clearly enlarged the grounds for Church disendow-
ment so as to include the taking over by the State
of all individual property. He was a thinker whose
theories were strangely compounded of absolutism and
democracy. The Emperor was to be supported because
his autocracy came from the people. Hence, when
Ockham is arguing about ecclesiastical wealth, and the
way in which it could be quite fairly confiscated by the
Government, he enters into a discussion about the origin
of the imperial dignity. This, he declares, was deliber
ately handed over by the people to the Emperor. To
escape making the Pope the original donor of the im
perial title, Ockham concedes that privilege to the people.
It was they, the people, who had handed over to the
Caesars of the Holy Roman Empire all their own rights
and powers. Hence Louis was a monarch whose ab
solutism rested on a popular basis. Then he proceeds
in his argument to say that the human positive law by
which private property was introduced was made by
the people themselves, and that the right or power by
which this was done was transferred by them to the
Emperor along with the imperial dignity.
64 MEDIAEVAL SOCIALISM
Louis, therefore, had the same right to undo what
they had done, for in him all their powers now resided.
This, of course, formed an excellent principle from
which to argue to his right to dispossess the Church of
its superfluous wealth indeed of all its wealth. But it
could prove equally effectual against the holding by
the individual of any property whatever. It made, in
effect, private ownership rest on the will of the prince.
Curiously, too, in quite another direction the same
form of argument had been already worked out by Nicole
Oresme, a famous Bishop of Lisieux, who first translated
into French the Politics of Aristotle, and who helped
so largely in the reforms of Charles V of France. His
great work was in connection with the revision of the
coinage, on which he composed a celebrated treatise. He
held that the change of the value of money, either by its
deliberate depreciation, or by its being brought back to its
earlier standard of face value, carried such widespread
consequences that the people should most certainly be
consulted on it. It was not fair to them to take such a
step without their willing co-operation. Yet he admits
fully that, though this is the wiser and juster way of
acting, there was no absolute need for so doing, since
all possession and all property sprang from the King.
And this last conclusion was advocated by his rival,
Philip de Meziers, whose advice Charles ultimately
followed. Philip taught that the king was sole judge
of whatever was for public use.
But there was a further point in the same question
which afforded matter for an interesting discussion
among the lawyers. Pope Innocent IV, who had first
been famous as a canonist, and retained as Pontiff his
old love for disputations of this kind, developed a
theory of his own on the relation between the right of
THE LAWYERS 65
the individual to possess and the right of the State over
that possession. He distinguished carefully between
two entirely different concepts, namely, the right and
its exercise. The first he admitted to be sacred and
inviolable, because it sprang from the very nature of
man. It could not be disturbed or in any way molested ;
the State had therefore no power to interfere with the
right. But he suggested that the exercise of that right,
or, to use his actual phrase, the " actions in accord with
that right," rested on the basis of civil, positive law,
and could therefore be controlled by legal decisions.
The right was sacred, its exercise was purely conven
tional. Thus every man has a right to property ; he
can never by any possible means divest himself of it,
for it is rooted in the depths of his being, and supported
by his human nature. But this right appears especi
ally to be something internal, intrinsic. For him to
exercise it that is to say, to hold this land or that, or
indeed any land at all the State s intervention must
be secured. At least the State can control his action
in buying, selling, or otherwise obtaining it. His right
cannot be denied, but for reasons of social importance
its exercise well may be. Nor did this then appear as a
merely unmeaning distinction ; he would not admit
that a right which could not be exercised was hardly
worth consideration. And, in point of fact, the Pope s
private theory found very many supporters.
There were others, however, who judged it altogether
too fantastical. The most interesting of his opponents
was a certain Antonio Eoselli, a very judiciously-minded
civil lawyer, who goes very thoroughly into the point
at issue. He gives Innocent s views, and quotes what
authority he can find for them in the Digest and
Decretals. But for himself he would prefer to admit
E
66 MEDIAEVAL SOCIALISM
that the right to private property is not at all sacred
or natural in the sense of being inviolable. He wil
lingly concedes to the State the right to judge all claims
of possession. This is the more startling since ordin
arily his views are extremely moderate, and throughout
the controversy between Pope and Emperor he succeeded
in steering a very careful, delicate course. To him,
however, all rights to property were purely civil and
arguable only on principles of positive law. There
was no need, therefore, to discriminate between the right
and its exercise, for both equally could be controlled
by the State. There are evidences to show that he
admitted the right of each man to the support of his
own life, and, therefore, to private property in the form
of actual food, &c., necessary for the immediate moment ;
but he distinctly asserts as his own personal idea that
" the prince could take away my right to a thing, and
any exercise of that right, 52 adding only that for this
there must be some cause. The prince cannot arbi
trarily confiscate property ; he must have some reason
able motive of sufficient gravity to outweigh the social
inconveniences which confiscation would necessarily
produce. Not every cause is a sufficient one, but those
only which concern " public liberty or utility. Hence
he decides that the Pope cannot alienate Church lands
without some justifying reason, nor hand them over to
the prince unless there happens to be an urgent need,
springing from national circumstances. It does not
follow, however, that he wishes to make over to the
State absolute right to individual property under normal
conditions. The individual has the sole dominion over
his own possessions ; that dominion reverts to the
State only in some extreme instance. His treatise,
therefore (Goldast, De MonarcMa, 1611-1614, Hanover,
THE LAWYERS 67
p. 462, &c.), may be looked upon as summing up the con
troversy as it then stood. The legal distinction suggested
by Innocent IV had been given up by the lawyers as
insufficient. The theories of Du Bois, Wycliff, Ockham r
and the others had ceased to have much significance,
because they gave the royal power far too absolute a
jurisdiction over the possessions of its subjects. The
feudal contractual system, which these suggested re
forms had intended to drive out, had failed for entirely
different reasons, and could evidently be brought back
only at the price of a complete and probably unsuccess
ful disturbance of the social and economic organisation.
The centralisation which had risen on the ruins of the
older local sovereignties and immunities, had brought
with it an emphasised recognition of the public rights
and duties of all subjects, and had at the same time con
firmed the individual in the ownership of his little
property, and given him at the last not a conditional,
but an absolute possession. To safeguard this, and to
prevent it from becoming a block in public life, a factor
of discontent, the lawyers were engaged in framing an
additional clause which should give to the State an
ultimate jurisdiction, and would enable it to overrule
any objections on the part of the individual to a national
policy or law. The suggested distinction that the word
6 right should be emptied of its deeper meaning, by
refusing it the further significance of " exercise, 5: was
too subtle and too legal to obtain much public support.
So that the lawyers were driven to admit that for a just
cause the very right itself could be set aside, and every
private possession (when public utility and liberty de
manded it) confiscated or transferred to another.
Even the right to compensation for such confiscation
was with equal cleverness explained away. For it was
68 MEDIAEVAL SOCIALISM
held that, when an individual had lost his property
through State action, and without his having done any
thing to deserve it as a punishment, compensation
could be claimed. But whenever a whole people or
nation was dispossessed by the State, there was no
such right at all to any indemnity.
Thus was the wholesale adoption of land-nationalism
to be justified. Thus could the State capture all private
possessions without any fear of being guilty of robbery.
It was considered that it was only the oppression of
the individual and class spoliation which really contra
vened the moral law.
The legal theories, therefore, which supplanted the
old feudal concepts were based on the extension of royal
authority, and the establishment of public rights. In
dividualistic possession was emphasised ; yet the simul
taneous setting up of the absolute monarchies of the
sixteenth century really made their ultimate capture
by the Socialist party more possible.
CHAPTER VI
THE SOCIAL REFORMERS
IT may seem strange to class social reforms under
the wider heading of Socialistic Theories, and the only
justification for doing so is that which we have already
put forward hi defence of the whole book ; namely, that
the term " socialistic 2 has come to bear so broad an
interpretation as to include a great deal that does not
strictly belong to it. And it is only on the ground of
their advocating State interference in the furtherance
of their reforms that the reformers here mentioned can
be spoken of as socialistic.
Of course there have been reformers in every age
THE SOCIAL REFORMERS 69
who came to bring to society their own personal measures
of relief. But in the Middle Ages hardly a writer took
pen in hand who did not note in the body politic some
illness, and suggest some remedy. Howsoever abstruse
might be the subject of the volume, there was almost
sure to be a reference to economic or social life. It was
not an epoch of specialists such as is ours. Each author
composed treatises in almost every branch of learning.
The same professor, according to mediaeval notions,
might lecture to-day on Scripture, to-morrow on theo
logy or philosophy, and the day after on natural science.
For them a university was a place w^here each student
learnt, and each professor taught, universal knowledge.
Still from time to time men came to the front with some
definite social message to be delivered to their own gen
eration. Some were poets like Langland, some strike-
leaders like John Ball, some religious enthusiasts like
John Wycliff, some royal officials like Pierre du Bois.
This latter in his famous work addressed to King
Edward I of England (De Recuperations Sancte Terre),
has several most interesting and refreshing chapters
on the education of women. His bias is always against
religious orders, and, consequently, he favours the
suppression of almost every conventual establishment.
Still, as these were at his own date the only places where
education could be considered to exist at all, he had to
elaborate for himself a plan for the proper instruction
of girls. First, of course, the nunneries must be con
fiscated by Government. For him this was no act of
injustice, since he regarded the possessions of the whole
clerical body as something outside the ordinary laws of
property. But having in this way cleared the ground of
all rivals, and captured some magnificent buildings,
he can now go forward in his scheme of education. He
70 MEDIAEVAL SOCIALISM
insists on having only lay-mistresses, and prescribes the
course of study which these are to teach. There should
be, he held, many lectures on literature, and music,
and poetry, and the arts and crafts of home life. Em
broidery and home-management are necessities for
the woman s work in after years, so they must be
acquired in these schools. But education cannot limit
itself to these branches of useful knowledge. It must
take the woman s intelligence and develop that as
skilfully as it does the man s. She is not inferior to
him in power of reason, but only in her want of its right
cultivation. Hence the new schools are to train her to
equal man in all the arts of peace. Such is the main
point in his programme, which even now sounds too
progressive for the majority of our educational critics.
He appeals for State interference that the colleges
may be endowed out of the revenues of the religious
houses, and that they may be supported in such a
fashion as would always keep them abreast of the
growing science of the times. And when, after a school
ing of such a kind as this, the girls go out into their
life-work as wives and mothers, he would wish them a
more complete equality with their men-folk than custom
then allowed. The spirit of freedom which is felt working
through all his papers makes him the apostle of what
would now be called the " new woman."
After him, there comes a lull in reforming ideas. But
half a century later occurs a very curious and sudden
outburst of rebellion all over Europe. From about the
middle of the fourteenth century to the early fifteenth
there seemed to be an epidemic of severe social unrest.
There were at Paris, which has always been the nursery
of revolutions, four separate risings. Etienne Marcel,
who, however, was rather a tribune of the people than a
THE SOCIAL REFORMERS 71
revolutionary leader, came into prominence in 1355 ; he
was followed by the Jacquerie in 1358, by the Maillotins
in 1382, and the Cabochiens in 1411. In Rome we
know of Rienzi in 1347, who eventually became hardly
more than a popular demagogue ; in Florence there
was the outbreak of Ciompi in 1378 ; in Bohemia the
excesses of Taborites in 1409 ; in England the Peasant
Revolt of 1381.
It is perfectly obvious that a series of social disturb
ances of this nature could not leave the economic
literature of the succeeding period quite as placid as
it had found it. We notice now that, putting away
questions of mere academic character, the thinkers and
writers concern themselves with the actual state of the
people. Parliament has its answer to the problem
in a long list of statutes intended to muzzle the turbulent
and restless revolutionaries. But this could not satisfy
men who set their thought to study the lives and circum
stances of their fellow-citizens. Consequently, as a
result, we can notice the rise of a school of writers who
interest themselves above all things in the economic
conditions of labour. Of this school the easiest exponent
to describe is Antonino of Florence, Archbishop and
canonised saint. His four great volumes on the ex
position of the moral law are fascinating as much for
the quotations of other moralists which they contain,
as for the actual theories of the saint himself. For the
Archbishop cites on almost every page contemporary
after contemporary who had had his say on the same
problems. He openly asserts that he has read widely,
taken notes of all his reading, has deliberately formed
his opinions on the judgments, reasoned or merely
expressed, of his authors. To read his books, then, is
to realise that Antonino is summing up the whole
72 MEDIAEVAL SOCIALISM
experience of his generation. Indeed he was par
ticularly well placed for one who wished for information.
Florence, then at the height of its renown under the
brilliant despotism of Cosimo dei Medici, was the scene
where the great events of the life of Antonino took place.
There he had seen within the city walls, three Popes,
a Patriarch of Constantinople, the Emperors of East and
West, and the most eminent men of both civilisations.
He had taken part in a General Council of the Church,
and knew thinkers as widely divergent as Giovanni
Dominici and ^Eneas Sylvius Piccolomini. He was,
therefore, more likely than most to have heard whatever
theories were proposed by the various great political
statesmen of Europe, whether they were churchmen or
lawyers. Consequently, his schemes, as we might well
expect, are startlingly advanced.
He begins by attacking the growing spirit of usury,
and the resulting idleness. Men were finding out that
under the new conditions which governed the money
market it was possible to make a fortune without having
done a day s work. The sons of the aristocracy of
Florence, which was built up of merchant princes, and
which had amassed its own fortunes in honest trading,
had been tempted by the bankers to put their wealth
out to interest, and to live on the surplus profit. The
ease and security with which this could be done made
it a popular investment, especially among the young
men of fashion who came in, simply by inheritance, for
large sums of money. As a consequence Florence
found itself, for the first time in its history, beginning
to possess a wealthy class of men who had never them
selves engaged in any profession. The old reverence,
therefore, which had always existed in the city for the
man who laboured in his art or guild, began to slacken.
THE SOCIAL REFORMERS 73
No longer was there the same eagerness noticeable
which used to boast openly that its rewards consisted
in the consciousness of work well done. Instead, idle
ness became the badge of gentility, and trade a slur upon
a man s reputation. No city can long survive so listless
and languid an ideal. The Archbishop, therefore, de
nounced this new method of usurious traffic, and hinted
further that to it was due the fierce rebellion which had for
a while plunged Florence into the horrors of the Jacquerie.
Wealth, he taught, should not of itself breed wealth, but
only through the toil of honest labour, and that labour
should be the labour of oneself, not of another.
Then he proceeded to argue that as upon the husband
lies the labour of trade, the greater portion of his day
must necessarily be passed outside the circle of family
life. The breadwinner can attend neither to works of
piety nor of charity in the way he should, and, conse
quently, to his wife it must be left to supply for his
defects. She must take his place in the church, and
amid the slums of the poor ; she must for him and his
lift her hands in prayer, and dispense his superfluous
wealth in succouring the poverty-stricken. For the
Archbishop will have none of the soothing doctrine
which the millionaire preaches to the mob. He asserts
that poverty is not a good thing ; in itself it is an evil,
and can be considered to lead only accidentally to any
good. When, therefore, it assumes the form of desti
tution, every effort must be made to banish it from the
State. For if it were to become at all prevalent in a
nation, then would that people be on the pathway to
its ruin. The politicians should therefore make it the
end of their endeavours though this, it may be, is an
ideal which can never be fully brought to realisation
to leave each man in a state of sufficiency. No one.
74 MEDIAEVAL SOCIALISM
for whatever reason, should be allowed to become desti
tute. Even should it be by his own fault that he were
brought low, he must be provided for by the State,
which has, however, in these circumstances, at the
same time, the duty of punishing him.
But he remarks that the cause of poverty is more
often the unjust rate of wages. The competition even
of those days made men beat each other down in
clamouring for work to be given them, and afforded to
the employers an opportunity of taking workers who
willingly accepted an inadequate scale of remuneration.
This state of things he considered to be unjustifiable
and unjust. No one had any right to make profit out
of the wretchedness of the poor. Each human being
had the duty of supporting his own life, and this he could
not do except by the hiring of his own labour to another.
That other, therefore, by the immutable laws of justice,
when he used the powers of his fellow-man, was obliged
in conscience to see that those powers could be fittingly
sustained by the commodity which he exchanged for
them. That is, the employer was bound to take note
that his employees received such return for their labour
as should compensate them for his use of it. The pay
ment promised and given should be, in other words,
what we would now speak of as a " living wage. 5 But
further, above this mere margin, additional rewards
should be added according to the skill of the workman,
or the dangerous nature of his employment, or the
number of his children. The wages also should be paid
promptly, without delay.
But it may sometimes happen that the labour which
a man can contribute is not of such a kind as will enable
him to receive the fair remuneration that should suffice
for his bodily comfort. The saint is thinking of boy-
THE SOCIAL REFORMERS 75
labour, and the case of those too enfeebled by age or
illness to work adequately, or perhaps at all. What
is to be done for them ? Let the State look to it, is his
reply. The community must, by the law of its own
existence, support all its members, and out of its super
fluous wealth must provide for its weaker citizens.
Those, therefore, who can labour harder than they need,
or who already possess more riches than suffice for
them, are obliged by the natural law of charity to give
to those less favourably circumstanced than themselves.
St. Antonino does not, therefore, pretend to advocate
any system of rigid equality among men. There is
bound to be, in his opinion, variety among them, and
from this variety comes indeed the harmony of the
universe. For some are born to rule, and others, by
the feebleness of their understanding or of their will,
are fitted only to obey. The workman and servant
must faithfully discharge the duties of their trade or
service, be quick to receive a command, and reverent
in their obedience. And the masters, in their turn,
must be forbearing in their language, generous in their
remuneration, and temperate in their commands. It
is their business to study the powers of each of those
whom they employ, and to measure out the work to
each one according to the capacity which is discoverable
in him. When a faithful labourer has become ill, the
employer must himself tend and care for him, and be
in no hurry to send him to a hospital.
About the hospitals themselves he has his own ideas,
or at least he has picked out the sanest that he can find
in the books and conversation of people whom he has
come across. He insists strongly that women should,
as matrons and nurses, manage those institutions which
are solely for the benefit of women ; and even in those
76 MEDIAEVAL SOCIALISM
where men also are received, he can see no incompati
bility in their being administered by these same capable
directors. He much commends the custom of chemists
in Florence on Sundays, feast-days, and holidays of
opening their dispensaries in turn. So that even should
all the other shops be closed, there would always be one
place open where medicines and drugs could be obtained
in an emergency.
The education of the citizens, too, is another work
which the State must consider. It is not something
merely optional which is to be left to the judgment of
the parent. The Archbishop holds that its proper
organisation is the duty of the prince. Education, in
his eyes, means that the children must be taught the
knowledge of God, of letters, and of the arts and crafts
they are to pursue in after life.
Again, he has thought out the theory of taxation.
He admits its necessity. The State is obliged to perform
certain duties for the community. It is obliged, for
example, to make its roads fit for travelling, and so
render them passable for the transfer of merchandise.
It is bound to clear away all brigandage, highway
robbery, and the like, for were this not done, no mer
chant would venture out through that State s territory,
and its people would accordingly suffer.
Hence, again, he deduces the need for some sort of
army, so that the goods of the citizens may be secured
against the invader, for without this security there
would be no stimulus to trade. Bridges must be built,
and fords kept in repair. Since, therefore, the State
is obliged to incur expenses in order to attain these
objects, the State has the right, and indeed the duty, to
order it so that the community shall pay for the benefits
which it is to receive. Hence follows taxation.
THE SOCIAL REFORMERS 77
But he sees at once that this power of demanding
forced contributions from wealthy members of society
needs safeguarding against abuse. Thus he is careful
to insist that taxation can be valid only when it is levied
by public authority, else it becomes sheer brigandage.
No less is it to be reprobated when ordered indeed by
public authority, but not used for public benefit. Thus,
should it happen that a prince or other ruler of a State
extorted money from his subjects on pretence of keep
ing the roads in good order, or similar works for the
advantage of the community, and yet neglected to put
the contributions of his people to this use, he would be
defrauding the public, and guilty of treason against his
country. So, too, to lay heavier burdens on his subjects
than they could bear, or to graduate the scale in such a
fashion as to weigh more heavily on one class than
another, would be, in the ruler, an aggravated form of
theft. Taxation must therefore be decreed by public
authority, and be arranged according to some reason
able measure, and rest on the motive of benefiting the
social organisation.
The citizens therefore who are elected to settle the
incidence of taxation must be careful to take account
of the income of each man, and so manage that on no
one should the burden be too oppressive. He suggests
himself the percentage of one pound per hundred.
Nor, again, must there be any deliberate attempt
to penalise political opponents, or to make use of
taxation in order to avenge class-oppression. Were
this to be done, the citizens so acting would be bound
to make restitution to the persons whom they had thus
injured.
Then St. Antonino takes the case of those who make
a false declaration of their income. These, too, he
78 MEDIAEVAL SOCIALISM
convicts of injustice, and requires of them that they
also should make restitution, but to the State. An
exception to this, however, he allows. For if it happens
to be the custom for each to make a declaration of in
come which is obviously below the real amount, then
simply because all do it and all are known to do it,
there is no obligation for the individual to act differently
from his neighbours. It is not injustice, for the law
evidently recognises the practice. And were he, on
the other hand, to announce his full yearly wage of
earnings, he would allow himself to be taxed beyond
the proper measure of value. But to refuse to pay, or
to elude by some subterfuge the just contribution which
a man owes of his wealth to the easing of the public
burdens, is in the eyes of the Archbishop a crime against
the State. It would be an act of injustice, of theft,
all the more heinous in that, as he declares with a flash
of the energy of Rousseau, the " common good is some
thing almost divine. 5
We have dwelt rather at length on the schemes of
this one economist, and may seem, therefore, to have
overlooked the writings of others equally full of interest.
But the reason has been because this Florentine moralist
does stand so perfectly for a whole school. He has
read omnivorously, and has but selected most of his
thoughts. He compares himself, indeed, in one passage
of these volumes, to the laborious ant, " that tiny insect
which wanders here and there, and gathers together
what it thinks to be of use to its community. 3 He
represents a whole school, and represents it at its best,
for there is no extreme dogmatism in him, no arguing
from grounds that are purely arbitrary, or from a priori
principles. It is his knowledge of the people among
whom he had laboured so long which fits him to speak
THE SOCIAL REFORMERS 79
of the real sufferings of the poor. But experience
requires for its being effectually put to the best advan
tage, that it should be wielded by one whose judgment
is sober and careful. Now, St. Antonino was known in
his own day as Antonino the Counsellor ; and his justly-
balanced decision, his delicately-poised advice, the
straightness of his insight, are noticeable in the masterly
way in which he sums up all the best that earlier and
contemporary writers had devised in the domain of
social economics.
There is, just at the close of the period with which
this book deals, a rising school of reformers who can
be grouped round More s Utopia. Some foreshadowed
him, and others continued his speculations. Men like
Harrington in his Oceana, and Milton in his Areo-
pagitica, really belong to the same band ; but life for
them had changed very greatly, and already become
something far more complex than the earlier writers
had had to consider. There seemed no possibility of
reforming it by the simple justice which St. Antonino
and his fellows judged to be sufficient to set things back
again as they had been in the Golden Age. The new
writers are rather political than social. For them, as
for the Greeks, it is the constitution which must be
repaired. Whereas the mediaeval socialists thought,
as St. Thomas indeed never wearied of repeating, that
unrest and discontent would continue under any form
of government whatever. The more each city changed
its constitution, the more it remained the same.
Florence, whether under a republic or a despotism,
was equally happy and equally sad. For it was the
spirit of government alone which, in the eyes of the
scholastic social writers, made the State what it hap
pened to be.
80 MEDIAEVAL SOCIALISM
In this the modern sociologist of to-day finds himself
more akin with the mediaeval thinkers than with the
idealists of the parliamentary era in England, or of the
Revolution in France. These fixed their hopes on
definite organisations of government, and on the exact
balance of executive and legislative powers. But for
Scotus, and Wycliff, and St. Antonino, the cause of the
evil is far deeper and more personal. Not in any form
of the constitution, nor in any division of ruling authority,
nor in its union under a firm despot, nor in the divine
right of kings, or nobles, or people, was security to be
found, or the well-ordering of the nation. But peace
and rest from faction could be achieved with certainty
only on the conditions of strict justice between man and
man, on the observance of God s commandments.
CHAPTER VII
THE THEORY OF ALMSGIVING
ANY description of mediaeval socialistic ideals which
contained no reference to mediaeval notions of alms
giving would not be complete. Almsgiving was for
them a necessary corollary to their theories of private
possession. In the passage already quoted from St.
Thomas Aquinas (p. 45), wherein he sets forth the
theological aspect of property, he makes use of a
broad distinction between what he calls "the power of
procuring and dispensing " exterior things and " the
use of them." We have already at some length tried
to show what economists then meant by this first
"power." Now we must establish the significance of
what they intended by the second. And to do this the
THE THEORY OF ALMSGIVING 81
more clearly it will be as well to repeat the words in
which St. Thomas briefly notes it : " The other office
which is man s concerning exterior things is the use of
them ; and with regard to this a man ought not to hold
exterior things as his own, but as common to all, that he
may portion them out readily to others in time of need. 5:
In this sentence is summed up the whole mediaeval
concept of the law of almsdeeds. Private property is
allowed is, in fact, necessary for human life but on
certain conditions. These imply that the possession of
property belongs to the individual, but also that the
use of it is not limited to him. The property is private,
the use should be common. Indeed, it is only this
common enjoyment which at all justifies private pos
session. It was as obvious then as now that there were
inequalities in life, that one man was born to ease or
wealth, or a great name, whereas another came into
existence without any of these advantages, perhaps
even hampered by positive disadvantages. Henry of
Langenstein (1325-1397) in his famous Tractatus de
Contractibus (published among the works of Gerson at
Cologne, 1484, torn. iv. fol. 188), draws out this variety
of fortune and misfortune in a very detailed fashion,
and puts before his reader example after example of
what they were then likely to have seen. But all the
while he has his reason for so doing. He acknowledges
the fact, and proceeds from it to build up his own
explanation of it. The world is filled with all these
men in their differing circumstances. Now, to make life
possible for them, he asserts that private property is
necessary. He is very energetic in his insistence upon
that point. Without private property he thinks that
there will be continual strife in which might, and not
right, will have the greater probability of success. But
F
82 MEDIAEVAL SOCIALISM
simultaneously, and as a corrective to the evils which
private property of itself would cause there should be
added to it the condition of common use. That is to
say, that although I own what is mine, yet I should put
no obstacle in the way of its reasonable use by others.
This is, of course, really the ideal of Aristotle in his
book of Politics, when he makes his reply to Plato s
communism. In Plato s judgment, the republic should
be governed in the reverse way, Common property and
private use ; he would really make this, which is a
feature of monastic life, compulsory on all. But
Aristotle, looking out on the world, an observer of human
nature, a student of the human heart, sets up as more
feasible, more practical, the phrase which the Middle
Ages repeat, Private property and common use. The
economics of a religious house are hardly of such a kind,
thought the mediae valists, as to suit the ways and
fancies of this workaday world.
But the Middle Ages do not simply repeat, they
Christianise Aristotle. They are dominated by his
categories of thought, but they perfect them in the
light of the New Dispensation. Faith is added to
politics, love of the brotherhood is made to extend
the mere brutality of the economists teaching. In
common use they find the philosophic name for
almsdeeds." " A man ought not to hold exterior
things as his own, but as common to all, that he may
portion them out readily to others in time of need."
This sentence, an almost literal translation from the
Boole of Politics, takes on a fuller meaning and is softened
by the unselfishness of Christ when it is found in the
Summa TJieologica of Aquinas.
Let us take boldly the passage from St. Thomas in
which he lays down the law of almsgiving.
cc
c;
THE THEORY OF ALMSGIVING 83
(2a, 2ae, 32, 5.) " Since love of one s neighbour is
commanded us, it follows that everything without
which that love cannot be preserved, is also commanded
us. But it is essential to the love of one s neighbour,
not merely to wish him well, but to act well towards
him ; as says St. John (1 Ep. 3), Let us not love in
word nor in tongue, but in deed and hi truth. But
to wish and to act well towards anyone implies that
we should succour him when he is in need, and this is
done by almsgiving. Hence almsgiving is a matter of
precept. But because precepts are given in things that
concern virtuous living, the almsgiving here referred
to must be of such a kind as shall promote virtuous
living. That is to say, it must be consonant with right
reason ; and this in turn implies a twofold considera
tion, namely, from the point of view of the giver, and
from that of the receiver. As regards the giver, it
must be noted that what is given should not be necessary
to him, as says St. Luke That which is superfluous, give
in alms. And by not necessary I mean not only to
himself (i.e. what is over and above his individual needs),
but to those who depend on him. For a man must
first provide for himself and those of whom he has the
care, and can then succour such of the rest as are
necessitous that is, such as are without what their
personal needs entail. For so, too, nature provides
that nutrition should be communicated first to the
body, and only secondly to that which is to be begotten
of it. As regards the receiver, it is required that he
should really be in need, else there is no reason for alms
being given him. But since it is impossible for one
man to succour all who are in need, he is only under
obligation to help such as cannot otherwise be provided
for. For in this case the words of Ambrose become
84 MEDIAEVAL SOCIALISM
applicable : Feed them that are dying of starvation,
else shall you be held their murderer. Hence it is a
matter of precept to give alms to whosoever is in extreme
necessity. But in other cases (namely, where the
necessity is not extreme) almsgiving is simply a counsel,
and not a command. 5
(Ad 2m.) " Temporal goods which are given a man
by God are his as regards their possession, but as regards
their use, if they should be superfluous to him, they
belong also to others who may be provided for out of
them. Hence St. Basil says : If you admit that God
gave these temporal goods to you, is God unjust in
thus unequally distributing His favours ? Why should
you abound, and another be forced to beg, unless it is
intended thereby that you should merit by your
generosity, and he by his patience ? For it is the bread
of the starving that you cling to ; it is the clothes of
the naked that hang locked in your wardrobe ; it is
the shoes of the barefooted that are ranged in your
room ; it is the silver of the needy that you hoard. For
you are injuring whoever is in want. And Ambrose
repeats the same thing."
Here it will be noticed that we find the real meaning
of those words about a man s duty of portioning out
readily to another s use what belongs to himself. It is
the correlative to the right to private property.
But a second quotation must be made from another
passage closely following on the preceding :
" There is a time when to withhold alms is to commit
mortal sin. Namely, when on the part of the receiver
there is evident and urgent necessity, and he does not
seem likely to be provided for otherwise, and when on
the part of the giver he has superfluities of which he
has not any probable immediate need. Nor should the
THE THEORY OF ALMSGIVING 85
future be in question, for this would be looking to the
morrow, which the Master has forbidden (Matt. 6). 53
(Ibid., 32, 6.) "But superfluous and necessity
are to be interpreted according to their most probable
and generally accepted meaning. Necessary has
two meanings. First, it implies something without
w^hich a thing cannot exist. Interpreted in this sense,
a man has no business to give alms out of what is
necessary to him ; for example, if a man has only enough
wherewith to feed himself and his sons or others de
pendent on him. For to give alms out of this would be
to deprive himself and his of very life, unless it were
indeed for the sake of prolonging the life of someone of
extreme importance to Church and State. In that
case it might be praiseworthy to expose his life and
the lives of others to grave risk, for the common good is
to be preferred to our own private interests. Secondly,
: necessary : may mean that without which a person
cannot be considered to uphold becomingly his proper
station, and that of those dependent on him. The
exact measure of this necessity cannot be very precisely
determined, as to how far things added may be beyond
the necessity of his station, or things taken away be
below it. To give alms, therefore, out of these is a
matter not of precept, but of counsel. For it would
not be right to give alms out of these, so as to help
others, and thereby be rendered unable to fulfil the
obligations of his state of life. For no one should live
unbecomingly. Three exceptions, however, should be
made. First, when a man wishes to change his state
of life. Thus it would be an act of perfect virtue if a
man, for the purpose of entering a religious order,
distributed to the poor for Christ s sake all that he
possessed. Secondly, when a man gives alms out of
86 MEDIAEVAL SOCIALISM
what is necessary for his state of life, and yet does so
knowing that they can very easily be supplied to him
again without much personal inconvenience. Thirdly,
when some private person, still more when the State
itself, is in the gravest need. In these cases it would
be most praiseworthy for a man to give what seemingly
was required for the upkeep of his station in life in
order to provide against some far greater need."
From these passages it will be possible to construct
the theory in vogue during the whole of the Middle Ages.
The landholder was considered to possess his property
on a system of feudal tenure, and to be obliged thereby
to certain acts of suit and service to his immediate lord,
or eventually to the King. But besides these burdens
which the responsibility of possession entailed, there
were others incumbent on him, because of his brother
hood with all Christian folk. He owed a debt, not merely
to his superiors, but also to his equals. Such was the
interpretation of Christ s commandment which the
mediaeval theologians adopted. With one voice they
declare that to give away to the needy what is super
fluous is no act of charity, but of justice. St. Jerome s
words were often quoted : "If thou hast more than is
necessary for thy food and clothing, give that away,
and consider that in thus acting thou art but paying
a debt 3 (Epist. 50 ad Edilia q. i.) ; and those others
of St. Augustine, " When superfluities are retained, it
is the property of others which is retained " (in Psalm
147). These and like sayings of the Fathers constitute
the texts on which the moral economic doctrine of what
is called the Scholastic School is based. Albertus
Magnus (vol. iv. in Sent. 4, 14, p. 277, Lyons, 1651)
puts to himself the question whether to give alms is a
matter of justice or of charity, and the answer which
THE THEORY OF ALMSGIVING 87
he makes is compressed finally into this sentence :
" For a man to give out of his superfluities is a mere
act of justice, because he is rather the steward of them
for the poor than the owner. 3 St. Thomas Aquinas is
equally explicit, as another short sentence shall show
(2a, 2ae, 66, 2, ad 3m) : " When Ambrose says Let no
one call his own that which is common property, he is
referring to the use of property. Hence he adds :
Whatever a man possesses above what is necessary
for his sufficient comfort, he holds by violence.
And the same view could be backed by quotations from
Henry of Ghent, Duns Scotus, St. Bonaventure, the
sermons of Wycliff, and almost every writer of any
consequence in that age.
Perhaps to us this decided tone may appear remark
able, and even ill-considered. But it is evident that
the whole trouble lies in the precise meaning to be at
tached to the expressions " superfluous and " needy. !
And here, where we feel most of all the need of guidance,
it must be confessed that few authors venture to speak
with much definiteness. The instance, indeed, of a
man placed in extreme necessity, all quote and explain
in nearly identical language. Should anyone be re
duced to these last circumstances, so as to be without
means of subsistence or sufficient wealth to acquire
them, he may, in fact must, take from anywhere what
ever suffices for his immediate requirements. If he
begs for the necessities of life, they cannot be withheld
from him. Nor is the expression " necessities of life
to be interpreted too nicely. Says Albertus Magnus :
" I mean by necessary not that without which he cannot
live, but that also without which he cannot maintain
his household, or exercise the duties proper to his con
dition " (loc. cit., art. 16, p. 280). This is a very generous
88 MEDIAEVAL SOCIALISM
interpretation of the phrase, but it is the one pretty
generally given by all the chief writers of that period.
Of course they saw at once that there were practical
difficulties in the way of such a manner of acting. How
was it possible to determine whether such a one was in
real need or not ? And the only answer given was
that, if it was evident that a man was so placed, there
could be no option about giving ; almsdeeds then be
came of precept. But that, if there were no convincing
signs of absolute need, then the obligation ceased, and
almsgiving, from a command, became a counsel.
In an instance of this extreme nature it is not difficult
to decide, but the matter becomes perilously compli
cated when an attempt is made to gauge the relative
importance of " need and " superfluity : in concrete
cases. How much " need 3> must first be endured before
a man has a just claim on another s superfluity ? By
what standard are " superfluities themselves to be
judged ? For it is obvious that when the need among
a whole population is general, things possessed by the
richer classes, which in normal circumstances might not
have been considered luxuries, instantly become such.
However then the words are taken, however strictly
or laxly interpreted, it must always be remembered
that the terms used by the Scholastics do not really
solve the problem. They suggest standards, but do
not define them, give names, but cannot tell us their
precise meaning.
Should we say, then, that in this way they had failed ?
It is not in place in a book of this kind to sit in judg
ment on the various theories quoted, and test them to
see how far they hold good, or to what extent they should
be disregarded, for it is the bare recital of mere historic
views which can be here considered. The object has
THE THEORY OF ALMSGIVING 89
been simply to tell what systems were thought out and
held, without attempting to apprize them or measure
their value, or point out how far they are applicable to
modern times. But in this affair of almsdeeds it is
perhaps well to note that the Scholastics could make
this much defence of their vagueness. In cases of this
kind, they might say, we are face to face with human
nature, not as an abstract thing, but in its concrete
personal existence. The circumstances must therefore
differ in each single instance. General laws can be laid
down, but only on the distinct understanding that they
are mere principles of direction in other words, that
they are nothing more than general laws. The Schol
astics, the mediaeval writers of every school, except a
few of that Manichean brood of sects, admitted the
necessity of almsgiving. They looked on it from a
moral point of view as a high virtue, and from an
economic standpoint as a correlative to their individual
istic ideas on private property. The one without the
other would be unjust. Alone, they would be unwork
able ; together, mutually independent, they would
make the State a fair and perfect thing.
But to fix the exact proportion between the two
terms, they held to be the duty of the individual in
each case that came to his notice. To give out of a
man s superfluities to the needy was, they held, un
doubtedly a bounden duty. But they could make no
attempt to apprize in definite language what in the
receiver was meant by need, and in the giver by super
fluity. They made no pretence to do this, and thereby
showed their wisdom, for obviously the thing cannot
be done. Yet we must note, last of all, that they drew
up a list of principles which shall here be set down,
because they sum up in a few sentences the wit of
90 MEDIAEVAL SOCIALISM
mediaeval economists, their spirit of orderly arrange
ment, and their unanimous opinion on man s moral
obligations.
(I) A man is obliged to help another in his extreme
need, even at the risk of grave inconvenience
to himself.
(II) A man is obliged to help another who, though
not in extreme need, is yet in considerable
distress, but not at the risk of grave incon
venience to himself.
(III) A man is not obliged to help another whose
necessity is slight, even though the risk to
himself should be quite trifling.
In other words, the need of his fellow must be adjusted
against the inconvenience to himself. Where the need
of the one is great, the inconvenience to the other must
at least be as great, if it is to excuse him from the just
debt of his alms. His possession of superfluities does
not compel him to part with them unless there is some
real want which they can be expected to supply. In
fine, the mediaevalists would contend that almsgiving,
to be necessary, implies two conditions, both con
comitant :
(a) That the giver should possess superfluities.
(b) That the receiver should be in need.
Where both these suppositions are fulfilled, the duty of
almsgiving becomes a matter not of charity, but of
justice.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
AMONG the original works by mediaeval writers on economic
subjects, which can be found in most of the greater libraries in
England, we would place the following :
De Recuperatione Terre Sancte, by Pierre du Bois. Edited by
C. V. Langlois in Paris. 1891.
Commentarium in Politicos Aristotelis, by Albertus Magnus.
Vol. iv. Lyons. 1651.
Summa Theologica, of St. Thomas Aquinas. This is being
translated by the English Dominicans, published by
Washborne. London. 1911. But the parts that deal with
Aquinas theories of property, &c., have not yet been
published.
De Regimine Principio 9 probably by Ptolomeo de Lucca. It
will be found printed among the works of St. Thomas
Aquinas, who wrote the first chapters. The portion here to
be consulted is in book iv.
Tractatus de Cimli Dominio, by Wyeliff, published in four vols.
in London. 1885-1904.
Unprinted Works of John Wyeliff^ edited at Oxford in three rols.
1869-1871.
Fasciculus Zizaniorum and the Chronicon Angliae, both edited in
the Boll Seriei, help in elucidating the exact meaning of
Wyeliff, and his relation to the insurgents of 1381.
Monarchia, edited by Goldast of Hanover in 1611, gives a
collection of fifteenth-century writers, including Ockham,
Cesena, Roselli, &c.
Summa Moralis, by St. Antonino of Florence, contains a great
deal of economic moralising. But the whole four volumes
(Verona, 1740) must be searched for it.
91
92 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Among modern books which can be consulted with profit
are :
Illustrations of the Mediaeval Thought, by Reginald Lane Poole.
1884. London.
Political Theories of the Middle Ages, by F. W. Maitland. 1900
Cambridge.
History of Mediaeval Political Thought, by A. J. Carlyle. 1903.
&c. Oxford (unfinished).
History of English Law, by Pollock and Maitland. 1898.
Cambridge.
Introduction to English Economic History, by W. J. Ashley.
1892. London.
Economic Politique au Moyen Age, by V. Brandts. 1895.
Louvain.
La Propriete apres St. Thomas, by Mgr. Deploige, Revue Neo-
Scholastique. 1895^1896. Louvain.
History of Socialism, by Thomas Kirkup. 1909. London.
Great Revolt of 1381, by C. W. C. Oman. 1906. Oxford.
Lollardy and the Reformation, by Gairdner. 1908-1911 (three
vols.) London.
England in the Age of Wy cliff, by G. M. Trevelyan, 1909.
London.
Leaders of the People, by J. Clayton. 1910. London. A sym
pathetic account of Ball, Cade, &c.
Social Organisation, by G. Unwin. 1906. Oxford.
Outlines of Economic History of England, by H. O. Meredith.
1908. London.
Mutual Aid in a Mediaeval City, by Prince Kropotkin (Nine
teenth Century Eeview. Vol. xxxvi. p. 198).
INDEX
ALBEKTUS Magnus, 51, 86, 87
Albigensians, 29
Almsgiving, 80
Ambrose, St., 10, 87
Antonino, St., 50, 52, 71, 80
Aquinas, St. Thomas, 30, 42, 51,
60, 79, 80, 83
Aristotle, 35, 42, 51, 64, 82
Augustine, St., 10, 86
Authority, 8, 10
BALL, John, 32, 38
Bavaria, Louis of, 32, 63
Beghards, 32
Beguins, 32
Benedict, St., 13
Black Death, 22
Bois, Pierre du, 62, 69
Bonaventure, St., 87
Bourbon, Etienne de, 29
Bracton, 59
CABOCHIENS, 71
Cesena, Michael de, 32
Ciompi, 25, 71
Communism, 29
DESTITUTION, 71
Dominicans, 30, 39, 47
EDUCATION, 76
FALL, 9
Fathers of Church, 8
Feudalism, 15, 56
Francis, St., 31
Franciscans, 30, 31, 39
Friars, 39
Froissart, 33
GHENT, Henry of, 87
HARRINGTON, 79
Hildebrand, 10
Hospitals, 75
INNOCENT IV, 64
JACQUERIE, 25, 71
Jerome, St., 86
John XXII, 32, 63
KING, 15, 56
LABOURERS, landless, 19, 27
Langenstein, Henry of, 81
Langland, 27, 39
Law of Nations, 11
Law of Nature, 11
Lawyers, 55
Legalists, 11
Lucca, Ptolomeo de, 51
93
MAILLOTINS, 71
94
Manicheans, 29
Manor, 71
Marcel, Etienne, 71
Meziers, Philip de, 64
Milton, 79
Moerbeke, 42
Monasticism, 13
More, Sir Thomas, 79
NECESSITIES, 83
OCKHAM, 32, 49, 63
Oresme, Nichole, 64
PARLIAMENT, 43
Peasant Revolt, 25, 32, 71
Plato, 35, 52, 82
Praetor Peregrinus, 11
Praetor Urbanus, 11
Property, 10, 12, 29, 41, 80
INDEX
RIENZI, 71
Ripa, John de, 50
Roselli, Antonio, 65
SCHOOLMEN, 41, 88
Scotus, Duns, 49, 80, 87
Slavery, 10
Socialism, 6, 16, 60
Straw, Jack, 34, 39
Superfluities, 83
TABORITES, 71
Taxation, 76
Tyler, Wat, 34
VAUDOIS, 29
WAGES, 23, 25, 74
Women, 70, 73
Wycliff, 35, 49, 60, 62, SO, 87
3/i3
Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON <&* Co.
Edinburgh &&gt; London
THE PEOPLE S BOOKS
THE FIRST HUNDRED VOLUMES
The volumes issued (Spring 1913) are marked with an asterisk
SCIENCE
*i. The Foundations of Science . . By W. C. D. Whetham, F.R.S.
*a. Embryology The Beginnings of Life By Prof. Gerald Leighton, M. D.
-3,. Biology The Science of Life . . By Prof. W. D. Henderson, M.A.
*4. Zoology: The Study of Animal Life By Prof. E. W. MacBride, F.R.S.
*$. Botany; The Modern Study of Plants By M. C. Stopes, D.Sc., Ph.D.
6. Bacteriology By W. E. Carnegie Dickson, M.D.
7. The Structure of the Earth . . By the Rev. T. G. Bonney, F.R.S.
8. Evolution. ... . By E. S. Goodrich, M.A. , F.R.S.
By Prof. W. Garstang, M.A., D.Sc.
9. Darwin . . .
*io. Heredity .
*n. Inorganic Chemistry
12. Organic Chemistry
*i4. Radiation
*i5. The Science of the Stars
*i6. The Science of Light .
*i7. Weather-Science .
*i8. Hypnotism
By J. A. S. Watson, B.Sc.
By Prof. E. C. C. Baly, F.R.S.
By Prof. J. B. Cohen, B.Sc., F.R.S.
*i3. The Principles of Electricity . By Norman R. Campbell, M.A.
By P. Phillips, D.Sc.
ByE. W. Maunder, F.R.A.S.
By P. Phillips, D.Sc.
By R. G. K. Lempfert, M.A.
By Alice Hutchison, M.D.
*i9. The Baby: A Mother s Book . . By a University Woman.
*ao. Youth and Sex Dangers and Safe- /By Mary Scharlieb, M.D., M.S., and
guards for Boys and Girls . .\ G. E. C. Pritchard, M.A., M.D.
* 2 i. Motherhood A Wife s Handbook . By H. S. Davidson, F.R.C.S.E.
*33. Lord Kelvin By A. Russell, M.A., D.Sc.
^23. Huxley By Professor G. Leighton, M.D.
24. Sir W. Huggins and Spectroscopic/ByE.W. Maunder, F.R.A.S., of the
Astronomy \ Royal Observatory, Greenwich.
*62. Practical Astronomy . . . . By H. Macphersan, Jr., F.R.A.S.
A ... , /By Sydney F. Walker, R.N.,
63. Aviation j ^j j
64. Navigation By W/Hail, R.N., B.A.
*6s. Pond Life By E. C. Ash, M.R A.C.
66. Dietetics By Alex. Bryce, M.D., D.P.H.
*94. The Nature of Mathematics . . By P. G. B. Jourdain, M.A.
95. Applications of Electricity ... By Alex. Ogilvie, B.Sc.
*96. Gardening By A. Cecil Bartlett.
97. The Care of the Teeth . . . By J. A. Young, L.D.S.
*98. Atlas of the World . . . . ByJ. Bartholomew, F.R.G.S.
*no. British Birds By F. B. Kirkman, B.A.
PHILOSOPHY AND RETLIGION
25. The Meaning of Philosophy . . By T. Loveday, M.A.
26. Henri Bergson . ... By H. Wildon Carr.
By H. J. Watt, M.A., Ph.D.
By Canon Rashdall, D.Litt., F.B.A.
By A. D. Lindsay, M.A.
By A. D. Lindsay, M.A.
By Prof. A. E. Taylor, M. A., F.B.A.
By M. A. Miigge, Ph.D.
By A. J. Jones, M.A., B.Sc., Ph.D.
*
7. Psychology
*a8. Ethics
29. Kant s Philosophy.
30. The Teaching of Plato
*67. Aristotle .
*68. Nietzsche
*6g. Eucken
7 * :h6rimenta SyCt 10gy f
} R y C W - Valentine, B.A.
*7i. The Problem of Truth . By H. Wildon Carr.
" Ge 167 * Philos phy By G. Dawes Hicks, Litt.D.
31. Buddhism . . . . . . By Prof. T.W. Rhys Davids, F.B.A.
*32. Roman Catholicism .... By H. B. Coxon.
*33. The Oxford Movement . . . By Wilfrid P. Ward.
34. The Bible in the Light of the Higher/ By Rev. W. F. Adeney, M.A., and
Criticism ...... ( Rev. Prof. W. H. Bennett, Litt.D.
35. Cardinal Newman ..... By Wilfrid Meynell.
*72. The Church of England . . .By Rev. Canon Masterman.
* 73
*74-
*75-
* 7 6.
37-
*38.
*39-
* 4 o.
V-
42.
*43-
44.
45-
46.
*6i.
77-
* 7 8.
100.
101.
IO2.
PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION (continued}
Anglo-Catholicism . . . . By A. E. Manning Foster.
The Free Churches . . . .By Rev. Edward Shillito, M.A.
Judaism ....... By Ephraim Levine, B.A.
Theosophy By Annie Besant.
104
*47-
48.
49.
50.
*79-
*8o.
81.
82.
The Growth of Freedom
Bismarck .
Oliver Cromwell
Mary Queen of Scots
Cecil Rhodes .
Julius Caesar .
History of England-
England in the Making
England in the Middle Ages
The Monarchy and the People
The Industrial Revolution
Empire and Democracy
Home Rule
Nelson ....
Wellington and Waterloo
A History of Greece .
Luther and the Reformation
The Discovery of the New World
Turkey and the Eastern Question
A History of Architecture .
SOCIAL AND
Women s Suffrage
HISTORY
By H. W. Nevinson.
By Prof. F. M. Powicke, M.A.
By Hilda Johnstone, M.A.
By E. O Neill, M.A.
By Ian Colvin.
By Hilary Hardinge.
By Prof. F. J. C. Hearnshaw, LL.D.
By E. O Neill, M.A.
By W. T. Waugh, M.A.
By A. Jones, M.A.
By G. S. Veitch, M.A.
By L. G. Redmond Howard.
By H. W. Wilson.
By Major G. W. Red way.
By E. Fearenside, B.A.
By L. D. Agate, M.A.
By F. B. Kirkman, B.A.
By John Macdonald.
By Mrs. Arthur Bell.
ECONOMIC
~ . . . By M. G. Fawcett, LL.D.
The Working of the British System\ B Prof Ram Mui M<A .
of Government to-day . . . ) J
An Introduction to Economic Science By Prof. H. O. Meredith, M.A.
Socialism ... By F. B. Kirkman, B.A.
106.
Si-
*53-
*54-
*55-
*56.
*57-
53.
59-
*6o.
84.
Mediaeval Socialism
Syndicalism
Labour and Wages
Co-operation .
Insurance as Investment
The Training of the Child
Trade Unions.
Everyday Law
By Rev. B. Jarrett, O.P., M.A.
By J. H. Harley, M.A.
By H. M. Hallswortk, M.A., B.Sc.
By Joseph Clayton.
By W. A. Robertson, F.F.A.
By G. Spiller.
By Joseph Clayton.
By J. J. Adams.
LETTERS
By
86.
*8 7 .
88.
89.
90.
91.
*93-
107.
*io8.
109.
Shakespeare
Wordsworth
Pure Gold A Choice of Lyrics
Sonnets
Francis Bacon
The Brontes .
Carlyle
Dante
Ruskin
Common Faults in Writing English
A Dictionary of Synonyms .
Classical Dictionary
History of English Literature
Browning .
Charles Lamb
Goethe
Balzac
Rousseau .
Ibsen.
Tennyson
R. L. Stevenson
Shelley .
William Morris
By
By
By
By
By
By
By
By
By
By
By
By
By
By
By
By
By
By
By
By
Prof. C. H. Herford, Litt.D.
Rosaline Masson.
H. C. O Neill.
Prof. A. R. Skemp, M.A.
Flora Masson.
the Rev. L. MacLean Watt.
A. G. Ferrers Howell.
A. Blyth Webster, M.A.
Prof. A. R. Skemp, M.A.
Austin K. Gray, B.A.
A. K. Stirling.
A. Compton-Rickett.
Prof. A. R. Skemp, M.A.
Flora Masson.
Prof. C. H. Herford, Litt.D.
Frank Harris.
H. Sacher.
Hilary Hardinge.
Aaron Watson.
Rosaline Masson.
Sydney Waterlow, M.A.
A. Blyth Webster, M.A.
LONDON AND EDINBURGH: T. C. & E. C. JACK
NEW YORK: DODGE PUBLISHING CO.
HX 31 .J37 1914 SMC
Jarrett, Bede,
Mediaeval socialism
