¹ Bras, Gabriel le, ed., Histoire du droit et des institutions del' Église en Occident (Paris, 1955).Google Scholar

² For a general statement of these points, see Chapters IV and V of The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, II (1952).Google Scholar

³ Perhaps it will be helpful to stress at this point that the political structure of society, and the stage of economic growth, are by now recognized essentials for the study of the western monastic economy, whereas the main queries about Eastern monasticism would still seem to turn about the possible importance of these very factors. To the student of Western monasticism, the growing cluster of jisa supply depots about Lamaist monasteries, described above by Mr. Miller, is indicative of a monastery situated in a relatively stable political and economic order. In contrast, it is not surprising to find with M. Bareau that the “great innovation” entered Buddhist monastic administration with the gift of land, opening the way in a more highly developed economy to “independent use”, and even “private ownership”. M. Bareau only points to the Emperor Asoka, and Mr. Miller mentions the impact of the Manchu dynasty as political influences in the economic life of the monastery. We know that “feudalization” had its influence upon religious of the East too, in terms of military cost (e.g. Lonfgrais, F. Jouon Des, L'Est et l'Ouest, Institutions du Japon et de l'Occident comparées, Paris, Institut de Recherches d'Histoire Étrangère, 1958, pp. 51,Google Scholar 55–61). But apparently there was no distinctly political influence as such since “the performance of rites was the state's business” (Coulborn, Rushton, “The State and Religion: Iran, India, and China”, CSSH, I, p. 55). For mediaeval Europe, in contrast, the distinction of political and religious jurisdictions is of primary sociological importance.Google Scholar

⁴ Ferrari, Guy, Early Roman Monasteries, Notes For The History Of The Monasteries And Convents At Rome From The V Through The X Century (Rome, Pontificio Instituto Di Archeologia Cristiana, 1957), p. 294.Google Scholar

⁵ Ibid., p. 132.

⁶ Poupardin, R., Recueil des Chartes de l'abbaye de Saint-Germain-des-Prés (Paris, 1909), p. 3 ff.Google Scholar

⁷ Knowles, David, The Monastic Order in England (Cambridge, 1940), p. 9.Google Scholar

⁸ Ibid., p. 13: “Only with the springing up of a more complex society, and the appearance of a new social order, did the monastic body split, as it were, horizontally into the divisions of choir monks and lay brethren and vertically into groups which were semi-eremitical, or at least purely contemplative, and groups which in greater or less degree touched the outside world with their activities.”

⁹ Bouillart, Jacques, ed., Histoire de l'abbaye Royale de Saint-Germain-des-Prez (Paris, 1724), pp. 25–26.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Graham, Rose, English Ecclesiastical Studies (London, 1929), p. 11.Google Scholar

¹¹ The eleventh-century practice, on the continent as well as in England, may be illustrated by the words of a grant of William I to Westminster Abbey: “… that is the market place, with stalls and shops and their revenues, and the shambles with customs and rights and revenues, which are for the lighting of the church,… Moreover to these concessions I add that all merchants well-known or strangers, natives or from abroad, of this or any other country, who (came) in the time of my predecessor namely King Edward… may now return.” Pp. 129–30, Gilbert Crispin, by Robinson, J. A. (Cambridge, 1911).Google Scholar

¹² Since commercial activity intensified at very different rates in different parts of Europe at this time, it is as yet difficult to draw a very precise schedule of this development. For example, in England payments of rents in kind as well as in money were common on royal and lay manors as well as manors of abbots until the second half of the eleventh century. But at the monastery of St. Martin of Tours all the rents (cens) were in money from the tenth century (“Les actes privés de l'abbaye de Saint-Martin de Tours du VIIIe au XIIe siècle” by Gasnault, Pierre, in Bibliothèque de L'Ecole des Chartes, Paris, 1955, p. 47).Google Scholar Nor is it yet possible to discover to what degree the abbots were simply rentiers in these arrangements. The wide use of a long-term lease or farm suggests rentier activities (e.g. Gasnault found the main-ferme widely used in tenth and eleventh-century St. Martin of Tours, ibid., pp. 51–2), but we know little about such questions as the actual rate of turnover of these leases, or the capital investment in farms by abbots, that are essential to the resolution of this problem.

¹³ There is no doubt that the military obligations proper of many monasteries were reduced for religious reasons from the eleventh century. But it is still a question for historical investigation as to how much, if at all, the total financial burden of “public taxation” upon the monastery was relieved.

¹⁴ Bloch, Marc, Annales d'Histoire Économique Et Sociale, I (1929), p. 258: “Dans son plus récent ouvrage, comme dans d'autres plus anciens, M. Thompson, dont le matérialisme historique n'est pas toujours sans intempérance, s'efforce volontiers de découvrir aux mouvements religieux du moyen âge des motifs de nature économique. Je suis, personnellement, beaucoup plus frappé par les résultats économiques des phénomènes religieux. Pour n'être pas voulus, ces effets n'en furent pas moms souvent très profonds. L'histoire de Cîteaux en fournit un exemple entre tous éloquents. Nul ordre plus complètement dégagé, à ses origines, de préoccupations d'action séculière, plus étroitement enfermé dans un ascétisme quase hérémitique. Mais, précisément parce que cet ascétisme avait ses nuances originales, 1'activité matérielle des moines blancs s'engagea dans des voies nouvelles; l'intransigeance même de leur règle, fit de leurs maisons des agents de transformation économique d'une portée sans ègale. Est-ce par crainte des digressions? Ces réactions si curieuses du spirituel sur le temporel—car le cas des cisterciens est loin d'être unique—ne me paraissent pas avoir toujours été suffisamment mises en lumière par les historien de l'économie. Expulsé de la théorie, l'homo oeconomicus trouverat-il dans l'histoire son dernier refuge?”Google Scholar

¹⁵ Carus-Wilson, Eleanor, “The Woollen Industry”, The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, II (1952), p. 367.Google Scholar

¹⁶ E.g., Graves, C. V., “The Economic Activities of the Cistercians in Medieval England (1128–1307)”, Analecta Sacri Ordinis Cisterciensis, Rome, 1957, pp. 32–45.Google Scholar

¹⁷ E.g., C. V. Graves, ibid., p. 28 ff.

¹⁸ James, Margery K., “Medieval Wine Dealer”, Explorations in Entrepreneurial History, X (1957), Harvard, p. 46: “What distinguished the specialist wine dealer was not so much the size of his trade as the regularity with which he engaged in it and the emphasis he placed upon it in relation to his other affairs.”Google Scholar

¹⁹ E.g. Reynolds, Robert L., “Origins of Modern Business Enterprise: Medieval Italy”, The Journal of Economic History, 1952, pp. 350–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁰ See Chenu, M. D., “Moines, clercs, laics au carréfour de la vie évangélique (xiie s.)”, Revue d'histoire écclésiastique, XLIX (1954), pp. 58–59.Google Scholar

²¹ Contrast the development in Moslem territory from the eleventh century: “D'autres fois, les circonstances générales peuvent provoquer une expansion du nomadisme pastoral au détriment de terroirs agricoles, donc une décadence, voire une ruine de l'agriculture. C'est ce qui se produira dans la période des XIe-XIIIe siècles”. “L'évolution sociale du monde musulman jusqu'au XIIe siècle face à celle du monde chrétien”, in Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, Xe-XIIe Siècles, I (Poitiers, 1958), p. 458.Google Scholar