§ 1. A twofold question is raised concerning trade. Some would prefer commerce to be prohibited altogether in a state, for it imports vices; others prohibit only the state itself from trading. They have their reasons. It is excellent not to seek foreign things, but to be content with one’s own. Cicero, Brutus. Next, when things pertaining to luxury have been imported, spirits grow languid and virtue is relaxed. Caesar, book 2, Gallic War. It is agreed that:
πλούτου κακίας μᾶλλον, ἢ καλοκἀγαθίας ὑπηρέτιν εἶναι.
Wealth is the handmaid of vice rather than of virtue.
Next, commerce makes a city poorer because it makes it more extravagant. A great mass of gold and silver is brought from Spain and Peru, yet nothing else has resulted than that, from the abundance of money, the prices of things have risen. For this reason, after Indian gold reached us, the ancient tables of rents which prescribed the payment of grain and wine were changed.
Next, before cochineal, anil, xylon, sandarac, sugar, cassia fistula, pearls, and quicksilver, we felt no want; now ambition has made it a law that cities must be filled with those delights and poisons. Guevara, book 3, chapter 4 of the Dial of Princes, beautifully introduces a Danubian farmer speaking about this question:
That you say there is no state in our country, no polity, but that we live like wild beasts, rests upon no greater reason than those statements above. For in our land we scarcely endured lying and turbulent traders, or those who import from foreign places the instruments of vice and luxury. Therefore, since we were honorable in clothing and rejoiced in sobriety in food, we had no need of much commerce.
Although there are in our country no Carthaginian merchants, no oil of Mauritania, merchants of Tyre, Cantabrian steel, Asiatic spices and ointments, Spanish gold, British silver, Sidonian amber, Damascene silk, Sicilian grain, Cretan wine, or Arabian purple, nevertheless we are not beasts in that land, nor are we wholly without a state. For those things, and others of that kind, are incitements to vice rather than spurs to virtue for men.
The same Guevara, book 3, chapter 28, introduces Marcus Aurelius severely reproaching a nobleman because, having abandoned public honors, he had cast himself down to plebeian trade: “I cannot wonder enough, Cincinnatus, why you have ceased to attack enemies in the manner of a Roman knight and have become a merchant, as though made one of the plebs.”
He indeed judges it unbecoming, but nevertheless speaks of unjust trade, by which, while foreigners are left unharmed, fellow citizens are injured. For he says thus:
Hold this as certain, Cincinnatus: commerce and merchants are not condemned by me, nor are the contracts of buyers and sellers censured. For just as war cannot be well conducted without cavalrymen, so a city cannot stand without merchants. But I find no other cause for abandoning military service and undertaking trade than that, sitting at leisure, you may plunder in the market-place because through old age you can no longer rob in the forests.
Therefore, most wretched Cincinnatus, buy cheaply and sell for more; promise many things and perform few; use one measure in receiving and another in giving; keep watch—indeed, be exceedingly watchful—lest anyone deceive you, as is customary for those who practice commerce in matters of this kind. But I affirm upon oath that the measure by which your life will be measured will be more just than the ell of your shop.
§ 2. I judge that legitimate trade, of the kind divine and human laws permit, must be preserved and increased with every effort. In Genesis 37:23 the Ishmaelites trade without censure, carrying resin, stacte, and other spices into Egypt. Indeed, in Genesis 34:21, the Israelites also do so: “Those men are peaceable and wish to dwell with us. Let them trade in the land and cultivate it, for it is spacious and broad and needs cultivators.” Although this can be understood of cultivation, the Hebrew word nevertheless signifies trade; therefore even the patriarchs were merchants.
Indeed, in 1 Kings 10:16, merchants and sellers of wares bring gold to Solomon. In 2 Chronicles 1:16 they are called the king’s merchants. In 2 Esdras 3:32 craftsmen and merchants build at the Sheep Gate. At Tyre, however, the merchants were princes, and the traders were renowned men of the earth, Isaiah 23:8. Babylon also was a merchant, Isaiah 47:15. In Ezekiel 17:4, a city of merchants in Canaan is mentioned. Yet rich Tyre surpassed all of them. Ezekiel 27:8:
The inhabitants of Sidon and Arvad were your rowers; your wise men, Tyre, became your pilots. The elders of Gebal and its wise men had sailors for the service of your various equipment; all the ships of the sea and their sailors were among the people of your commerce. Persians, Lydians, and Libyans were warriors in your army; they hung shield and helmet in you for your adornment. The sons of Arvad with your army were upon your walls round about; and the Pygmies who were in your towers hung their quivers upon your walls on every side; they themselves completed your beauty.
The Carthaginians, your merchants, from the multitude of every kind of riches, filled your markets with silver, iron, tin, and lead. Greece, Tubal, and Meshech were your traders; they brought slaves and bronze vessels to your people. From the house of Togarmah they brought horses, horsemen, and mules to your market. The sons of Dedan were your merchants; many islands were the commerce of your hand; they exchanged ivory teeth and ebony for your price.
The Syrian was your merchant because of the multitude of your works; they offered gems, purple, embroidered cloth, fine linen, silk, and chodchod in your market. Judah and the land of Israel were your traders in the finest wheat; they offered balm, honey, oil, and resin in your markets. Damascus was your merchant in the multitude of your works, in the multitude of various riches, in rich wine and wool of the finest color.
Dan, Greece, and Mosel offered wrought iron in your markets; stacte and cane were in your commerce. Dedan were your traders in carpets for sitting. Arabia and all the princes of Kedar were the merchants of your hand; your merchants came to you with lambs, rams, and kids. The sellers of Sheba and Raamah were your merchants; with all the choicest spices, precious stone, and gold they offered their goods in your market.
Haran, Canneh, and Eden were your merchants; Sheba, Asshur, and Chilmad were your sellers. They were your merchants in many kinds of things, with wrappings of violet cloth, embroidered work, and precious treasures which were wrapped and bound with cords; they also had cedars in your commerce. The ships of the sea were your princes in your commerce; and you were exceedingly filled and glorified in the heart of the sea.
Indeed, vast Nineveh made its merchants more numerous than the stars of heaven. Therefore, those who seek renowned cities and kingdoms must increase commerce.
I admit that morals suffer loss through commerce and riches, but these are vices not of things but of men. Otherwise it would be wrong to seek the fertility of the earth, for it too is a fertile mother of vices; nevertheless God gave his people the most excellent land, not unaware that very many would abuse that liberality for wickedness. I report these things as though the reasoning of those men were certain, because they attribute those evils to commerce; nevertheless, in this matter they seem to me to err not slightly.
For no less deceit and fraud—and even more envy and spite—are found in the huts of the poor. The vices of barbarous peoples to whom merchants did not travel were not lighter, nor are they found lighter even today. For above all they departed farthest from humanity, destroyed natural law, sanctioned man-eating and other horrors by laws, and, as now appears among the Brazilians and other peoples of America and histories teach, almost became brutish. Yet there is no less hatred, arrogance, and lust among them than among all the richest people: those beneath rags are inflamed no less than these beneath silk.
§ 3. Acquisition, or χρηματιστική, is twofold. One kind agrees with nature and arises from nature itself. For ἡ κτητική is the faculty, implanted in us by nature, of procuring what is necessary for life, just as in all animals both appetite and the acquisition of food are innate in most diverse ways, and instruments are given by which each may feed itself, as Aristotle demonstrates in Politics 1, chapter 8.
Beasts possess one method of obtaining a necessary thing: they pursue and seize the thing itself, as an ox hay, a dog bones, a lion a stag. But another method has also been given to human beings: when one has a surplus of what another lacks, they exchange with one another. This occurs in two ways. First, when one thing takes the place of another: a shoe is exchanged for a cap. If Spain exchanges wine for Polish grain, that is simple exchange. Second, when one thing is exchanged not for another thing but for money. This was invented from necessity and by the law of nations, because things cannot always be transported; money was therefore created, which by a moral law contains the power of all things.
Next, it rarely happens that one man has, in the same number and value, what another needs; thus money makes all those things liquid. Nor does it differ from other things because the use of other things is twofold: we use wine to extinguish thirst and exchange it for other merchandise, whereas every use of money is perceived in exchange.
Τὸ νόμισμα γὰρ στοιχεῖον καὶ πέρας ἐστὶ τῆς ἀλλαγῆς.
For money is the element and end of exchange, as Aristotle says in Politics 1, chapter 9.
From this it is evident that artificial commerce is also very close to nature. For just as a Pole sows wheat not only to bake bread but also to exchange it for money and with that money procure other safeguards of life, so also a merchant carries wine bought in Spain into Poland in order to purchase other necessities with the money. Each expends labor; each undergoes danger. There is less labor but more danger in the merchant. Nature, therefore, taught this method of sustaining life.
For my part, I do not at all doubt that Abraham was a merchant. He had sheep and camels, silver and gold. I do not believe that, while wandering continually, he mined the latter, but that he acquired them through the exchange and sale of livestock. Therefore he raised livestock for this purpose: to sell it, purchase a household, and accumulate money.
§ 4. That method is therefore honorable, just as when sustenance is sought from a mechanical art, from labors upon the earth, or from the pasturing of livestock, which is movable and living agriculture. Nor is there disgrace in selling at a higher price a thing bought more cheaply, although it has not been made better. For it is in the interest of the state that this be done, and therefore a thing is ordinarily considered better by reason of place, time, and other circumstances, especially by reason of expenses. If none of these exists, the trade will not be legitimate, as when money is given and received no worse than before, yet its price is nevertheless increased.
It is honorable to sell a thing for a price; all kings also do this when they possess something in abundance. It is no less honorable to sell for a higher price a thing bought and made better, as when you raise foals and sell them dearly. But this is the work of merchants; therefore their art and practice are honorable.
A thing must be considered better even if it has sometimes been made worse. For the price of every thing is found where its use is. Rhine wine in Sweden is better by moral valuation, although, having endured transport and the sea, it is physically worse than in its native soil. For the expense and dangers of carriage are valued at a great price. As in truth he who seeks profit must incur expense, so he who has incurred expense deservedly receives profit. This is true profit because it is just; that iambic poet therefore said prudently:
Τὸ κέρδος ἡγοῦ κέρδος, ἐὰν δίκαιον ᾖ.
Regard profit as profit if it is just.
But you will say that it is shameful to risk oneself from desire of profit and that this does not befit a great man. Then look at an army for me, and from thirty legions select one cohort of men who do not daily put on the garb of death in hope of profit and plunder. Why do you praise these men and censure merchants?
§ 5. Therefore those who removed merchants from the state did not act prudently. The Thebans did not admit men to the helm of the state unless they had abstained from trade for ten years. This was also received in the customs and laws of the Lacedaemonians, but through the error of both cities. It is not worth the trouble to summon the Thebans to counsel concerning the state:
You would swear that a Boeotian was born in the thick air.
Through the courage of Epaminondas alone they gained strength in a short time like a torrent, and with him they ceased. The Lacedaemonians, who at first professed military courage and poverty alone, became the most avaricious of robbers. Although that city possessed some good things, it possessed very many evils, so that they could not readily resist a powerful adversary.
I demonstrate that merchants must be admitted to counsel concerning and administration of the state. First, from the nature of the thing: exchange is a part of money-making, τῆς χρηματιστικῆς; ἡ μεταβολικὴ, καὶ τῆς μεταβολικῆς μέγιστον ἡ ἐμπορία. The greatest means of producing wealth is exchange, and the principal part of exchange is commerce. It follows that this is a principal instrument for establishing a household, and thus also a state, which arises from well-established households. If anyone considers these things, he will see that Venice, Florence, Messina, Nuremberg, and other commercial cities both abound exceedingly and possess a very well-established state. Formerly merchants were held in such honor that they were inviolate even in time of war. Indeed, in our own times, when war raged between the Belgians and the Spaniards, commerce was nevertheless not abolished.
Second, the more numerous and powerful merchants are in a city, the more numerous are the resources of the state and the methods of preserving the city. For it is exceedingly useful to possess an abundance of various things against every event. It possesses profit, but profit is an aid to need, as Aristotle warns in Ethics 8: profit, that is, with benefit to the state, without another’s loss, or even with his profit.
Third, merchants are also more useful to the state if rich and distinguished merchants preside over it. For thus judged the Tyrians, Carthaginians, and other exceedingly wealthy states. 2. Their diligence brings great benefits, both because they know the characters, resources, and conditions of various nations and because with easy business and at a moderate price they obtain the things pertaining to the defense of the state, including arms, gunpowder, and engines of war. 3. They also excel in dexterity of action and civility; for wherever they go, they introduce these too. Among the reasons why the ancient Belgians were less civilized, Tacitus adduces the fact that merchants rarely migrated among them.
§ 6. Among humane and civilized peoples—that is, those who employ true prudence and moderate sustenance, as all must live, and who retain the true worship of God—commerce is necessary. For what now protects the Christian state and the dignity of kings except the diligence of merchants? Seville alone brings together the wealth of one kingdom; Lisbon alone, the wealth of a great kingdom. Therefore, where there is commerce, there are also great cities, such as Seville, Lisbon, London, Antwerp, Hamburg, Lübeck, and Amsterdam. Hence, when the multitude of people overflows, many can be retained and hired for the defense of the country.
Indeed, if we wish to confess the truth, without merchants kings can neither wage war nor even conveniently maintain a court. Merchants also conciliate foreign nations by importing things pleasing and opportune. Three things acquired the Indies for the king of Portugal: religion, war, and commerce. Religion was the head; God deigned to employ the others as instruments. Meanwhile, the Indies themselves are now held by their tribute. Innocent VIII said that the Spaniards were born to govern, so that they might commit no error in this respect; therefore they now hold so many nations in obedience. But that is public praise; after that saying they perhaps committed private errors, not by public counsel but through the desires of governors.
For my part, I think that they were born to trade. For princes, marquises, and nobles trade through others with such decorum that they preserve their dignity above all nations and increase their estate. Indeed, when I compare everything with the flourishing Roman Empire, I assert that that kingdom stands more through opportunities for commerce than through force of arms. Rome too could not stand without trade; its foremost citizens traded throughout the world, and now the Spaniards pursue the same path.
§ 7. Not only must individual merchants be fostered, but it is also honorable, according to ancient custom, for kings, states, nobles, senators, and distinguished and wealthy citizens acting in their name to trade publicly and privately. Sidon, Tyre, Nineveh before them, Babylon, and afterward Carthage teach that this was customary among the ancients. Yet they do not equal the Romans, a martial people whose rank depended upon the census, while the census of merchants is ordinarily the greatest.
Let us look at the Roman state. The Senate held the first place—the council of the world, judged even by hostile testimony to be an assembly of kings. At first there were one hundred, then three hundred, finally six hundred through the action of Livius Drusus, and at last one thousand in the time of the civil war; Augustus reduced them to six hundred. They were the heads of the empire and lights of the provinces, chosen by the censor. Although they were not free of the reproaches of enormous vices, they nevertheless compensated for these by many virtues, until the vices conquered and abolished liberty.
In the second place stood the equestrian order, certainly noble and in great part drawn from senators. It was itself also a nursery of senators, as Emperor Alexander called it. But a great part of these men traded. Crassus, who possessed a name derived from his riches, had as many as five hundred architects and craftsmen among his slaves; he hired out their labor in a city exposed to collapses and fires.
Livy is the authority that a guild of merchants was established at Rome; it was formed when Appius Claudius and Publius Servilius were consuls. At Rome there was a most powerful association of tax-farmers. They were Roman knights because they possessed influence in a province. Cicero, in letters to Lentulus, Appius, and Quintus his brother: these same men were merchants and traded throughout the province.
What of Caecina, a man of such rank, birth, and ability? Does he not write to Cicero, Letters to Friends 6.7: “As to the journey to Asia, although the greatest necessity pressed, I did as you commanded”? Cicero’s letter indicates that he sought counsel whether he should remain in Sicily or proceed to the remnants of his Asian business. Caecina was therefore an Asiatic merchant. Cicero also commends Cuspius to Valerius, a man who had presided over the greatest affairs of the association in Africa, book 13, letter 6.
But why do we doubt concerning the Romans? Let us venture to hear Cicero For Fonteius:
They say that, while this man was praetor, Gaul was overwhelmed with debt. By whom do they say the refinancing of such great sums was made? By Gauls? Nothing less. By whom, then? By Roman citizens who trade in Gaul. Why do we not hear their words? Why are none of their account-books produced? I pursue them of my own accord and press the accuser, judges; I pursue him, I say, and demand witnesses. I consume more labor and effort in this case in demanding witnesses than other defenders do in refuting them.
I say this boldly, judges; I do not affirm it rashly. Gaul is filled with merchants; it is full of Roman citizens. No Gaul conducts any business without a Roman citizen; no coin is moved in Gaul without the account-books of Roman citizens. See how far I descend, judges, how far I seem to depart from my custom, caution, and diligence. Let one account-book be produced in which there is any trace signifying that money was given to Fonteius. Let them produce one witness from the whole number of merchants, colonists, tax-farmers, farmers, and stock-raisers.
Here he puts merchants in the first place, and Roman merchants at that. What happened in the other provinces? Were the affairs of the Romans fewer? Mithridates, by a single edict, killed 80,000 Roman citizens in Asia, among whom the foremost were knights; nevertheless, not all were killed, for hiding places protected many and friends many. Plutarch in Sulla numbers 150,000 men killed; Appian is authority that their children too were killed. These men, therefore, traded and turned every gain to their own advantage, and for this reason they were hated by the provincials.
Cicero, seventh speech Against Verres, greatly commends the affection of the Sicilians toward Rome because they did not hate tax-farmers and merchants: “Indeed, they so love our men that among them alone neither a tax-farmer nor a merchant is hated.” Why “among them alone”? Therefore they were hated by all others. They were hated because they enjoyed the greatest liberty, because they had magistrates who were citizens and those whom they had favored by their votes, and because they had been commended to them through friends, so that it was difficult to obtain justice against a Roman.
Anyone who considers these things will find that there was more commerce than warfare in the provinces. For what does it mean that no business was conducted without a Roman citizen and that no coin was moved? In these affairs plebeians, knights, and senators engaged; and, what was most serious of all, they practiced usury. The case of Seneca is well known. Verres lent public money at interest. Pompey oppressed the provinces more through interest than through war. Nor could the immense wealth of the Romans have stood in any other manner, for how could the luxury and splendor of so many knights and patricians have endured without commerce?
§ 8. Let us also consider the trade of great princes in our own time. The first is in Portugal, concerning which Botero writes, book 7, discourse 12. Each year immense heaps of pepper are carried from the East Indies. These and all spices were customarily the king’s, for he was accustomed to buy them together at a fixed price in Malacca and other islands. Their price is increased in the House of India at Lisbon so greatly that what is bought for three gold pieces is sold for forty.
Ginger, cinnamon, mastic, cloves, and nutmegs, to a sum of 200,000 gold pieces, are brought at every arrival of ships. They are carried to the fulling-house of Eudolius for a sum of about 100,000 gold pieces; and because in Spain they began not long ago to use them in dyeing cloth, they are sold at a dearer price, equal to that of spices. Borax, camphor, sandalwood, aloe, ebony, condiments, and other spices are brought severally for 40,000 ducats. Bales of various kinds of cotton are leased to private persons for a price of 60,000, from which a profit of eighty for every hundred is made. Ambergris and musk are brought for 20,000 gold pieces.
No moderate quantity of pearls, gems, amethysts, and diamonds is brought, but how much is unknown, because private persons hold them secretly so that they may not pay the king the duty of five for each hundred. From China, Malacca, the Moluccas, Bengal, Pegu, Lambaca, and other places in those regions are brought white silks, porcelain wares, and many most delicate trifles, which at Lisbon are called brincos, in great number. Small pearls are also brought from China, and most delightful and minute works which at Lisbon are sometimes valued at one hundred gold pieces each and are worn by the Portuguese like upper garments, as Italian priests are adorned with their rochets and dalmatics.
From China are brought certain couches, tables, chairs, and stools made from a certain wood black and shining like ebony, skillfully worked and gilded, and other most beautiful objects. From this we understand that the Chinese peoples abound in delights and possess the keenest ability. From Persia are brought most elaborate carpets worked from silk, gold, and the finest wool. The ships which come from the Indies carry in place of ballast certain small white shells found upon particular shores; these are afterward sold at Lisbon to certain merchants trading within the kingdom.
How great a profit could be prepared if the king possessed faithful ministers and drew the whole profit publicly to himself? What shall I say of exceedingly wealthy Venice? Do not both the state itself and its citizens and nobles trade? That state certainly owes to commerce the fact that it has often resisted the most powerful monarchs, for it possessed at home the sinew—money. If the power of others did not stand in the way, it would long ago have prepared a great empire; but it is difficult to rise against such powerful men.
The States of Holland protect commerce as the life and blood of their provinces, and defend voyages to the Indies with no less care than their native walls, although with great losses to private persons. For if they cease, the sailors will go elsewhere and die off, so that it will be necessary to cease altogether. The cities of Germany either trade or are partners of those who trade. The fact that some practice usury through Jews is certainly an execrable crime. I do not know whether any cities are governed more rightly than those marts, especially those in which all citizens can be participants in the public council.
§ 9. There is nothing among these things which cannot be done most honorably. If the treasury is exhausted, if debt has also been contracted, will money not be collected more honorably through commerce than through urine and other things? Nor is the question difficult for a wise man: is it more honorable to press subjects with tributes, or through diligence in trading to assist the state and spare the poor? But who will be a faithful trader for the prince? What does this matter? Who is a faithful exactor of tributes?
No one, by Hercules, no one—either two men, or no one. Trading requires less care than collecting everything individually. The rapacity of collectors is constrained by so many laws, yet no force sufficiently opposes their desires. Let the prince employ the tax-farmers whom he now employs.
But what is worse than tax-farmers? Chrysostom asks: “What is worse than a tax-farmer? Tell me. He is the minister and trader of the misfortunes of others. He divides the labors of others and, although he has no part in the sweat, receives profit from another’s labor. For a tax-farmer is nothing other than violence raging under license, a lawful injury, avarice beneath an honorable pretext.”
Now all the chests and bundles of merchants are searched so that part of great riches may be brought into the treasury; by the same labor, complete profits can also be acquired. Τελώνης, says Suidas:
ἀλλοτρίων πραγμάτων μεριστής, πεπαρρησιασμένη βία, ἀνεπιτίμητος ἁρπαγή, ἀναίσχυντος πλεονεξία, παραγγελίας λόγον μὴ ἔχουσα, ἀναιδὴς ἐμπορία.
A tax-farmer is a participant in and divider of the business of others; free and permitted violence; unpunished plunder; shameless avarice; business lacking reason; commerce without modesty. Let him exchange this for a somewhat more modest trade and carry the prince’s merchandise. Employ him, therefore, in merchandise. He will be capable of less evil in trade than in collection, for there he prevails by cunning alone, but here also by force; there he deals with Cretans, here with Boeotians.
§ 10. The end of commerce is to procure necessary things and sell superfluous things without fraud or deceit. If a prince does this through his agents, I do not see why he does not preserve his dignity. The merchant despises everything beneath the burning sun and sea-monsters, and
The African wind wrestling with Icarian waves.
The merchant, fearing them, praises the leisure and fields Of his own town; soon he repairs his shattered ships, Unable to endure poverty.
It also belongs to kings and princes to undertake dangers for their country; to die is not the part of the timid. To stand in the first battle-line, move among weapons, keep watch, dig a rampart, walk through frosts, and commit life to a fragile ship which enemy beaks will soon assail is judged the highest honor amid such majesty. To feed the soldier from enemy territory and establish colonies belongs to a provident commander. This appears greater, but in truth it is wiser and more right if through diligence he acquires wealth and protects the kingdom, if India and Asia increase the treasury.
Solomon’s ships certainly went to Tarshish, and they did not bring back royal merchandise without commerce. “For his fleet went by sea with the fleet of Hiram once every three years to Tarshish, bringing thence gold and silver, elephants’ teeth, apes, and peacocks. King Solomon was therefore magnified above all the kings of the earth in riches and wisdom,” 1 Kings 10:22.
Without doubt the gold and silver were bought by the commander of the fleet with other merchandise carried there. Next, why would elephants’ teeth be enumerated unless they were brought in great number? Nor do I see why the king should convey so great a quantity of ivory. Therefore the ivory was sold through royal traders, just as pepper and Indian spices once were in Portugal. Why too would apes and peacocks be mentioned if they were procured for the royal household alone and not for the whole kingdom, into which they were sold? I will not believe that playful animals were brought without profit, but that those flocks were sold throughout the richest marts of Asia.
But if some think it sordid to increase resources through commerce, they are mistaken. For wherever it is not sordid to receive revenues from merchants, countrymen, gardeners, and poor people, neither is it sordid to make a profit by exchanging things, provided that the public good is sought.
They carry the magnanimity of Theophilus in their mouths. When a cargo ship arrived with his wife’s merchandise, Theophilus, although he had commanded that the property of private persons be exempted, burned it with Greek fire, pursuing the empress with insults and curses. Commerce, he said, belonged to private persons; their profits were not to be snatched away by princes but permitted to men of slender fortune. An illustrious speech in appearance, in reality empty.
Let us therefore consider Theophilus, and we shall assess his deed. Curopalates wrote his life, and the others drew from that source. 1. He feigned justice:
After Michael’s death his son Theophilus, who had now reached manhood, received his father’s empire in the month of October, in the eighth indiction. In words he sought to be called a vehement lover of justice and a perfect observer of the civil laws; but in truth, guarding himself from outsiders who were hostile to him, lest anyone perhaps venture some crime against him, he feigned these things.
Therefore, immediately at the beginning, he took care that all who had conspired with his father in the murder of Leo be removed from their midst and put to death. He accordingly issued an edict that all who had received any benefit from the emperor, and in addition all who had been made participants in any imperial dignity, should assemble in the Magnaura or the Pentapyrgium. When this had been done and all had assembled as he ordered, as though he had previously hidden his savagery in darkness, he addressed those gathered together in a mild and submissive voice:
“My father, O people,” he said, “wished and intended to bestow many benefits and other honors upon those who had assisted him and undertaken the contest for obtaining the empire. But overtaken by fate, and lest he seem ungrateful to those who had deserved well of him, he left me, his successor in the empire, as their debtor. Therefore let each man separate himself from the multitude and show himself openly to us, so that, once our friends are known, we may reward them with worthy prizes.”
Deceived by these words and led out of their minds, the wretched men, each of whom had devoted his effort to Leo’s murder, identified themselves.
That statement, therefore, belonged to a dissembler, and to an avaricious dissembler who hunted for the reputation of magnificence. For in truth he was an iconoclast and a most bitter and avaricious persecutor. Thus the Acts of Saint Joannicius the Anchorite relate:
Theophilus held the scepter of the Romans. But he was wholly intent upon heaping up gold and was overcome by it; moreover, unable to bear being a Christian and behaving impiously toward the divine images, surpassing others both in power and in the dogma of the icon-fighters, he concealed such a snare for all Christians. With scribes and exactors he occupied an entire village at once, wishing to do two things which are the worst: both to gratify his avaricious spirit by exactions of tribute and to make manifest to himself every person who followed orthodox doctrine, so that he might seize them by force and cause them, even unwillingly, to be joined to the heresy of the icon-fighters.
Do you not wonder that so rapacious an exactor of the poll tax was so severe toward commerce? But he was angry with his wife Theodora, an excellent woman. Her mother Theoctista also did not consent to iconoclasm, as Curopalates relates. Hence came his anger, and from any cause he sought an opportunity for vengeance. Curopalates tells the story concerning Bender, a new Thersites.
Therefore Theodora must be praised, a heroic empress of great virtue and the wife of that monster, who bore up under servitude to a husband who stripped all temples of images and filled all prisons with bishops, pastors, and monks. Mountains and caves were full of men killed by hunger and thirst. He enclosed Saint
Methodius alive in a tomb; delighted with magic himself, he made John the Magician patriarch of Constantinople. A cruel and avaricious man, raging even at death itself, ought not to have been brought forward as an example of liberality and magnificence. These things had to be warned because many writers judge serious affairs from some single ambitious or even feigned statement.
Greater authority resides in an edict of the emperors Honorius and Theodosius: “We prohibit those more noble by birth, conspicuous in the splendor of honors, and richer in patrimony from practicing merchandise pernicious to cities, so that the intercourse of buying and selling may occur more readily among plebeians and merchants.” Code, book 4, title 63, law 3. They are not excluded because commerce is unlawful, but because it is more difficult for men of slender means to contract with them in the same city; there is now no danger of this.
Commerce, however, seems afterward to have been permitted to nobles, rich men, and those holding magistracy. For Harmenopulus, book 2, title 5, §19, testifies that it is lawful for all to practice commerce. Certainly law 1, title 63, book 4 of the Code, teaches that it was formerly customary among the powerful: “Merchants, if any belong to our household, and the men of powerful persons, are to be admonished to acknowledge the obligation of payments owed, as honor demands, so that among all who take profits from commerce the disposition of acknowledging a tolerable duty may arise.”
In the time of the Henries and afterward, a great part of the German nobility had turned to robbery and plunder, as histories and the castles still lying in ruins teach. The cause of so great an evil was that commerce was either prohibited to nobles or made a reproach to them. Even now many among the nobility prefer to be in need and defraud their creditors rather than trade, although the magnates of Spain and Italy, as also those of Belgium, practice commerce with great zeal and continually. They do this in rivalry with the marts in which they live, for they see that they are despised if only birth is in their possession and property is in the possession of others. Birth and virtue, unless joined with property, are viler than seaweed in the opinion of men—an evil opinion indeed, but one which possesses very great weight in governing a state.
The imperial laws make it manifest that commerce is not condemned in a noble and military man. For it is prohibited to soldiers, who possess a particular military oath, title 35, Code, law 12. But the reason is added in book 15:
Soldiers, who are armed and maintained by the state, ought to be occupied with public utilities alone, and ought to labor not for the cultivation of fields, the care of animals, or profit from merchandise, but at the duties of their own military service. Let your greatness not allow any soldier hereafter to be free from the aforementioned services, but order them to be present frequently in their own unit, so that through daily exercise in arms they may prepare themselves for wars.
But if any military judge believes that any soldiers should be assigned to divine, royal, or private households or possessions, or to various other services, contrary to the prohibition of our serenity, let him know that from the one who acted contrary to the prohibition and from the one who dared to receive the soldier, one pound of gold for every soldier is immediately to be exacted.
Behold, it places merchandise and agriculture in an equal position and prohibits both, because soldiers are maintained by the state and must be prepared for wars through daily exercise in arms.
§ 11. Various goods are prohibited. At the present time all things by which the Turks could be aided against us are prohibited from being sold to them, such as every kind of weapon and things pertaining to weapons. Formerly it was also unlawful to export gold. Thus Gratian, Valentinian, and Theodosius, title 63:
Not only is gold by no means to be furnished to barbarians, but even if any is found among them, let it be taken away by subtle ingenuity. But if gold has moreover been carried to barbarian lands by merchants in exchange for slaves or goods of any kind, they shall be subjected not so much to losses as to punishments. And if a judge does not reclaim what is found, he hastens to conceal it like an accomplice in the crime.
Now in Sicily and Spain the export of military horses is prohibited.
§ 12. Let goods by which those of the country and native goods become cheaper not be permitted to be imported. Thus in Germany princes should not permit Cretan or Spanish wine except with an immense customs duty, nor English cloth, since the Germans themselves weave so great a variety of garments. Since the French possess much silk, they will readily permit domestic silk to be sold but burden foreign silk with customs duties.
§ 13. Finally, that prince seems to me likely to act most prudently who incites every most honorable man to commerce rather than permits him to be idle; who summons those who increase wealth through business to public duties; who furnishes merchants not only with immunities and privileges but also steadfastly provides for their safety; who orders his own people, when they travel to various kingdoms, to learn everything; who administers justice accurately and swiftly to foreigners; who grants them their own consuls and magistrates if they are numerous; and who diligently prevents frauds, monopolies, and other things which obstruct the public good.
§ 14. This too has often been asked: is it lawful for clerics to trade?
First, unlawful trade is forbidden by canon law and divine law not only to clerics but to all Christians. Thus Distinction 88, chapter 11:
By casting those who sold and bought out of the temple, the Lord signified that a merchant can scarcely or never please God. Therefore no Christian ought to be a merchant; or, if he wishes to be one, let him be cast out of the Church of God, as the Prophet says: “Because I did not know commercial dealings, I shall enter into the powers of the Lord.” For just as one who walks between two enemies, wishing to please both and commend himself to both, cannot avoid much speaking—for it is necessary that these men speak evil of that man, and those men evil of this one—so one who buys and sells cannot avoid falsehood and perjury.
And canon 13:
What else is trade but to wish to sell more dearly what can be bought more cheaply? Those merchants, therefore, are considered abominable who, paying no regard to the justice of God, are polluted by an immoderate pursuit of money, burdening their merchandise more with perjuries than with prices. The Lord cast such men out of the temple, saying: “Do not make my Father’s house a house of trade.”
Second, dangerous commercial dealings are dissuaded for all, On Penance, distinction 5, canon 2:
The character of the profit either excuses or accuses the trader, because there is both honorable and shameful gain. Nevertheless, it is more useful for a penitent even to suffer losses than to be bound by the dangers of trade, because it is difficult for sin not to intervene in the intercourse of buyer and seller.
Third, trade is prohibited to clerics just as other secular affairs are. Thus Distinction 88, chapter 2, Consequent; chapter 8, Useless; and chapter 9: “Flee as a kind of plague a clerical merchant who becomes rich from poverty and glorious from obscurity.” And chapter 10: “Fornication is never lawful for anyone; trade, however, is lawful at one time and unlawful at another. For before someone becomes an ecclesiastic, it is lawful for him to trade; once he has become one, it is not lawful.” And Cause 14, question 4: “Let clerics know that they must abstain from unworthy gains and cease from every design or desire for any kind of commerce;
or, if, in whatever rank they have been placed, they are unwilling to cease, let them immediately be compelled to abstain from clerical offices.”
Fourth, a cleric can expend some time upon business if he acts not from cupidity but with the intention of aiding the wretched. Thus Distinction 88, chapter The Holy Synod Decreed:
The holy synod decreed that henceforth no cleric should lease estates or involve himself in secular business, except for the care of wards, orphans, and widows, or if perhaps the bishop of the city commands him to have concern for ecclesiastical affairs.
Here it is plainly evident that some affairs are secular and others ecclesiastical. Was not Moses in the world when he repeatedly entered and left the tabernacle—one who, within, was carried away in contemplation, but outside was pressed by the affairs of the weak? And chapter 7: “Let the bishop conduct the administration of widows, wards, and strangers not by himself but through the archpriest or archdeacon.”
Just as in the preceding book we spoke about the secular dominion of clerics and their hearing of cases, so we must reason about commerce. Nor is there danger in this respect. For one who involves himself in business in order to relieve the poor, since the matter is indifferent by nature, makes it holy by a good end; nor will one whom piety rather than avarice has led to commerce readily commit fraud or lie.
Fifth, if commerce is permitted for the cause of wards and the poor, much more is it permitted for a cleric’s own cause if he is poor; it is better for him to trade than to burden others by begging. Hence it is evident that Plato, when he thinks cities must be removed farther from harbors lest an unregulated crowd rush in and they be deformed by vices, is ἀεροβατεῖν—walking on air—and constructing separate Ideas, Chimeras, and Utopias. He does not accommodate himself to human pursuits and affections or teach that which can be put into practice.
For if a city is situated at a convenient harbor, so that cargo ships can enter the bridges and be brought into the middle of the city, why should I withdraw it to a mountain, so that ships must be unloaded with great labor and merchandise conveyed at great expense? Aristotle rightly reproaches this in his teacher, for convenience in human affairs is not to be neglected.
For my part, I think that such a city, situated rather far from a harbor, will be more vicious than one which receives into its bay fleets laden with wealth. For that more distant city needs an immense supply of sailors, boatmen, carriers, grooms, beasts of burden, and wagoners, who infect the city with great vices and receive those arriving at their very first approach. This counsel for excluding commerce seems to me like one by which someone should attempt to persuade our inhabitants of the Rheingau, who inhabit the happy hills beside the Rhine, to migrate to the neighboring mountains and carry their wines there, lest their morals be corrupted through the easy arrival of foreigners. But these things belong not to one who wishes to establish a state, but to one contemplating metaphysics.
I approve the action of an emperor who in his time was considered the best. For he had previously governed four consular provinces, lived moderately, and was most skilled in military discipline; men judged him most worthy not only of honor but also of veneration. When he was designated, the barbarians, through fear of his tested courage and confidence in the justice they knew to be in him, voluntarily surrendered themselves to him. In the greatest danger he said or did nothing that was not worthy of an emperor. When he was killed by the injury of the Praetorians, the people and Senate bore it so bitterly that they ran about like madmen and filled everything with tumult and mourning. Herodian and others relate these things concerning him.
This was Pertinax, who as a private man taught grammar, led military units, and was considered rather frugal—a fact which was also a cause of his death. Julius Capitolinus relates of him: “He was so frugal and so desirous of profit that, at the fords of Sabaria, as emperor he practiced commerce through his agents no differently than he had been accustomed to do as a private man.”
Capitolinus says this with little sincerity, for he is plainly convicted of falsehood when he says that Pertinax “was nevertheless not greatly loved.” How was one not greatly loved at whose elevation as emperor the Senate and people so rejoiced that there had been no altogether so sincere rejoicing over anyone? Whom they mourned as greatly as any mother mourned a son? Capitolinus himself says that the people bore his death with the greatest indignation. The soldiers and courtiers indeed hated him, and the cause of their hatred was most unjust: because he restrained their plunder and lusts. Finally, his successor Severus adopted the name Pertinax so that he might seem likely to emulate the morals of a good prince. He would not have done this unless Pertinax had been dear.
I do not excuse him from avarice. He himself defended himself when he was refusing the empire:
Besides, all those who have become accustomed to the enormous and immense largesses of tyrants, if you begin to act a little more frugally or temperately because of a lack of money, do not attribute it to moderate administration and prudence, but immediately reproach you with avarice and sordidness. Nor do they consider that no one can distribute great gifts to everyone if he abstains from violence and plunder. But one who administers rightly and according to each person’s rank not only unjustly takes nothing from anyone, but also teaches others to be frugal and to spare what has been acquired.
His deeds were performed according to this rule. Herodian says:
He entirely remitted all the revenues which tyrants had devised for collecting money upon riverbanks, in city harbors, and along roads and journeys, and restored them to their ancient liberty. He seemed likely to do many other things according to the same example. For he had also driven informers from the city and commanded that they be punished wherever they were found, taking care that no one suffer injury or have danger raised against him from empty accusations.
The deed was excellent if rightly weighed. Commodus had squandered everything; Pertinax found ten hundred-thousands of sesterces, that is, scarcely 30,000. Nevertheless, he had to distribute donatives, govern the state, and establish a court. Amid these things he abolished tyrannical revenues and sought lawful methods of acquiring wealth. Among them he included commerce, which he had practiced as a private man; nor was it charged against him as a fault that, after so many wars successfully completed and provinces administered, already a senator of the highest rank and sixty years old, he traded. He was venerable to the people and Senate and dear to emperors and the army—worthy to become an emperor from a merchant.
This history sufficiently shows what I said above: that martial people cultivated Mercury even more zealously than Gradivus, whom they thought the father and founder of their race.
Hence came the wealth of Crassus, with which he could maintain an army. Pliny nevertheless records that freedmen were richer than Crassus. Lucius Domitius promised the soldiers four iugera each, which, according to the number of soldiers, were forty-eight thousand. Pliny, book 18, says that six landowners possessed half of Africa. Therefore the Romans were not only soldiers but also plowmen and merchants, and both amid arms.
Guilds rightly established are bonds and supports of democracy. Therefore Solon established and strengthened them. For they prepare wealth, possess counsel, are bound together by a certain hidden compact, and accomplish everything in order. Therefore they are like certain legions or cohorts, not a crowd,
and are most tenacious of their rights and privileges. From them arise practical experience and prudence that are not subject to tribunes and agitators. Nor do they harm monarchy: since they possess privileges from the king, practice requires them always to seek new ones and to have the old confirmed. Let there be among them men who preside in the king’s name and report everything. Let there also be a fixed time at which statutes and rights must be reread and approved afresh. A certain jurisdiction and power of correction are customarily granted, final law, Code, On Jurisdiction. See Gaill, book 2, observation 2; Hippolytus, singular law 560, no. 2.
The preservation of guilds and associations therefore pertains greatly to commerce, since an association of several persons who do and profess the same things is established; they also call it one body. See law 4 at the beginning, π., On Guilds. Bodin has much concerning guilds, Politics 3.7. See also book 11 of the Code. It was an institution of Numa; Plutarch, in his life; Dionysius, Book 2. Solon likewise had this care; Plutarch.