Wim Decock
Wim Decock (1983) is professor of Roman law, legal history and comparative law at the University of Louvain (UCLouvain) in Louvain-la-Neuve. He also teaches legal history on a part-time basis at the University of Liège. Before joining UCLouvain, Decock was a research professor at the Flemish University of Louvain (KU Leuven) in Leuven. From 2012 through 2014 he led a junior research group at the Max-Planck-Institute for European Legal History in Frankfurt. Decock received his PhD in law in 2011 from the universities of Roma Tre and KU Leuven with a dissertation on the theological origins of contract law that won several prizes, including the H. M.-Leibnitz-Prize 2014 by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the Michael Novak Award 2017. In 2020, he was awarded the VWS-Prize by the Royal Flemish Academy for his more recent book on the early modern foundations of the economics of meritocracy. Decock holds master degrees in classics (KU Leuven, summa cum laude) and law (Ghent Univ, summa cum laude). In 2021, he was elected associate member of the Royal Academy of Overseas Sciences in Brussels. In 2022, Decock was the recipient of a Max Planck-Humboldt medal.
Supervisors: Emanuele Conte and Laurent Waelkens
Supervisors: Emanuele Conte and Laurent Waelkens
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Books by Wim Decock
May beggars be excluded from public spaces? May vagabonds be denied access to foreign cities? Should assistance to the poor rely on private charity rather than public welfare institutions? These and similar questions are at the heart of "Deliberation on the Cause of the Poor", a remarkable treatise on poor relief by Domingo de Soto (1495 –1560), a renowned Dominican friar from the University of Salamanca and one of Spain’s most famous theologian-jurists. Soto draws on manifold arguments from the Bible, the church fathers, natural law, Roman law, and canon law to radically defend the legitimate poor’s right to beg for assistance, while recalling the vital importance of the virtue of mercy.
Das vierbändige „Handbuch zur Geschichte der Konfliktlösung in Europa“ beschäftigt sich mit rechtlichen und außerrechtlichen Wegen der Entscheidung von Konflikten zwischen einzelnen Menschen sowie zwischen Personen und ihren Obrigkeiten. Das von Expertinnen und Experten aus vielen europäischen Ländern geschriebene Handbuch soll als zentrales Referenzmedium für die historische Dimension aller Aspekte der Streitentscheidung dienen.
Der Aufbau des Werks orientiert sich an den vier Epochen Antike, Mittelalter, Frühe Neuzeit und 19./20. Jahrhundert.
Nach einer Einführung in die jeweilige Epoche werden die für den Zeitabschnitt kennzeichnenden Akteure, Verfahren und Institutionen vorgestellt sowie Kernfragen und Zentralprobleme der Streitentscheidung in zeittypischen Konfliktfeldern behandelt. Die europäische Perspektive des Handbuchs schlägt sich in Überblicken zu einzelnen Ländern, Regionen und Rechtskulturen nieder. Ausführliche Hinweise auf die weiterführende Literatur runden die Darstellung ab. Der vorliegende Band 3 umfasst Beiträge zur Frühen Neuzeit.
Comprendre la genèse de l’économie moderne nécessite un retour à ses fondements théologiques. Plus d’un siècle après la parution de L’Éthique protestante et l’esprit du capitalisme, l’enquête de Max Weber reste en effet inachevée. Le Marché du mérite revisite l’héritage de l’un des protagonistes de l’histoire de la pensée économique tout en élucidant ses origines juridico-théologiques. Dans un contexte marqué par la mondialisation des échanges, l’essor des places boursières et de profonds bouleversements politico-religieux, le jésuite Léonard Lessius (1554-1623) fera figure d’« Oracle des Pays-Bas » parmi les marchands, banquiers et princes qui cherchaient à s’orienter dans ce Nouveau Monde. Son principal ouvrage, Sur la justice et le droit, deviendra rapidement un livre de référence en raison de sa fine maîtrise de la technique juridique et de la lucidité de ses analyses économiques (spéculation, subprimes, assurances, information et marché, monopoles, investissements, prêts, risques…). Si le marché n’a pas pour vocation de transformer le monde en marchandises ni l’homme en esclave d’une soif matérialiste, Lessius, comme ses collègues théologiens de l’École de Salamanque, encourage néanmoins l’effort, la prudence et l’industrie, autant de vertus aptes à libérer un marché basé sur le mérite.
History of private law - contract law - moral theology - canon law - freedom of contract - justice in exchange
The Roman legal tradition is the ancestor of modern contract law but there is no agreement as to how and when a general law of contract emerged. Wim Decock’s thesis is that an important step in this evolution was taken by theologians in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They transformed the Roman legal tradition (ius commune) by insisting on the moral foundations of contract law. Theologians emphasized that the enforceability of contracts is based on voluntary consent and that a contract should not enrich one party at another's expense. While their main concern was the salvation of souls, theologians played a key role in the development of a systematic contract law in which the founding principles were freedom and fairness.
Studies of early modern scholasticism are experiencing a boom today. Legal scholars, philosopher, theologians, and economists are approaching the texts of the “Spanish late scholastics” and “Catholic natural law theorists” from their own perspectives. Both beginners and experts will find the tools in this volume for conducting independent research on the sources and cross-disciplinary insight regarding the state of research.
This translation is a selection from Lessius’ treatment of contract law in his larger work On Justice and Right. By drawing on diverse sources ranging from Roman and canon law to moral philosophy, Lessius offers practical advice in commercial and financial matters. These chapters on sale, securities, and insurance engage perennial questions concerning the lawfulness of insider trading, the sale of toxic debt, and asymmetric information in insurance markets.
This work offers an extraordinary perspective on the early modern debates about toleration and the binding force of private agreements and international treaties between people of different Christian faiths. Drawing on principles of contract law developed by jurists and theologians from the School of Salamanca, the Jesuit controversialist Martinus Becanus (1563–1624) argues in favor of the duty to honor promises beyond confessional boundaries. Although hostile to religious freedom as a matter of principle, he acknowledges that a prince may have good reasons to grant exceptions. In particular circumstances the toleration of religious diversity may not only prevent greater evil, but also advance the greater good, especially by stimulating a kind of pious competition between confessional communities. This first English translation of Becanus’s De fide haereticis servanda allows modern scholars to discover a major work of one of the most prominent advocates of a permission concept of tolerance in the early modern period.
This book explores the tensions between the religious and legal principles of Islamic finance and Islamic banking in practice. It does not limit itself to a legal discussion and presents an interdisciplinary and intercultural dialogue between lawyers, theologians, and economists with roots in academia and practice. There is considerable divergence in their evaluation of the status quo and future of Islamic finance.
Contributions cover aspects of Islamic finance in theory and practice. It provides insights into the interplay of religion, ethics and finance covering both the Islamic and Christian traditions that sets the scene for Islamic finance in practice: economic technicalities of Islamic banking services, its regulatory aspects, and the complex legal arrangements of Islamic finance in non-Muslim-majority countries.
With contributions by Martin Bünning and Aryanaz Rezaian, Mahmoud A. El-Gamal, Syed Imad-ud-Dis Asad, Amel Makhlouf, Mathias Rohe, Hans Visser and Rodney Wilson.
This volume collects papers by specialists such as Dave De Ruysscher, Martijn Punt, Stefania Gialdroni and Karsten Voss on diverse aspects of company law in a crucial stage of its formation, ranging from company law in 16th and 17th century cities such as Antwerp and Maastricht, including its Italian origins, through the English East India Company and the creation of Carribean Plantation Economies by French chartered companies in the early 18th century.
The essays collected in this volume investigate the role of the religious reform movements since the 16th century in the transformation of the Western legal tradition, focussing on one particular topic, viz. how law had to deal with the reference to conscience, a crucial concept for all confessions in the early modern period. Research on the teachings of Lutheran, Calvinist, and Roman Catholic theologians and jurists from the 16th up to the early 18th century, too often examined separately, is brought together in a comparative perspective. The essays comprise studies on legal concepts of conscience and on their implementation in the teachings in Public Law and in Canon or Ecclesiastical Law from the perspectives of theology, law, and philosophy.
Wim Decock, Jordan Ballor, Michael Germann and Laurent Waelkens collect contributions by internationally renowned experts in law, history and religion on the impact of the Reformations on law, jurisprudence and moral theology. The overall impression conveyed by the essays is that on the level of substantive doctrine (the legal teachings) there seems to be more continuity between Protestant and Catholic, or, for that matter, between medieval and early modern jurisprudence and theology than usually expected. As it is illustrated with regards to topics ranging from just war doctrine over business ethics to marriage law, at the very least there appears to have been an on-going conversation between jurists and theologians across the confessional divide. This does not prevent some contributions from highlighting that on the institutional level, for instance in university politics, radical tensions between Reformers and Counter-Reformers played a paramount role. This book also offers approaches to the relationship between Church(es) and State(s) in the early modern period and to the practical as well as doctrinal use of natural law in both Protestant and Catholic lands.
Zestig miljard euro per maand. Daarmee probeert de Europese Centrale Bank (ECB) de economie van de eurozone nieuw leven in te blazen.
Het is één van de onconventionele maatregelen van de ECB in de nasleep van de banken- en staatsschuldencrisis. Het beleid van de ECB stuit echter op steeds meer kritiek: Past dit wel binnen het traditionele juridische kader voor een eengemaakt Europees monetair beleid? Gaat de ECB haar boekje niet te buiten? Vormen de aankoopprogramma’s voor overheidsschuld geen schending van het verbod op monetaire staatsfinanciering?
Naar aanleiding van het Gauweiler-arrest van het Hof van Justitie wil dit boek een antwoord bieden op deze vragen. De crisismaatregelen van de ECB worden in hun bredere juridische en historische context geplaatst.
Papers by Wim Decock
Charles Dumoulin (1500-1566) is undoubtedly one of the most famous jurists from early modern Europe. His Commentary on the Custom of Paris earned him a reputation as a brilliant jurist and as one of the founders of a unified French legal culture. Until the early twentieth century, French jurists considered engagement with Dumoulin’s work obligatory to get a better understanding of the sources of Napoleon’s Civil Code. Yet Dumoulin was also a man of his own age, torn apart by the growing divisions within Christianity and fascinated by the rise of nationalist interests. His hostility towards the Pope and his condemnation of abusive practices within the Roman Catholic Church meant that he became a persona non grata in Paris for a while. He was forced into exile in Switzerland and Germany, where he met Calvinist and Lutheran theologians without ever losing his uncompromising temper and sense for individual autonomy. This contribution concentrates on Dumoulin’s struggle to find a personal faith adapted both to his spiritual needs and to his concerns with the privileges of the Gallican Church and the French monarchy. It also highlights the impact of his Protestant sympathies on his ecclesiological and economic thought, particularly his call for a return to the primitive church and his acceptance of moderate interest rates as a matter of principle.
Even though the sixteenth century is commonly remembered as the golden age of Spain (el siglo de oro), poverty was a constant threat to large parts of its population. Agriculture and food reserves could not keep up with the increase in population over the century, leading to migration of innumerable poor people to the cities. Government interventions, e.g. through the regulation of grain prices, only worsened the situation. This paper investigates how Domingo de Soto (1494-1560), a learned doctor in theology, reacted to legislative solutions proposed by urban and imperial authorities to solve the social challenges resulting from the dire state of the Spanish economy. Soto’s "Deliberation on the cause of the poor" (1545) was a direct reaction against statutory regulations in cities such as Zamora, Valladolid and Salamanca that laid down public measures to deal with poverty and migration. The more specific angle from which this problem is considered in this article is the manner in which the learned doctors in theology took a critical stand towards the measures taken by the law-makers – the creators of statutory regulations (lex) – on the basis of their defence of the supremacy of the natural legal order, the ius commune and subjective rights (ius).
May beggars be excluded from public spaces? May vagabonds be denied access to foreign cities? Should assistance to the poor rely on private charity rather than public welfare institutions? These and similar questions are at the heart of "Deliberation on the Cause of the Poor", a remarkable treatise on poor relief by Domingo de Soto (1495 –1560), a renowned Dominican friar from the University of Salamanca and one of Spain’s most famous theologian-jurists. Soto draws on manifold arguments from the Bible, the church fathers, natural law, Roman law, and canon law to radically defend the legitimate poor’s right to beg for assistance, while recalling the vital importance of the virtue of mercy.
Das vierbändige „Handbuch zur Geschichte der Konfliktlösung in Europa“ beschäftigt sich mit rechtlichen und außerrechtlichen Wegen der Entscheidung von Konflikten zwischen einzelnen Menschen sowie zwischen Personen und ihren Obrigkeiten. Das von Expertinnen und Experten aus vielen europäischen Ländern geschriebene Handbuch soll als zentrales Referenzmedium für die historische Dimension aller Aspekte der Streitentscheidung dienen.
Der Aufbau des Werks orientiert sich an den vier Epochen Antike, Mittelalter, Frühe Neuzeit und 19./20. Jahrhundert.
Nach einer Einführung in die jeweilige Epoche werden die für den Zeitabschnitt kennzeichnenden Akteure, Verfahren und Institutionen vorgestellt sowie Kernfragen und Zentralprobleme der Streitentscheidung in zeittypischen Konfliktfeldern behandelt. Die europäische Perspektive des Handbuchs schlägt sich in Überblicken zu einzelnen Ländern, Regionen und Rechtskulturen nieder. Ausführliche Hinweise auf die weiterführende Literatur runden die Darstellung ab. Der vorliegende Band 3 umfasst Beiträge zur Frühen Neuzeit.
Comprendre la genèse de l’économie moderne nécessite un retour à ses fondements théologiques. Plus d’un siècle après la parution de L’Éthique protestante et l’esprit du capitalisme, l’enquête de Max Weber reste en effet inachevée. Le Marché du mérite revisite l’héritage de l’un des protagonistes de l’histoire de la pensée économique tout en élucidant ses origines juridico-théologiques. Dans un contexte marqué par la mondialisation des échanges, l’essor des places boursières et de profonds bouleversements politico-religieux, le jésuite Léonard Lessius (1554-1623) fera figure d’« Oracle des Pays-Bas » parmi les marchands, banquiers et princes qui cherchaient à s’orienter dans ce Nouveau Monde. Son principal ouvrage, Sur la justice et le droit, deviendra rapidement un livre de référence en raison de sa fine maîtrise de la technique juridique et de la lucidité de ses analyses économiques (spéculation, subprimes, assurances, information et marché, monopoles, investissements, prêts, risques…). Si le marché n’a pas pour vocation de transformer le monde en marchandises ni l’homme en esclave d’une soif matérialiste, Lessius, comme ses collègues théologiens de l’École de Salamanque, encourage néanmoins l’effort, la prudence et l’industrie, autant de vertus aptes à libérer un marché basé sur le mérite.
History of private law - contract law - moral theology - canon law - freedom of contract - justice in exchange
The Roman legal tradition is the ancestor of modern contract law but there is no agreement as to how and when a general law of contract emerged. Wim Decock’s thesis is that an important step in this evolution was taken by theologians in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They transformed the Roman legal tradition (ius commune) by insisting on the moral foundations of contract law. Theologians emphasized that the enforceability of contracts is based on voluntary consent and that a contract should not enrich one party at another's expense. While their main concern was the salvation of souls, theologians played a key role in the development of a systematic contract law in which the founding principles were freedom and fairness.
Studies of early modern scholasticism are experiencing a boom today. Legal scholars, philosopher, theologians, and economists are approaching the texts of the “Spanish late scholastics” and “Catholic natural law theorists” from their own perspectives. Both beginners and experts will find the tools in this volume for conducting independent research on the sources and cross-disciplinary insight regarding the state of research.
This translation is a selection from Lessius’ treatment of contract law in his larger work On Justice and Right. By drawing on diverse sources ranging from Roman and canon law to moral philosophy, Lessius offers practical advice in commercial and financial matters. These chapters on sale, securities, and insurance engage perennial questions concerning the lawfulness of insider trading, the sale of toxic debt, and asymmetric information in insurance markets.
This work offers an extraordinary perspective on the early modern debates about toleration and the binding force of private agreements and international treaties between people of different Christian faiths. Drawing on principles of contract law developed by jurists and theologians from the School of Salamanca, the Jesuit controversialist Martinus Becanus (1563–1624) argues in favor of the duty to honor promises beyond confessional boundaries. Although hostile to religious freedom as a matter of principle, he acknowledges that a prince may have good reasons to grant exceptions. In particular circumstances the toleration of religious diversity may not only prevent greater evil, but also advance the greater good, especially by stimulating a kind of pious competition between confessional communities. This first English translation of Becanus’s De fide haereticis servanda allows modern scholars to discover a major work of one of the most prominent advocates of a permission concept of tolerance in the early modern period.
This book explores the tensions between the religious and legal principles of Islamic finance and Islamic banking in practice. It does not limit itself to a legal discussion and presents an interdisciplinary and intercultural dialogue between lawyers, theologians, and economists with roots in academia and practice. There is considerable divergence in their evaluation of the status quo and future of Islamic finance.
Contributions cover aspects of Islamic finance in theory and practice. It provides insights into the interplay of religion, ethics and finance covering both the Islamic and Christian traditions that sets the scene for Islamic finance in practice: economic technicalities of Islamic banking services, its regulatory aspects, and the complex legal arrangements of Islamic finance in non-Muslim-majority countries.
With contributions by Martin Bünning and Aryanaz Rezaian, Mahmoud A. El-Gamal, Syed Imad-ud-Dis Asad, Amel Makhlouf, Mathias Rohe, Hans Visser and Rodney Wilson.
This volume collects papers by specialists such as Dave De Ruysscher, Martijn Punt, Stefania Gialdroni and Karsten Voss on diverse aspects of company law in a crucial stage of its formation, ranging from company law in 16th and 17th century cities such as Antwerp and Maastricht, including its Italian origins, through the English East India Company and the creation of Carribean Plantation Economies by French chartered companies in the early 18th century.
The essays collected in this volume investigate the role of the religious reform movements since the 16th century in the transformation of the Western legal tradition, focussing on one particular topic, viz. how law had to deal with the reference to conscience, a crucial concept for all confessions in the early modern period. Research on the teachings of Lutheran, Calvinist, and Roman Catholic theologians and jurists from the 16th up to the early 18th century, too often examined separately, is brought together in a comparative perspective. The essays comprise studies on legal concepts of conscience and on their implementation in the teachings in Public Law and in Canon or Ecclesiastical Law from the perspectives of theology, law, and philosophy.
Wim Decock, Jordan Ballor, Michael Germann and Laurent Waelkens collect contributions by internationally renowned experts in law, history and religion on the impact of the Reformations on law, jurisprudence and moral theology. The overall impression conveyed by the essays is that on the level of substantive doctrine (the legal teachings) there seems to be more continuity between Protestant and Catholic, or, for that matter, between medieval and early modern jurisprudence and theology than usually expected. As it is illustrated with regards to topics ranging from just war doctrine over business ethics to marriage law, at the very least there appears to have been an on-going conversation between jurists and theologians across the confessional divide. This does not prevent some contributions from highlighting that on the institutional level, for instance in university politics, radical tensions between Reformers and Counter-Reformers played a paramount role. This book also offers approaches to the relationship between Church(es) and State(s) in the early modern period and to the practical as well as doctrinal use of natural law in both Protestant and Catholic lands.
Zestig miljard euro per maand. Daarmee probeert de Europese Centrale Bank (ECB) de economie van de eurozone nieuw leven in te blazen.
Het is één van de onconventionele maatregelen van de ECB in de nasleep van de banken- en staatsschuldencrisis. Het beleid van de ECB stuit echter op steeds meer kritiek: Past dit wel binnen het traditionele juridische kader voor een eengemaakt Europees monetair beleid? Gaat de ECB haar boekje niet te buiten? Vormen de aankoopprogramma’s voor overheidsschuld geen schending van het verbod op monetaire staatsfinanciering?
Naar aanleiding van het Gauweiler-arrest van het Hof van Justitie wil dit boek een antwoord bieden op deze vragen. De crisismaatregelen van de ECB worden in hun bredere juridische en historische context geplaatst.
Charles Dumoulin (1500-1566) is undoubtedly one of the most famous jurists from early modern Europe. His Commentary on the Custom of Paris earned him a reputation as a brilliant jurist and as one of the founders of a unified French legal culture. Until the early twentieth century, French jurists considered engagement with Dumoulin’s work obligatory to get a better understanding of the sources of Napoleon’s Civil Code. Yet Dumoulin was also a man of his own age, torn apart by the growing divisions within Christianity and fascinated by the rise of nationalist interests. His hostility towards the Pope and his condemnation of abusive practices within the Roman Catholic Church meant that he became a persona non grata in Paris for a while. He was forced into exile in Switzerland and Germany, where he met Calvinist and Lutheran theologians without ever losing his uncompromising temper and sense for individual autonomy. This contribution concentrates on Dumoulin’s struggle to find a personal faith adapted both to his spiritual needs and to his concerns with the privileges of the Gallican Church and the French monarchy. It also highlights the impact of his Protestant sympathies on his ecclesiological and economic thought, particularly his call for a return to the primitive church and his acceptance of moderate interest rates as a matter of principle.
Even though the sixteenth century is commonly remembered as the golden age of Spain (el siglo de oro), poverty was a constant threat to large parts of its population. Agriculture and food reserves could not keep up with the increase in population over the century, leading to migration of innumerable poor people to the cities. Government interventions, e.g. through the regulation of grain prices, only worsened the situation. This paper investigates how Domingo de Soto (1494-1560), a learned doctor in theology, reacted to legislative solutions proposed by urban and imperial authorities to solve the social challenges resulting from the dire state of the Spanish economy. Soto’s "Deliberation on the cause of the poor" (1545) was a direct reaction against statutory regulations in cities such as Zamora, Valladolid and Salamanca that laid down public measures to deal with poverty and migration. The more specific angle from which this problem is considered in this article is the manner in which the learned doctors in theology took a critical stand towards the measures taken by the law-makers – the creators of statutory regulations (lex) – on the basis of their defence of the supremacy of the natural legal order, the ius commune and subjective rights (ius).
This chapter gives an overview of the state of the art in legal historical scholarship on the neoscholastic analysis of property, torts and contracts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Neoscholastics, especially followers of the so-called “School of Salamanca”, have been credited with laying the foundations of a principled, systematic approach to the law of property and obligations. Concrete examples illustrating the wealth of the primary source material on these topics will be drawn mainly from Leonardus Lessius’s tractate De iustitia et iure, first published in Louvain in 1605. He is generally recognized to be one of the most important representatives of neoscholastic legal thought. Standing between the medieval ius commune and the Protestant natural law tradition, neoscholastics such as Lessius played a major role in shaping modern private law doctrines.
The starting point for reflection in this contribution is the plurality of meanings attached to the Latin word fides in the late medieval and early modern legal and theological traditions. Fides can denote both the Catholic faith and the trust or confidence that promises will be kept and contracts enforced. But what happens when these two notions of fides enter into conflict, as when an agreement has been made with a heretic: can the heretical creditor enforce the promise made by the debtor? Can he count on faith in the contractual sense, even if he has lost the right faith? Traditionally, the ius commune was adduced to argue that an excommunicated or heretical creditor forfeited his rights, including the right to enforce promises. However, against the background of confessional strife and religious wars, a seminal effort was made by Catholic canon lawyers and scholastic theologians to adapt the ius commune to the new historical realities. This article will concentrate on the early seventeenth century contributions by Francisco Suárez (1548-1617) and Martin Becanus (1563-1624) to this debate. They were two major Jesuit scholastic thinkers working in Spain and the Holy Roman Empire, respectively, who transformed the traditional teachings on religious faith and contractual confidence to establish a trans-confessional doctrine of contract.
Jesuits and Jurisprudence, in R. Maryks (ed.), Jesuit Historiography Online, BrillOnline Reference Works
Legal pluralism calls into question the monopoly of the modern state on the production and the enforcement of norms. It rests on the assumption that juridical normativity and state organization can be dissociated. From an early modern historian’s perspective, such an assumption makes perfect sense, the plural nature of the legal order being the natural state of affairs in imperial spaces across the globe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This article will provide a case study of the collaborative nature of the interaction between spiritual and temporal legal orders in Spain and its overseas territories as conceived by Tomás de Mercado (ca. 1520-1575), a major theologian from the School of Salamanca. His treatise on trade and contracts (1571) contained an extended discussion of the government’s attempt to regulate the grain market by imposing a maximum price. It will be argued that Mercado’s view on the bindingness of economic regulations in conscience allowed for the internalization of the regulatory power of the nascent state. He called upon confessors to be strict enforcers of state law, considering them as fathers of the republic as much as fathers of faith. This is illustrative of the “collaborative form of legal pluralism” typical of the osmotic relationship between Church and State in the early modern Spanish empire. It contributed to the moral justification of state jurisdictions, while at the same time guaranteeing a privileged role for theologians and religious leaders in running the affairs of the state.
Debt forgiveness is at the heart of the gospel message. The Lord sent His Son to redeem the debts of the world created by Adam and Eve and that were transmitted to subsequent generations of humanity. The New Testament restored older biblical ideas of debt relief, such as the Jubilee. The Lord’s Prayer begs God to forgive the pious their debts, as
they also forgive their debtors (Mt 6:12). Yet what, if anything, does that mean for legal
practice? Is there a Christian mode of debt collection and enforcing contractual promises? Should Christian creditors refrain from exercising their rights? This paper explores the responses to these questions given by canon lawyers and moral theologians in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe, many of whom belonged to the so-called ‘School of Salamanca’. They took natural law as the ultimate measure to evaluate the lawfulness of man’s actions in the world. I conclude that these moral and legal experts were sensitive to the needs of indigent debtors, but certainly not to the point of promoting debt cancellation. They insisted upon the bindingness of contractual promises (pacta sunt servanda) and considered postponing repayment to be the most appropriate manner
to deal with insolvent debtors. Debt relief in the strict sense was viewed suspiciously, since the marketplace is subject to the dictates of justice, not charity.
From a historical point of view, canon lawyers have made a fundamental contribution to the development of legal cultures around the world. Driven by a spiritual desire to build a new legal culture on the ruins of Roman precedents but imbued with Christian values, the canonists’ regulatory appetite, especially from the age of Gregorian Reform until after the Council of Trent, has left its mark on all fields of life. Their aim was to create a legal culture sufficiently flexible to account for the complexities of life, but strict enough to avoid disturbance of peace. They wanted to advance a model legal system that could become light for the world and salt of the earth. They succeeded. Three issues on which canonists had something to say to the world will be discussed in this article: mercy and justice, mediation and litigation, and the protection of human rights.
In this contribution we will recall that the Belgian Constitution of 1831 was a leading document at the time of its adoption. The constitutional fathers, who experienced themselves the inconveniences of “enlightened despotism”, stressed the importance of solid protection of fundamental rights, especially in relation to the executive power. What they feared most, was arbitrary interferences by public authorities in the exercise of fundamental freedoms. This idea matched very well with the then very popular idea of the minimal State.
However, this discomfort, if not distrust, with public authorities was fuelled as well by the romantic idea of a “rebellious past”. In their relationship to central authorities, which were often of foreign origin, the local forces of power (e.g. the medieval Cities) enjoyed a certain degree of autonomy since late medieval times. To the extent that they were represented by the Estates, citizens were given, albeit in a very timid way, the enjoyment of some “fundamental” rights, guaranteed by medieval Charters. These texts can be seen as the local “pendants” of the Magna Carta.
This paper tackles the topic of disinheritance as a punishment against the marriage of children without their parents’ consent in the Middle Ages and in the Modern Era. According to Roman law, the father’s consent to the marriage of his children-in-power was required. In a society based on parental authority, also many medieval Italian (but also Spanish and French) cities issued statutes in order to preserve the father’s control over his children’s marriages (above all over underage daughters’ marriages). Such a perspective, however, met the opposition of canon law, since according to the laws of the Church parental consent was not necessary to enter into wedlock: marriage was also a sacrament which only concerned the decision of those who were involved. Thus a conflict between lay and church powers arose, since it was hard to coordinate different laws and their respective jurisdictions and to understand which one should prevail. Jurists had to deal with several issues, trying to find a delicate balance: they had to determine whether, in the field of marriage consent, canon law repealed Roman laws or whether lay laws could enforce penalties against those who married without parental permission, for example disinheriting them. Disinheritance was indeed the most serious patrimonial consequence provided for by secular laws against children who did not adhere to the choice of the head of the family. In this way, jurists gave an essential contribution to the solution of a complex problem in the medieval order of powers, and were pivotal to defining the line between lay and Church jurisdiction.
This paper intends to shed light on the attitude of Reformed and Counter-Reformed theologians, respectively, towards the rise of commercial capitalism in the early modern period. Particularly, the views of the Reformed theologian Wolfgang Musculus (1497–1563) will be contrasted with those of the Jesuit theologian Leonardus Lessius (1554–1623). Since those theologians did not write separate essays in which they revealed their opinion on the rise of a culture of financial investment strategies, the answer to the initial question must be obtained in an indirect way. Theologians in the sixteenth and seventeenth century, such as Musculus and Lessius, may not have produced manifests in favor of or against capitalism, but their writings on legal and moral problems abound with statements which reveal their approval or disapproval of the juridical devices and moral principles that form the legal backbone of a capitalistic economy. One such device is the triple contract (contractus triplex or contractus trinus). By means of a triple contract, which could be analyzed as a combination of a partnership (societas), an insurance (assecuratio) and a sale contract (emptio-venditio), capitalists could safely invest their money in commercial enterprises at a fixed annual profit rate. The triple contract developed into the juridical backbone of ‘commercial capitalism’ in the literal sense of the word: the investment of capital in commercial activities for the sake of making profit.
Late scholastic economic thought, just pricing, information in the market, Weber thesis, reception of Cicero
Hailed by some as a precursor of modern economic analysis, Leonardus Lessius (1554-1623) might have been in the vanguard of a paradigm shift in early modern economic thought. From his treatment of a case of conscience dealing with information and just pricing known as “The Merchant of Rhodos” emerges a stunning approval of profit-making based on cunning exploitation of a dominant knowledge position. In the present article, Lessius’ discussion of this case will be examined and set against the background of late scholastic economics. I will argue that by consistently applying a legalistic doctrine of the just price, Lessius both fulfilled and partly outgrew the scholastic paradigm in economic thought. His elaborations reflect the idea of the market as an increasingly impersonal game in which, among their peers, prudent businessmen should be allowed to gain from their clever insight into market mechanisms.
Banque islamique – finances et crédit – liberté contractuelle – interdiction du prêt à intérêt – droit religieux
Dans le contexte de la fascination de notre société pour la finance islamique, cette contribution a pour objectif de soumettre à une évaluation critique l’architecture juridique qui sous-tend la finance islamique. Peut-on réconcilier ses fondements normatifs avec les besoins réels en crédits des particuliers et des entreprises? Comment la finance islamique réussit-elle à allier une culture juridique de nature traditionnelle et religieuse, d’une part, et l’économie de marché contemporaine, d’autre part? Dans un premier temps, les sources et fondements de la finance islamique, particulièrement en matière de droit des contrats, sont examinés. On analyse ensuite les techniques juridiques qui servent à concilier norme et pratique. En guise de conclusion, les chances de survie de la finance islamique dans des sociétés modernes sont évaluées.
Numéro spécial de la Revue de droit international et de droit comparé à l'occasion de la parution du centième volume en 2023.
LECTIO is looking for a Research Manager at Postdoc level to broker a methodological paradigm shift in pre-modern intellectual history trhough the integration of Digital Humanities and Artificial Intelligence.
LECTIO, the KU Leuven Institute for the Study of the Transmission of Texts, Ideas and Images in Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, is committed to advancing the study of the intellectual heritage of pre-modern Europe. It comprises more than 150 researchers from 12 research groups within arts, law, philosophy and theology at KU Leuven.
Within the framework of its new research program "Scholars, Schools and Societies", LECTIO wants to contribute to the renewal of the history of ideas and the science of text editing through increased integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Digital Humanities (DH).
The rise of capitalism in the early modern period urged scholars to come up with a new normative framework to accommodate new commercial and financial transactions. This PhD project concentrates on the transformation of the Catholic morality and law of the marketplace prompted by these events in the Low Countries. Student notebooks featuring the teachings on law and economics by the Jesuit theologians Robert Bellarmine and Leonardus Lessius will be at the centre of this study. The PhD candidate will provide an in-depth, comparative study of the teachings of Bellarmine and Lessius on the legal framework for economic transactions. Special attention will be paid to the way in which Bellarmine and Lessius facilitated the transmission of the teachings of the School of Salamanca in the Low Countries while adapting them to local realities. At least part of the research will have to be based on the meticulous, philological analysis of hitherto unexamined and unpublished manuscript sources.
This vacancy is part of the large-scale project "Innovation through Education. Pioneering Change in Law and Theology during Leuven's Golden Age”, which will be conducted by 5 PhD students and their supervisors in the Faculties of Arts, Law and Theology. It investigates how Louvain professors in law and theology during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries adapted the content and methods of their teaching to the changing needs of society, in order to prepare the future elites for tackling the religious, political and economic challenges of their time. The source material consists of student notes that will be compared with printed material such as treatises and textbooks of the professors involved.