Debt or Sin?
The Moral Roots of European Legal and Economic Thought
Volume editor Wim Decock Volume editor Wouter Druwé
Hardback (Published)
(October 2026)
ISBN: 9783506705426
6.1 x 9.25 inches
Price: $144.00
On back order
Issues of sin and guilt are never far away when it comes to bad payers. The notion that insolvent people are fraudsters has become a commonplace. Today, it is not uncommon, especially in debates on public finance, to see economic-legal categories such as “creditors” and “debtors” pop up alongside terminology from the moral-religious sphere such as “saints” and “sinners.” In addition to an economic and legal meaning, in many languages the term employed to denote debt has religious and moral overtones, as is the case with the German word “Schuld”. Despite current tendencies by experts to reduce debt issues to technical legal and economic problems, moral connotations of debt persist in disputes about debt around the world. The articles collected in this volume show that at least part of the explanation lies in the deep, historical interconnectedness of law, religion, morality and the economy, especially in late medieval and early modern Europe.
Issues of sin and guilt are never far away when it comes to bad payers. The notion that insolvent people are fraudsters has become a commonplace. Today, it is not uncommon, especially in debates on public finance, to see economic-legal categories such as “creditors” and “debtors” pop up alongside terminology from the moral-religious sphere such as “saints” and “sinners.” In addition to an economic and legal meaning, in many languages the term employed to denote debt has religious and moral overtones, as is the case with the German word “Schuld”. Despite current tendencies by experts to reduce debt issues to technical legal and economic problems, moral connotations of debt persist in disputes about debt around the world. The articles collected in this volume show that at least part of the explanation lies in the deep, historical interconnectedness of law, religion, morality and the economy, especially in late medieval and early modern Europe.
- Volume editor Wim Decock
- Volume editor Wouter Druwé
Other Titles in this Series
Shaping Canon Law in an Age of Reform
Petrus Peckius on Church Reparation and Clerical Discipline
Volume 8
“The Slave is a Human Person”
Fernão Pérez’s "De restitutione" and the Debate on Slavery in Early Modern Portugal
Volume 6
Recht und Gerechtigkeit
Philosophisch-theologische Grundlagen der westlichen Rechtstradition
Volume 2
Similar Books
‘For You I Study, For You I Work, For You I Live, For You I Am Ready To Even Give My Life’
Essays in Honour of Francis (Frank) J Moloney, SDB
A Connecting Polemic in the Medieval Mediterranean
The Correspondence of Leo III and ʿUmar II
Volume 6
Ars Prophetica
Theology in the Poetry of Twentieth-Century Hebrew Poets Avraham Halfi, Shin Shalom, Amir Gilboa, and T. Carmi
As Messianism Turns to Heresy
The Regenstein Chair Lectures On Lurianic Kabbalah and Shabbatai Tzevi at Hebrew Union College - Cincinnati
Creating the Woman in Antiquity
Proceedings of the 16th Melammu Workshop, Innsbruck, 2–3 June 2022
Volume 13
Drunk the Potion, No Whit Charmed
The Doctrine of Pure and Perfect Souls from Iamblichus to Damascius
Extracanonical Traditions and the Holy Land
Texts, Rituals, and Material Culture in Late Antique Palestine
Fear, Fear of God, God-Fearers
Philological and Historical Perspectives on the World of Ancient Judaism and Christianity
Legal Visuality
Exegesis, Ambiguity, and Dissimulation of the Donation of Constantine in the Early Modern Period
Liturgia semper reformanda
Adaptations and accommodations in the liturgy in light of canon 838 of the Code of Canon Law
