American Buddhist Net

IF THERE’S ONE element of my book How To Be Free that the scoffers really rounded on, it was the positive light I threw on various medieval institutions and approaches to life. To see anything good in the Middle Ages contradicts our neophyte conditioning. But the medievals really did have some excellent ideas. Community rather than individuality was at the heart of the medieval approach to things. For example, Florence and the city states called themselves communes, and governed themselves with a revolving panel of guild master craftsmen.

Well, the medieval approach to economics is particularly interesting given what is happening in the financial world right now, because it specifically banned usury, that is, the lending of money at interest. Usury was reserved for the lowest of the low. It was not the done thing. The medieval society had taken to heart Biblical injunctions against usury and also the example of Jesus turning over the tables of the money-changers.

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