Middle Ages Economics as a product of moral and political dogma rather than economic thinking

The middle ages covered a period of about
one thousand years. Although scholars tend
to disagree on the exact dates it’s believed to
have extended from the fall of the romans in
AD 476 to about 1500. A lot of scholars have
come to believe that economic thinking in the
Middle Ages was highly dominated by moral
and political dogma rather than economic
thinking. This they said because of the so
many doctrinal backgrounds upon which this
particular school of thought and its disciples
advocated. Discussing the reason for this
believes we shall be focusing our discussion
on Thomas Aquinas a major intellectual of
this school of thought. He personally made
contributions to just price with respect to
selling and buying, profit making and loans.
Aquinas particularly said all goods must be
sold at just price; a price defined as sufficient
to maintain the seller at his customary
standard of living. he also spoke of wages
basing his argument on the Christian
principle that states a labourer as being
worthy of his labour but the wage must also
be the just wage which is simply the wage
that can keep the worker healthy to maintain
his standard of living and level of contribution
to production.
This school of thought chaired by Aquinas
saw poverty as a catalyst for sin and crimes,
at such it’s obvious that they were
maintaining peace and order in that era
based on religious a dogma that anyone who
commits sin was heading to hell. People
coexisted purely with the church
administration because they were given a
reason to live which was the end of times i.e
making it to heaven and not hell. These
religious doctrines guided all their actions in
this era.
In buying and selling for instance it was
believed that bargaining may tend to the
advantage of one party which may result to
the disadvantage of the other part. This
singular act was regarded as an abnormality
in divine law. Its reckoned unlawful if the
equality of justice is not observed in buying
and selling as its stated that he who had
received more than he ought to must
compensate the person that suffers the loss.
This just price ideology was actually
problematic as a little addition or
substitution will bring about deviation. Laws
like making restitutions were made and
strictly followed in this era so a deviation
from the supposed just price does not only
render a person guilty of fraudulent sales, it
also meant the person must make restitution.
Profit making was also controversial in this
era as it was regarded as a means for
satisfying the human greed which was
discovered to have no limit and at such tends
to infinity. Any trade that brought about
exchange of money for money or any good
sold for money but are not regarded as a
necessity of life was regarded evil. This meant
a seller luxury goods for instance sinning
against the divine laws.
Loan issues were not left out as the
discussed the sin of usury. Usury is a
religious term used when loans are given out
on interest. Just as we have earlier pointed
out money was invented for the purpose of
exchange and not for making more money
according to this school of thought so
interest on loans was seeing as unlawful.
All this issues discussed above were certainly
being discussed from a constrained
circumstance of religious dogma and political
autocracy as the church was the governing
body of all forms of trade in that era. The
church being so wealthy was able to
implement their own laws on the national
economy. The result of these result of this far
reaching thought led to the development of a
new economic order.