Your Money or Your Life: Economy and Religion in the Middle Ages

By Jacques Le Goff

Book Overview

In this book, one of the most esteemed contemporary historians of the Middle Ages presents a concise examination of the problem that usury posed for the medieval Church, which had long denounced the lending of money for interest. Jacques Le Goff describes how, as the structure of economic life inevitably began to include financial loans, the Church refashioned its ideology in order to condemn the usurer not to hell but merely to purgatory. Le Goff is in the forefront of a history that studies "the deeply rooted and the slowly changing." As one keenly aware of the inertia of older societies, he is all the more able to delineate for us the disruptive forces of change.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0942299159
• ISBN13: 9780942299151
• Release Date: January 1990
• Publisher: Zone Books
• Length: 120 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.0" x 9.0"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Usury at its core

I purchased this book for a class on medieval cathedral architect for my second year college studies. My professor had us read this book over the weekend as prep for our final test. It's a very easy digestible book in terms of language, though one may need to look up and infer certain terminologies used in medieval times as Le Goff references them in his book. This book details the medieval history and treatment of usurers and their impact and relationship to the medieval economy. Usury is the lending of money at interest. Le Goff details the religious implications of practicing usury and how usurers were an "evil necessity," as placated by the Christian Church. Usurers, in the kindest words of the Church, had their own place in hell. This was due to how usurers violated several Christian mortal sins by charging interest for lending money. According to the Church, they made money by selling God's resource - time. In comparison to other workers, usurers made money even when they were asleep and were compared to as oxes, lions, and other foul comparisons in terms of how they survived. Le Goff also goes into slight detail on how the Church turned a blind eye towards the usurers and even gives them respite for their sins if they confessed and returned the money they "stole." However, a good chunk of this book is spent in detailing how vilified usurers were at that time and that they played a significant role in the birth of capitalism. This book was a short and informational read and I applaud the Le Goff for doing all the research for this book.