Debt or Sin?

The Moral Roots of European Legal and Economic Thought
2026
ISBN: 978-3-506-70542-6
Verlag: Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh

Buch, Englisch, Band 9, 392 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 235 mm

Reihe: Law and Religion in the Early Modern Period / Recht und Religion in der Frühen Neuzeit

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 the medieval and early modern European tradition.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Weitere Mitwirkende

Decock, Wim

Druwé, Wouter

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein Religionsgeschichte

Über Autor(innen)

Wim Decock is Professor of Roman Law and Legal History at UCLouvain and ULiège. Previously, he held a research professorship at the Faculty of Law and Criminology at KULeuven.
Wouter Druwé is Professor of Roman Law and Legal History at KULeuven. He studies the interaction between late medieval and early modern learned law and legal practice, with a particular focus on the Low Countries.