The Theology of Debt in Late Medieval English Literature

Exploring debt's permutations in Middle English texts, Anne Schuurman makes the bold claim that the capitalist spirit has its roots in Christian penitential theology. Her argument challenges the longstanding belief that faith and theological doctrine in the Middle Ages were inimical to the development of market economies, showing that the same idea of debt is in fact intrinsic to both. The double penitential-financial meaning of debt, and the spiritual paradoxes it creates, is a linchpin of scholastic and vernacular theology, and of the imaginative literature of late medieval England. Focusing on the doubleness of debt, this book traces the dynamic by which the Christian ascetic ideal, in its rejection of material profit and wealth acquisition, ends up producing precisely what it condemns. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.

• Redefines the terms in which the economic, the literary, and the theological relate as categories of medieval thought and culture
• Traces the roots of commercialism in the penitential theology that pervaded the late medieval cultural imagination, resolving apparent contradictions between medieval religious teaching and economic practice
• Challenges recent economic criticism, showing that literary models for faith in the market and money pre-date the modern novel by several centuries, as does the economic imaginary in which unpayable and infinitely reproducible debts promise future profit and salvation