Early church writing on usury is rampant, but does anyone know anything about the writings of the early church fathers on monetary issues and money supply? Rome apparently demonetized silver in 360 A.D., and I'm particularly interested in church reactions to or anticipations of that decision.
As a primer see _Money in Classical Antiquity_.
ReplyDeleteIn the least twenty years that has been a general reassessment of "the economy" in antiquity; the effort to create a sharp divide between the classical world and the modern has been somewhat overturned. We would be more familiar with Athen's banking system during the time of Pericles than has generally been acknowledged. Though the Athenian state did do stupid things; like dispersing large amounts of gold and silver from the Thracian mines to the free population - thus assuming that wealth equaled how much precious metal you have on hand. It also lead to some pretty nasty inflation.
ReplyDeleteMaybe you'll find something here: http://mises.org/books/fortycenturies.pdf
ReplyDeleteI'll look through Huerta de Soto's book later.