PLATEA, Franciscus de.

£15,000 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Opus restitutionum, usurarum et excommunicationum; Early edition of one of the first printed books on an economic subject, a vigorous condemnation of usury by the Franciscan theologian Franciscus de Platea (died c.1460). The work was first published in Venice in 1472. The Padua edition, also of 1472, is the earliest book in the vast Goldsmiths' catalogue of economic literature."The Opus enjoyed a large diffusion in Europe at the time; eight subsequent editions [following the first] appeared in the fifteenth century. The treatise was reprinted, without substantial changes, in Padua (about 1472 - the Goldsmiths' copy - and 1473), Venice and Cologne (1474), Cracow (1475), Paris (1476 and 1477), Venice (1477) [this edition] and finally Speyer (1489)" (Books that Made Europe)."A long-standing tradition from the Old Testament and beyond had considered trading with suspicion and money lending as a sin. Usury was either against the Mosaic Law or the Seventh Commandment... In the early modern age, money lending became a central question in the economic debate of the time; the topic pervaded the entire economic reflection of the Scholastics and its practice was mostly associated to Jewish ghettos, evil and ambiguous enclaves and places within the Christian society... Platea is firm in his absolute condemnation according to biblical and natural law: usury is an infamous sin, and the usurers - as he declares in the third and last section of his work - must be excommunicated" (Books that

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