The Transformation Of The Rome Catholic Economic Ethics In The Middle Ages

In 476, the Western Roman Empire disappeared on the stage of the world history, and the western European society entered into a newly historical period. The refulgence of Roman Empire was supplanted by the ruin of this land. The Western Europe was taken into the feudal society which based on the principle of land, by the nomadic Germanic nations. The Roman Catholic Church combined with the feudal secular society step by step, and formed the unique theocracy of the western Europe in the Middle Ages. The Roman Catholic Church controlled the ideology of the people in the western European feudal society, whose authority was not only once superior to the kingship in the political fields, but also played an important role in the economic development. The religious ideology indoctrinated to the western people, particularly, the economic ethics, formed the precondition of the personal economic behaviors.In the later Medieval period, the Catholic economic ethics transformed due to the impact of the secular social changes. The Roman Catholic Church inherited classic doctrine of the primitive Christianity and adhered the Testament, especially in the economic sphere, both theologians and canon jurists held the traditional ideas of the early Christianity which were negative to the concepts of the property rights, monetary, trade, usury and interest in the secular society. However, the economic structure of the western European feudal society had a fundamental change after the 11th and 12th centuries, which greatly influenced on the Roman Catholic Church, and the theologians attached importance to the functions of the Catholic ideology in the economic sphere. Then, the Catholic economic ethics started the transformation. In the first chapter, I will discuss the Catholic economic ethics from the aspects of property rights, monetary, trade and usury and interest.The second chapter will discuss the reasons that caused the transformation of the Catholic economic ethics. I think that the social environment factors mainly effected in the process of the transformation, particularly, including the economy, the social structure, and the politics. In addition, it was the economic factor that played a role in the transformation.The third chapter will be divided into three sections, which will discuss the influence of the transformation of the economic ethics. Firstly, the most obvious change in the doctrines was traditional labor concepts of the Christian. Although the early Christian believed that only when one did the physical labor, can he approach God, the theologians changed the concepts in the later medieval times, who believed that both physical work and brainwork would make God pleased. Secondly, the transformation of the Catholic economic ethics also developed the concepts of justice, which not only had an effect on the politics but also greatly influenced the economy. Finally, in the process of transformation of the catholic economic ethics, the changes of the ideas of property rights, monetary, trade and usury and interest impelled the development of the Italian economy in the Middle Ages. Meanwhile, the moral concepts conflicted with the new economic ethic concepts in the church, which ultimately resulted in the recession of the Italian economy and the transformation of the Florentine merchant class.