Abstract
This paper discusses The Merchant of Venice from an economic and Biblical perspective in an attempt to corroborate the view that the work epitomizes the spirit of the early capitalism of Shakespeare’s London. The main goal of the paper is to enrich mainstream interpretation by showing different, and more complex faces of the main characters of the play. Starting with the debate on usury in the late Middle Ages, the paper argues that the main ethical message conveyed by The Merchant of Venice is a criticism of the hypocrisy of the spirit of emerging capitalism at the time. Furthermore, the paper claims that in order to understand the core of this masterpiece, its Biblical references must be explored and reconsidered, as accurate interpretation of their context may shed new light on the play and on Shakespeare’s general view of proto-capitalism.
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Notes
Cf. Shatzmiller (1990).
As far as the Biblical references in The Merchant are concerned, cf. Ephraim (2005).
In this scenario, the Florentine merchants of the fourteenth century would never have called usuraio a loan (or a ‘letter of exchange’, or a contract of commenda) at an annual rate of 5 or even 10%. They were aware that there were good and bad bankers in the arena of medieval finance. This was the concrete life of flesh-and-blood merchants, who operated and lived among things good and bad, facing the ambiguity of economic and social life everyday.
The word ‘banker’ comes from moneylenders owning a banco or bench in Italian, then bank in English.
In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Venice boasted more than a hundred banks, led by both Christians and Jews, whereas Florence stuck to seventy; Naples relied on forty “credit institutions”, and Palermo counted fourteen. Cf. Cusumano (1892).
The Middle-Age hypothesis was that time belongs to God. The usurer was considered one who trades time, resulting in profit from a good that is not really his in the first place. This was one of the oldest arguments against interest-bearing loans. In this divine nature of time, however, there is something else important in how the birth of capitalism is understood: the usurer acts against the universal natural law because time is a common good of all creatures. That was the influential thesis of Summa Aurea by William of Auxerre (1160–1229). It was considered a common good, and as such, it could not be traded for profit (because doing so would be a private appropriation of a common good). Hence, time was both a divine good and a global common good. Cf. Langholm (1992), in particular chapter 3.
The Decrutum Gratianii is a twelfth-century code, an important collection of canonical norms and conventions.
At the end of the period of the Roman Republic, the legal interest rate was set at around 12%, and it remained so until the sixth century when it was lowered (due basically to a long period of socio-economic depression). The twelfth-century lay school of law itself in Bologna, the one where Irnerius and Bulgarus were academics among the others, had a secular attitude toward borrowing and interest; essentially they legitimized it, in part because they based their inferences on consolidated Roman law theories. Cf. Nuccio (1988).
Beginning in the mid-fifteenth century, Franciscans (minors) founded hundreds of pawn shops by imitating Jewish pledge credit; these were the so-called Monti di Pietà: cf. Bruni (2022, chapter 2). Interesting to note that in 1515, Pope Leo X (bolla Inter multiplices) allowed interest loans from the Monti di Pietà (5%), run mainly by Franciscans.
“A Jew might legitimately lend to a Christian, though not to another Jew”: Ferguson (2008, p. 36).
Cf. Romani (2013).
Juxtaposed against anti-mercantilism, however, anti-Semitism, typical of the ancien régime, engendered very ‘bad press’ against Jews and their banks and financial activities. It is true that pledging was a way to reduce the risk of trust; pledges depended on the fluctuation of markets, however; they could not always be liquidated, and an unreturned loan resulted in diminishing liquidity in any case, in a world where money was already tight. Then, alongside the few official banks, quasi-bankers or informal lenders (including pinchers, apothecaries, and butchers) developed; the latter pursued an additional goal—to lend objects to be used as pledges with which to borrow from banks in very sophisticated secondary and tertiary markets.
On this cf. Dini (1999).
F. Trivellato (2019, p. 76).
Kaye (2014) contains chapters on Christian credit and interest-bearing lending, as also writes (Le Goff, 1986). An Italian book that makes it very clear how Christian moneylenders could not only be admitted to the city but also make a brilliant political career is Giansante (2008). Essential are the works of Giacomo Todeschini (2011a, 2011b, 2019).
According to the same line of reasoning, it was shown that paying an insurance premium for maritime endeavors (foedus nauticus) or to those who lent capital for a long commercial mission in the East was a far cry from the very different, and in fact very bad, practice of taking usury money from a bank. In its essence, the usury part is not the actual material sum of money paid as interest because sometimes that money was simply a necessary and good collateral component of a business operation.
If the merchant Ser Lapo lends 1000 florins to Ser Duccio and thus renounces the possibility of using those deniers for a bargain, it is morally permissible for Duccio to compensate Lapo with interest for the gain that his colleague had foregone because of his loan.
This was so much the case that merchants were counted among the pauperes in some medieval cities, although they were not indigent because they were radically dependent on liquid assets and on the uncertainty and alea of contracts and markets.
Among others, reference shall be made to Agostino Chigi, the principal banker of the popes in Renaissance Rome. The reason for this is that, not least, a business person needed to collect in advance a lot of money to lend before becoming a banker in proto-capitalism. This huge amount of cash was generally the outcome of successful mercantile activity. However, “Bardi, Peruzzi and Acciaiuoli were all wiped out in 1340 as a result of defaults by their principal clients, King Edward III of England and King Robert of Naples” (Ferguson, 2008, p. 42).
And so it is not surprising to read in the accounting books (‘Libro della ragione’): “We Francescho del Bene and companions on the day of August 1319 forgave Duccio Giunte and Geri di Monna Mante, mayors of the Art, and all those of the Art who had merit from us; and the above mentioned mayors forgave us”—“Noi Francescho del Bene e compagni a dì d'agosto del 1319 perdonammo a Duccio Giunte e a Geri d i Monna Mante, sindachi dell'Arte, a tutti quelli de l'Arte ch'avessero avuto da noi merito; e i suddetti sindachi perdonarono a noi”, in Sapori (1941, p. 119).
A possible implicit reference to (Antonio’s) homosexuality has been mentioned by many commentators.
The pound of flesh from a failing Christian debtor is a reversal of the actual situation. According to Graeber, Jews were the ones who were often mutilated for unpaid debts, not Christians: “Stories about the extraction of Jewish teeth, skin, and intestines are important to bear in mind when thinking about Shakespeare’s imaginary Merchant of Venice demanding his ‘pound of flesh’” (2012, p. 394).
The quotes from The Merchant of Venice are from Moelwyn Merchant (1967), based on in-quarto printed in 1600.
For a recent study among many, see Eyre (2022).
Incidentally, this episode of the Genesis is where the word, ‘salary,’ first appears in the Bible.
Here is the full text: “Then Jacob took fresh rods of poplar and almond and plane, and peeled white streaks in them, exposing the white of the rods. He set the rods that he had peeled in front of the flocks in the troughs, that is, the watering places, where the flocks came to drink. And since they bred when they came to drink, the flocks bred in front of the rods, and so the flocks produced young that were striped, speckled, and spotted. Jacob separated the lambs, and set the faces of the flocks toward the striped and the completely black animals in the flock of Laban; and he put his own droves apart, and did not put them with Laban’s flock. Whenever the stronger of the flock were breeding, Jacob laid the rods in the troughs before the eyes of the flock, that they might breed among the rods, but for the feebler of the flock he did not lay them there; so the feebler were Laban’s, and the stronger Jacob’s. Thus the man grew exceedingly rich, and had large flocks, and male and female slaves, and camels and donkeys” (Gen 30:37–43).
Berni 1552. A similar thesis can be found in Il debitore felice (end of XVI cent., by Muzio Petroni), reprinted in Barbieri (2013, pp. 193–198).
As clearly shown by the historian Todeschini (2011a, 2011b), in the late Middle Ages, money-making activities (both commercial and financial) were held to be ‘like Judas’ who sold Jesus for 30 dinari. On the other hand, the reference to Mary Magdalene, who wasted 300 dinari of perfumed oil to worship the Lord, created a medieval economic ethics that approved public spending for magnificentia (churches, public palaces, etc.), even with public debt. The character of Bassanio is an expression of this praise for spending (borrowed money).
On this cf. Fanfani (1984).
Cf. f.i. Art. 1346 of Italian Civil Code.
cf. The Digest, 9.II.13.
This rule did not apply to slaves, who were likened to objects, and as such were bought, sold, and often killed by their owners (with or without just cause). What if Shakespeare meant to say that insolvent debtors were the new slaves of new capitalism, among his many implicit messages?
Martin Luther used the word ‘beruf’, which meant both work and vocation in German.
A proverb quoted by Roger Ascham, Queen Elizabeth’s tutor: see https://books.openedition.org/pup/8703?lang=it.
On the Book of Daniel cf. also Bruni (2023).
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The author thanks Paolo Santori and the anonymous referee who offered suggestions and amendments resulting in substantial improvement, reflected in the final version of the paper. Thanks also to Bill Neu and Pierre de Gioia Carabellese for precious help in the linguistic revisions.
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Bruni, L. At the Roots of Business Ethics: A New Reading of the Merchant of Venice. J Bus Ethics (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-023-05607-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-023-05607-6