Economic Thought and Economic Life in Byzantium

Angeliki E. Laiou (1941 - 2008) was Dumbarton Oaks Professor of Byzantine History at Harvard University, USA.

• Contents: Preface; Introduction, Cécile Morrisson; Part I Economic Thought: God and Mammon: credit, trade, profit and the canonists; The Church, economic thought and economic practice; Social justice: exchange and prosperity in Byzantium; Nummus parit nummos: l’usurier, le jurist at le philosophe à Byzance; Economic concerns and attitudes of the intellectuals of Thessalonike; Le débat sur les droits du fisc et les droits régaliens au début du 14e siècle. Part II Economic Life: On individuals, aggregates and mute social groups; Priests and bishops in the Byzantine countryside, 13th-14th centuries; The peasant as donor (13th-14th centuries); A history of mills and monks: the case of the mill of Chantax (with Dieter Simon); The Byzantine village (5th-14th century); The Byzantine city: parasitic or productive?; Index.

'Reading these studies, most for the second time, reminded me of the clarity and precision of Laiou’s thought and writing style. Yes, there is some repetition here and some unevenness, but overall the collection does lay out most of the major problems that face contemporary studies of the Byzantine economy.' Speculum