Quotable: Reformation Economics

Martin Luther, renowned father of Protestantism, in An Open Letter to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation (1520), quoted in George W. Forell, Faith Active in Love (1954):

"We must put a bit in the mouth of the Fuggers* and similar corporations. How is it possible that in the lifetime of a single man** such great possessions, worthy of a king, can be piled up, and yet everything be done legally and according to God's will? I am not a mathematician, but I do not understand how a man with a hundred gulden can make a profit of twenty gulden in one year, nay, how with one gulden he can make another; and that, too, by another way than agriculture or cattle-raising, in which increase of wealth depends not on human wits, but on God's blessing."

"This I know well, that it would be much more pleasing to God if we increased agriculture and diminished commerce."

Who knew Luther was an Agrarian? I like him better the more I learn. Too bad this stuff doesn't make it into Sunday School curriculum more often. The American church*** couldn't possibly be more interested in civic indoctrination than in historical veracity, could it?

And who knew that corrupt popes and medieval mob families spawned capitalism centuries before Adam Smith came along? Funny how that never came up in high school Social Studies, college History, or graduate school Economics classes. So much for modern Western society having objective, accurate, and rational explanations for the causes and origins of everything. Mythology is not dead after all.

*16th century Italian banking establishment employed by the Vatican to facilitate the sale of indulgences. During this era, the papacy "sometimes used the threat of excommunication to compel men to pay the usurious interests demanded by Italian moneylenders." - Forell
**Please excuse Luther's gender-exclusive language.
***Double entendre intended.