INTRODUCTION: DEFINITIONS AND PROBLEMS

‘Since all things are common by God's law and by law of nature, how may any man be lord of anything more than another?’ mused Dives, the rich man, in the early fifteenth-century treatise Dives and Pauper. The question was not a new one, and this chapter will examine various answers which were suggested, either by groups or individuals, to the disagreement between divine-natural law and human law. By the law of God and nature all things were given to everyone in common; by human law things were owned individually and divided unequally. Was it possible to reconcile these two extreme positions – to find a mean between them? Some solutions to be examined here were purely theoretical; others, from late medieval England, were both theoretical and practical. Before investigating them, however, property, the origin and basis of all economic life and attitudes, needs to be defined.

Property can be seen as the means to sustain life and as something to be enjoyed and shared. It can also be seen as the object of human greed, and its possession as a title to riches and to power over others. Medieval thinkers considered that both property and the subjection of one person to another were the result of sin. In Paradise there was no private property, for everything was held in common, and the fruits of the earth were naturally shared.