E-text prepared by David Clarke, Martin Pettit, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net/) from page images generously made available by Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries (http://www.archive.org/details/toronto) Note: Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries. See http://www.archive.org/details/mediaevalsocial00jarruoft MEDIAEVAL SOCIALISM by BEDE JARRETT, O.P., M.A. [Illustration: Logo] London: T. C. & E. C. Jack 67 Long Acre, W.C., and Edinburgh New York: Dodge Publishing Co. CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE I. INTRODUCTION 5 II. SOCIAL CONDITIONS 17 III. THE COMMUNISTS 29 IV. THE SCHOOLMEN 41 V. THE LAWYERS 55 VI. THE SOCIAL REFORMERS 68 VII. THE THEORY OF ALMS-GIVING 80 BIBLIOGRAPHY 91 INDEX 93 MEDIAEVAL SOCIALISM CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION The title of this book may not unnaturally provoke suspicion. After all, howsoever we define it, socialism is a modern thing, and dependent almost wholly on modern conditions. It is an economic theory which has been evolved under pressure of circumstances which are admittedly of no very long standing. How then, it may be asked, is it possible to find any real correspondence between theories of old time and those which have grown out of present-day conditions of life? Surely whatever analogy may be drawn between them must be based on likenesses which cannot be more than superficial.