Pouvait-on oublier une dette ? Endettement, lien social et structures économiques à la fin du Moyen Âge

Abstract

Asking the question of the possibility of forgetting a debt, modifying or even erasing the bond between creditor and debtor, leads to presenting medieval credit in its specificity. This analysis, based on the analysis of notarial and judicial series, considers the structural aspects of the financial economy, thus emphasizing the characteristics specific to the economy of the medieval West (12th-15th Centuries). The debt–the debtor’s point of view–is confronted with its debt, the debt–the lender’s point of view. The opposition between two distinct spheres, that of generosities and that of the interest loan, which would aim to obtain profits, proves not to be binary, just as feudalism does not exclude practices falling under capitalism. Before being an economic mechanism, credit is a social system that creates links through management that plays the structuring tension between memory and forgetfulness.

Keywords

• debt
• debt novation
• James of Aragon
• fides
• Jew
• profit