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The picture is horrifying, and one must be grateful to those, like M. Luchaire and Mr. Coulton, who demolish romance. But the denunciation of vices implies that they are recognized as vicious; to ignore their condemnation is not less one-sided than to conceal their existence; and, when the halo has vanished from practice, it remains to ask what THE MEDIEVAL BACKGROUND 34 men valued, and what standards they erected. The economic doctrines elaborated in the Summac of the principles Schoolmen, in which that question receives its most systematic answer, have not infrequently been dismissed as the fanciful extravagances of writers disqualified from throwing light on the affairs of this world by their morbid preoccupation with those of the next.

For to defend the property of the peasant and small master is necessarily to attack that of the monopolist and usurer, which of to fifteenth-century grows by devouring it. The assumption on which all this body of doctrine rested simple. It was that the danger of economic interests increased in direct proportion to the prominence of the pecuniary motives associated with them. Labor the common lot of mankind is necessary and honorable trade is neces- was ; sary, but perilous to the soul; finance, best sordid and at worst disreputable.

Antonino, who wrote with a highly developed commercial civilization beneath his eyes, endeavored to effect a synthesis, in which the principle of the traditional doctrine should be observed, while the necessary play should be left to economic motives After a subtle analysis of the conditions affecting value, he concluded that the fairness of a price could at best be a matter only of "probability and conjecture," since it would vary with places, periods and persons. His practical contribution was to introduce a new elasticity into the whole conception by distinguishing three grades of prices a gradus plus, discretus, and rigidus.