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Economy and Confession: The Business Practices of Augsburg Merchant Companies in the Reformation Era

Économie et confession : les pratiques commerciales des compagnies marchandes d’Augsbourg à l’ère de la Réforme
Mark Häberlein
p. 627-646

Abstracts

The essay examines how the coming of the Protestant Reformation affected the business strategies and economic practices of south German merchant companies – especially those firms that rendered important commercial and financial services to the Roman Church. Apart from the Fugger Company, whose activities in Rome have been studied in detail by Aloys Schulte and Götz von Pölnitz, this theme is especially relevant for the Welser Company of Augsburg, which regularly handled business transactions with the curia as well as with individual clergymen. Based on newly discovered sources, the article develops a comparative perspective on the changing commercial and financial practices of the pre-eminent south German mercantile companies of the Reformation era regarding their relations with the church.

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Text / excerpt

Outline

Introduction
The Fuggers and the Roman Curia
The Welser Company and the Roman Church
Conclusions

Text / first lines

Introduction

It is well known that the Wittenberg theologian and Church reformer Martin Luther (1483–1546) and the pre-eminent businessman of his time, the Augsburg merchant-banker Jakob Fugger (1459–1525), were not particularly fond of each other. In his address « To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation », published in 1520, Luther took up the cause of the so-called anti-monopoly movement, which argued for legal restrictions on the activities of large mercantile companies at the imperial diets of the early sixteenth century. The reformer doubted that the companies’ profits could possibly be gained by honest means, and he therefore demanded that « a bridle be put into the mouth of the Fuggers and others of their kind ».

Four years later, Luther’s tract « On Commerce and Usury » stipulated clear limits to money-lending at interest and bemoaned the flow of bullion out of the Holy Roman Empire for the purchase of Indian spices and other luxury goods. For the Wittenberg theologian,...

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References

Bibliographical reference

Mark Häberlein, “Economy and Confession: The Business Practices of Augsburg Merchant Companies in the Reformation Era”Revue de l’histoire des religions, 4 | 2020, 627-646.

Electronic reference

Mark Häberlein, “Economy and Confession: The Business Practices of Augsburg Merchant Companies in the Reformation Era”Revue de l’histoire des religions [Online], 4 | 2020, Online since 01 January 2025, connection on 19 April 2024. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/rhr/10892; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/rhr.10892

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About the author

Mark Häberlein

University of Bamberg
mark.haeberlein[at]uni-bamberg.de

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Copyright

The text and other elements (illustrations, imported files) are “All rights reserved”, unless otherwise stated.

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