The Grammar of Profit: The Price Revolution in Intellectual Context (Brill's Studies in Intellectual History) (Brill's Studies in Intellectual History)

This study explores the relationship between the prevailing concept of \'just profit\' and contemporary reactions to the Sixteenth-Century Price Revolution by tracing the evolving meaning of \'profit\' in religious, political, and social discourse. Using the period's own macrocosmic-microcosmic analogy, the book examines family correspondence, wills, and court cases in addition to formal tracts to move outward from issues of spiritual profit to family values, employment relationships, and church and state. While England's experience provides a focal point, extensive use of continental sources reveals the problem's broader context. This study should prove particularly useful to those wishing to knit together the now particularized and separated strands of early modern economic, political, social, and religious history ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Chapter One. PROFIT AND THE PRICE REVOLUTION Chapter Two. BODY, MIND, AND SOUL Chapter Three. FAMILY VALUES Chapter Four. MASTER AND SERVANT Chapter Five. THE BODY OF PROFIT Chapter Six. PROFIT AND DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE I: THE SINS OF THE BODY Chapter Seven. PROFIT AND DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE II: THE SINS OF THE MONARCH Chapter Eight. PROFIT AND COMMUTATIVE JUSTICE Chapter Nine. THE MODERN PROBLEM OF PROFIT: A PARADOX BY WAY OF A DIGRESSION Chapter Ten. CONCLUSION: THE GRAMMAR OF PROFIT IN AN AGE OF REVOLUTIONS BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX "This study explores the relationship between the prevailing concept of "just profit" and contemporary reactions to the Sixteenth-Century Price Revolution by tracing the evolving meaning of "profit" in religious, political, and social discourse. Using the period's own macrocosmic-microcosmic analogy, the book examines family correspondence, wills, and court cases in addition to formal tracts to move outward from issues of spiritual profit to family values, employment relationships, and church and state."--Jacket