Religion and the Rise of Capitalism

was plenty of the “capitalist spirit” in fifteenth-century Venice and Florence, or in south Germany and Flanders, for the simple reason that these areas were the greatest commercial and financial centers of the age, though all were, at least nominally, Catholic. The development of capitalism in Holland and England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was due, not to the fact that they were Protestant powers, but to large economic movements, in particular the Discoveries and the results which flowed from them. Of course material and psychological changes went together, and of course the second reacted on the first. But it seems a little artificial to talk as though capitalist enterprise could not appear till religious changes had produced a capitalist spirit. It would be equally true, and equally one-sided, to say that the religious changes were purely the result of economic movements.

(ii) Weber ignores, or at least touches too lightly on, intellectual movements, which were favorable to the growth of business enterprise and to an individualist attitude towards economic relations, but which had little to do with religion. The political thought of the Renaissance was one; as Brentano points out, Machiavelli was at least as powerful a solvent of traditional ethical restraints as Calvin. The speculations of business men and economists on money, prices and the foreign exchanges were a second. Both contributed to the temper of single-minded concentration on pecuniary gain, which Weber understands by the capitalist spirit.

(iii) He appears greatly to oversimplify Calvinism itself. In the first place, he apparently ascribes to the English Puritans of the seventeenth century the conception of social ethics held by Calvin and his immediate followers. In the second place, he speaks as though all English Puritans in the seventeenth century held much the same view of social duties and expediency. Both suggestions are misleading. On the one hand, the Calvinists of the sixteenth century (including English Puritans) were believers in a rigorous discipline, and the individualism ascribed not unjustly to the Puritan movement in its later phases would have horrified them. The really significant question is that of the causes of the change from the one standpoint to the other, a question which Weber appears to ignore. On the other hand, there were within seventeenth-century Puritanism a variety of elements, which held widely different views as to social policy. As Cromwell discovered, there was no formula which would gather Puritan aristocrats and Levellers, landowners and Diggers, merchants and artisans, buff-coat and his general, into the fold of a single social theory. The issue between divergent doctrines was fought out within the Puritan movement itself. Some won; others lost.

Both “the capitalist spirit” and “Protestant ethics,” therefore, were a good deal more complex than Weber seems to imply. What is true and valuable in his essay is his insistence that the commercial classes in seventeenth-century England were the standard-bearers of a particular conception of social expediency, which was markedly different from that of the more conservative elements in society⁠—the peasants, the craftsmen, and many landed gentry⁠—and that that conception found expression in religion, in politics, and, not least, in social and economic conduct and policy. ↩

Cunningham, The Moral Witness of the Church on the Investment of Money and the Use of Wealth, 1909, p. 25. ↩

Knox, The Buke of Discipline, in Works, ed. D. Laing, vol. II, 1848, pp. 183 seqq.; Thos. Cartwright, A Directory of Church Government (printed in D. Neal, History of the Puritans, 1822, vol. V, Appx. IV); W. Travers, A Full and Plain Declaration of Ecclesiastical Discipline, 1574; J. Udall, A Demonstration of the Trueth of That Discipline Which Christe Hath Prescribed in His Worde for the Government of His Church, 1589; Bancroft, Dangerous Positions and Proceedings Published and Practised Within This Iland of Brytaine Under Pretence of Reformation and for the Presbyteriall Discipline, 1593 (part reprinted in R. G. Usher, The Presbyterian Movement in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, as Illustrated by the Minute Book of the Dedham Classis, 1905). ↩

Thos. Cartwright, A Directory of Church Government (printed in D. Neal, History of the Puritans, 1822, vol. V, Appx. IV) ↩

R. G. Usher, The Presbyterian Movement in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, as Illustrated by the Minute Book of the Dedham Classis, 1905, p. 1. ↩

R. G. Usher, The Presbyterian Movement in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, as Illustrated by the Minute Book of the Dedham Classis, 1905, pp. 14⁠–⁠15, for Bancroft’s account of the procedure. ↩

Quoted from Baillie’s Letters by W. A. Shaw, A History of the English Church During the Civil Wars and Under the Commonwealth, 1900, vol. I, p. 128. ↩

W. A. Shaw, A History of the English Church During the Civil Wars and Under the Commonwealth, 1900, vol. II, chap. III (The Presbyterian System, 1646⁠–⁠60). For the practical working of Presbyterian discipline, see Chetham Society, vols. XX, XXII, XXIV, Minutes of the Manchester Classis, and vols. XXXVI, XLI, Minutes of the Bury Classis. ↩

See here. ↩

Puritan Manifestoes, p. 120, quoted by H. G. Wood, The Influence of the Reformation on Ideas Concerning Wealth and Property, in Property, Its Rights and Duties, 1913, p. 142. Mr. Wood’s essay contains an excellent discussion of the whole subject, and I should like here to acknowledge my obligations to it. For the views of Knewstub, Smith, and Baro, see the quotations from them printed by Haweis, Sketches of the Reformation, 1844, pp. 237⁠–⁠40, 243⁠–⁠6. It should be noted that Baro, while condemning those who, “sitting idle at home, make merchandise only