But the real roots of the religious ethics which led the way to the modern conception of a calling lay in the sects and the heterodox movements, above all in Wyclif; although Brodnitz (Englische Wirtschaftsgeschichte), who thinks his influence was so great that Puritanism found nothing left for it to do, greatly overestimates his significance. All that cannot be gone into here. For here we can only discuss incidentally whether and to what extent the Christian ethic of the Middle Ages had in fact already prepared the way for the spirit of capitalism. ↩
The words μηδὲν ἀπελπίζοντες (Luke 6:35) and the translation of the Vulgate, nihil inde sperantes, are thought (according to A. Merx) to be a corruption of μηδένα ἀπελπίζοντες (or meminem desperantes), and thus to command the granting of loans to all brothers, including the poor, without saying anything at all about interest. The passage Deo placere vix potest is now thought to be of Arian origin (which, if true, makes no difference to our contentions). ↩
How a compromise with the prohibition of usury was achieved is shown, for example, in Book I, chapter 65, of the statutes of the Arte di Calimala (at present I have only the Italian edition in Emiliani-Guidici, Storia dei comuni italiani, III, p. 246). “Procurino i consoli con quelli frate, che parrà loro, che perdono si faccia e come fare si possa il meglio per l’amore di ciascuno, del dono, merito o guiderdono, ovvero interesse per l’anno presente e secondo che altra volta fatto fue.” It is thus a way for the guild to secure exemption for its members on account of their official positions, without defiance of authority. The suggestions immediately following, as well as the immediately preceding idea to book all interest and profits as gifts, are very characteristic of the amoral attitude towards profits on capital. To the present stock exchange black list against brokers who hold back the difference between top price and actual selling price, often corresponded the outcry against those who pleaded before the ecclesiastical court with the exceptio usurariae pravitatis. ↩
Of the ancient languages, only Hebrew has any similar concept. Most of all in the word מְלָאבָה. It is used for sacerdotal functions (Exodus 35:21; Nehemiah 6:22; 1 Chronicles 9:13, 23:4, 26:30), for business in the service of the king (especially 1 Samuel 8:16; 1 Chronicles 9:23, 29:6), for the service of a royal official (Esther 3:9, 9:3), of a superintendent of labour (2 Kings 12:12), of a slave (Genesis 39:11), of labour in the fields (1 Chronicles 28:26), of craftsmen (Exodus 31:5, 25:21; Kings 7:14), for traders (Psalm 107:23), and for worldly activity of any kind in the passage, Sirach 11:20, to be discussed later. The word is derived from the root לאךְ, to send, thus meaning originally a task. That it originated in the ideas current in Solomon’s bureaucratic kingdom of serfs (Fronstaat), built up as it was according to the Egyptian model, seems evident from the above references. In meaning, however, as I learn from A. Merx, this root concept had become lost even in antiquity. The word came to be used for any sort of labour, and in fact became fully as colourless as the German Beruf, with which it shared the fate of being used primarily for mental and not manual functions. The expression (חק), assignment, task, lesson, which also occurs in Sirach 11:20, and is translated in the Septuagint with διαθήκη, is also derived from the terminology of the servile bureaucratic regime of the time, as is דבַר־יום (Exodus 5:13, cf. Exodus 5:14), where the Septuagint also uses διαθήκη for task. In Sirach 43:10 it is rendered in the Septuagint with κρίμα. In Sirach 11:20 it is evidently used to signify the fulfillment of God’s commandments, being thus related to our calling. On this passage in Jesus Sirach reference may here be made to Smend’s well-known book on Jesus Sirach, and for the words διαθήκη, ἔργον, πόνος, to his Index zur Weisheit des Jesus Sirach (Berlin, 1907). As is well known, the Hebrew text of the Book of Sirach was lost, but has been rediscovered by Schechter, and in part supplemented by quotations from the Talmud. Luther did not possess it, and these two Hebrew concepts could not have had any influence on his use of language. (See below on Proverbs 22:29.)
In Greek there is no term corresponding in ethical connotation to the German or English words at all. Where Luther, quite in the spirit of the modern usage (see below), translates Jesus Sirach 11:20 and 21, bleibe in deinem Beruf, the Septuagint has at one point ἔργον, at the other, which however seems to be an entirely corrupt passage, πόνος (the Hebrew original speaks of the shining of divine help!). Otherwise in antiquity τὰ προσήκοντο is used in the general sense of duties. In the works of the Stoics κάματος occasionally carries similar connotations, though its linguistic source is indifferent (called to my attention by A. Dieterich). All other expressions (such as τάξις, etc.) have no ethical implications.
In Latin what we translate as calling, a man’s sustained activity under the division of labour, which is thus (normally) his source of income and in the long run the economic basis of his existence, is, aside from the colourless opus, expressed with an ethical content, at least similar
