Joel Kaye, “Monetary and Market Consciousness in Thirteenth and Fourteenth Century Europe.”

Kaye, Joel. “Monetary and Market Consciousness in Thirteenth and Fourteenth Century    Europe.” Ancient and Medieval Economic Ideas and Concepts of Social Justice. Ed. S. Todd Lowry and Barry Gordon. New York, NY: Brill, 1998. 371-404. Print.

I'm familiar with Joel Kaye's work from his Economy and Nature in the Fourteenth Century, which I'll write something on at a later date, so some of the concepts and ideas of this article were familiar. Kaye's purpose in this article is to consider market consciousness in the stated period, but rather than looking at actors directly involved with economic trade, such as records kept my merchants, Kaye's article looks at economic thought in chronicles and literature. According to Kaye, doing provides a more complete picture when considering the role of economics in late medieval thought and culture. This process would be much like reading a modern pop song dealing with the correlation between money and romantic relationships for what that song suggests about the commodification of love in the 21st century. 

In looking at chronicles, Kaye traces a series of chroniclers whose economic details provide insight into concerns over scarcity and debt, as well as how these factors affect a cross section of late medieval society. Kaye provides examples of high ranking clergymen and even monarchs dining at merchants' houses in instances that are clearly improper interactions and yet are allowed due to the financial issues at hand; a Prior may well not want to offend a merchant to whom the monastery owes a great deal of money. In addition to showing a general growing cultural concern over economic issues, Kaye also highlights how instances such as these highlight the growing power of a merchant class, a class in a liminal space between the three estates while exerting influence over the first and second. 

Kaye also reads three areas of literature for market consciousness, namely the French fablieux, Dante's Divine Comedy, and Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. Building from other scholarly work on these texts, Kaye ties together how each not only considers economic issues but is aimed at an audience familiar with both noble and mercantile concerns, suggesting a hybrid audience rather than a solely bourgeois one. 

All of this, according to Kaye, is tied to the "economic revolution" that builds throughout Europe in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, resulting in growing trade, more developed centers of exchange in towns, and increased monetization across all sections of society. In sentiments that are shared by Wood's later monograph, the change of how money and exchange is perceived in this period - from a trade just a step down from theft to a necessary aspect of medieval lifestyle - enters into all avenues of society, and considering this impact in chronicles, literature, and scholastic discussions allows for sharper image of medieval economic thought.