The morale of sale in Tomás de Mercado

Abstract

Tomás de Mercado, outstanding figure of the School of Salamanca, is considered by the vast majority of scholars of the Spanish economy of the sixteenth century as one of the doctors who presented with great clarity and precision the various issues of economic morality of his time. One of those topics that he analyzed with mastery was the legality and illegality of the purchase contract. In the light of the theory of human acts and natural law, the Dominican came to the conclusion that lucrative trade is not an action that in itself is good or bad, but indifferent, and that its morality depends on the intention or purpose with which it is carried out.