The Debt Society<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Mark Greengrass (Christendom Destroyed) observes that nearly everyone in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe was in debt at one time or another\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2015\/06\/the-debt-society\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Debt Society\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Mark Greengrass (Christendom Destroyed) observes that nearly everyone in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe was in debt at one time or another\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2015\/06\/the-debt-society\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Leithart\" \/>\n<meta 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{"id":17310,"date":"2015-06-03T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-06-03T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=2135"},"modified":"2015-06-03T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2015-06-03T00:00:00","slug":"the-debt-society","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2015\/06\/the-debt-society\/","title":{"rendered":"The Debt Society"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n<\/head>

Mark Greengrass (Christendom Destroyed<\/a>) observes that nearly everyone in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe was in debt at one time or another during their lifetimes: \u201cIn Rome, for example, about 6 percent of the population found \u00a0themselves imprisoned for debt in 1582 alone.\u201d Court records provide further evidence: \u201cDebt litigation dominated law cases in London in the century after 1550\u201d (112).<\/p>\n

And it wasn\u2019t just commoners, merchants, or lower nobility who incurred debt. On the contrary, \u201cthe higher up you were socially, the more in debt you were likely to be. In Elizabethan England, the duke of Norfolk, the earls of Shrewsbury and Essex, and other aristocrats regularly pledged their plate, jewels and occasional revenues to sustain their lifestyles. In 1642, the income of England\u2019s peers has been estimated as about 730,000 [pounds] \u2013 but their debts were double that figure. The palaces of Europe\u2019s grandees were as much a tribute to their capacity for debt management as they were an acknowledgement of the importance of conspicuous consumption in upholding their social status. And they were led by Europe\u2019s princes, more indebted by far than their predecessors\u201d (113). Philip II declared bankruptcy three times, and some European monarchs stayed afloat only because of the treasure coming in from the New World.<\/p>\n

(In a depressing aside, Greengrass notes that one of the reasons American silver and gold didn\u2019t have as much of an impact on the European economy as we\u2019d expect is because much of the treasure was expended on war. American metals bankrolled the self-destruction of Europe.)<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"