Chapter Otium e otiosi nella riflessione dei teologi-giuristi della prima modernità (XVI-XVII sec.)

Abstract

Fifteenth- and seventeenth-century theologians-jurists, and in particularthe Early Modern Scholastics, are confronted with the issue of otium as a real problem, not just as an object of rhetorical speculation. They question the role of the idler within human communities where otium is made possible by an increasingly widespread financial economy (the numerous 'capitalist' investors in the new transatlantic trades are emblematic of this), but where such idleness also becomes an absolutely pressing social issue when it comes to the idleness suffered, especially in cities where large numbers of people without any occupation flow in from the countryside. Added to these problems is the issue of 'natural' idleness, which, in the eyes of observers of the time, seems to be a peculiar characteristic of the american natives.