Market and currency in the Franciscan construction of political identity. The Catalan-Aragonese case

Abstract

The Franciscan textuality of Catalan-Aragonese area is an important source of the political discourse and of the construction of community identities. Among the most significant aspects emerge the discourse about the value and function of money. Since Arnau de Vilanova the currency expresses and conveys the strength and identity of a political community: through it is to define the role of economic, civil and political agents in community areas. It also puts into question an historiographical assumption: «the constellation of concepts of political modernity erupts from the denial of what had preceded itì». If this argument asserts that the lemma and the concept of «contract», defined since Hobbes, is "the genetic location" of modernity, remains untraceable the break with the "not modern ".  In the relationship that connects fides, money and identity in medieval Franciscan texts that design communities of cives-fideles, the community space becomes public and legal arena, institutionalized. And in the space of the market, constituitive of the space of the community, different wills converge negotiating areas and limits of economic and financial sovereignties, but equally conscious political ones.