[Footnote 7:  Dublin Review, vol. xxxiii. p. 305.  See Goyau, Autour du Catholicisme sociale, vol. ii. pp. 93 et seq.]

The importance which the scholastics attached to an extended and widespread production is evidenced by their attitude towards the growth of the population.  The fear of over-population does not appear to have occurred to the writers of the Middle Ages;[1] on the contrary, a rapidly increasing population was considered a great blessing for a country.[2] This attitude towards the question of population did not arise merely from the fact that Europe was very sparsely populated in the Middle Ages, as modern research has proved that the density of population was much greater than is generally supposed.[3]

[Footnote 1:  Brants, op. cit., p. 235, quoting Sinigaglia, La Teoria Economica della Populazione in Italia, Archivio Giuridico, Bologna, 1881.]

[Footnote 2:  Catholic Encyclopaedia, art.  ‘Population.’  Brants draws attention to the interesting fact that a germ of Malthusianism is to be found in the much-discussed Songe du Vergier, book ii. chaps. 297-98, and Franciscus Patricius de Senis, writing at the end of the fifteenth century, recommends emigration as the remedy against over-population (De Institutione Reipublicae, ix.).]

[Footnote 3:  Dureau de la Malle, ’Memoire sur la Population de la France au xiv^e Siecle,’ Memoires de l’Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, vol. xiv. p. 36.]

The mediaeval attitude towards population was founded upon the sanctity of marriage and the respect for human life.  The utterances of Aquinas on the subject of matrimony show his keen appreciation of the natural social utility of marriage from the point of view of increasing the population of the world, and of securing that the new generation shall be brought up as good and valuable citizens.[1] While voluntary virginity is recommended as a virtue, it is nevertheless distinctly recognised that the precept of virginity is one which by its very nature can be practised by only a small proportion of the human race, and that it should only be practised by those who seek by detachment from earthly pleasures to regard divine things.[2] Aquinas further says that large families help to increase the power of the State, and deserve well of the commonwealth,[3] and quotes with approbation the Biblical injunction to ’increase and multiply.’[4] AEgidius Romanus demonstrates at length the advantages of large families in the interests of the family and the future of the nation.[5]

[Footnote 1:  Summa Cont.  Gent., iii. 123, 136.]

[Footnote 2:  Summa, II. ii. 151 and 152.]

[Footnote 3:  De Reg.  Prin., iv. 9.]

[Footnote 4:  Gen. i. 28.]

[Footnote 5:  De Reg.  Prin., ii. 1, 6.]