The growth of a healthy population was made possible by the reformation of family life, which was one of the greatest achievements of Christianity in the social sphere.  In the early days of the Church the institution of the family had been reconstituted by moderating the harshness of the Roman domestic rule (patria potestas), by raising the moral and social position of women, and by reforming the system of testamentary and intestate successions; and the great importance which the early Church attached to the family as the basic unit of social life remained unaltered throughout the Middle Ages.[5]

[Footnote 5:  Troplong, De l’Influence du Christianisme sur le Droit civil des Romains; Cossa, Guide, p. 99; Devas, Political Economy, p. 168; Perin, La Richesse dans les Societes chretiennes, i. 541 et seq.; Hettinger, Apologie du Christianisme, v. 230 et seq.]

The Middle Ages were therefore a period when the production of wealth was looked upon as a salutary and honourable vocation.  The wonderful artistic monuments of that era, which have survived the intervening centuries of decay and vandalism, are a striking testimony to the perfection of production in a civilisation in which work was considered to be but a form of prayer, and the manufacturer was prompted to be, not a drudge, but an artist.

In the Middle Ages, however, as we have said before, man did not exist for the sake of production, but production for the sake of man; and wise consumption was regarded as at least as important as extended production.  The high estimation in which wealth was held resulted in the elaboration of a highly developed code of regulation as to the manner in which it should be enjoyed.  We do not wish to weary the reader with a repetition of that which we have already fully discussed; it is enough to call attention to the fact that the golden mean of conduct was the observance of liberality, as distinguished, on the one hand, from avarice, or a too high estimation of material goods, and, on the other hand, from prodigality, or an undue disregard for their value.  Social virtue consisted in attaching to wealth its proper value.

Far more important than its teaching either on production or consumption was the teaching of the mediaeval Church on distribution, which it insisted must be regulated on a basis of strict justice.  It is in this department of economic study that the teaching of the mediaevals appears in most marked contrast to the teaching of the present day, and it is therefore in this department that the study of its doctrines is most valuable.  As we said above, the modern world has become convinced by bitter experience of the impracticability of mere selfishness as the governing factor in distribution; and the economic thought of the time is concentrated upon devising some new system of society which shall be ruled by justice.  On the one hand, we see socialists of various schools attempting to construct a Utopia in which each man shall be rewarded, not in accordance with his opportunities of growing rich at the expense of his fellow-man, but according to the services he performs; while, on the other hand, we find the Christian economists striving to induce a harassed and bewildered world to revert to an older and nobler social ethic.