SUMMENHART’S THEORY OF RIGHTS A Culmination of the Late Medieval Discourse on Individual Rights

Abstract

Conrad Summenhart’s (1455–1502) principal work, Opus septipartitum de contractibus pro foro conscientiae et theologico (c. 1500), presents economic life as a phenomena that can in great measure be analyzed in terms of the rights possessed by individuals.1 The obvious point of departure is that individual subjects have rights in things (ius in re). The fact that rights can be priced by and transferred through contracts is the basic prerequisite for economic exchange that also enables the evaluation of economics from the viewpoint of justice. The task of the moral theologian, which Summenhart takes up in the pages of Opus septipartitum, lies in analyzing the actual and possible contractual situations into which economic actors enter, and defining the cases in which economic activity meets the requirements of morality. Summenhart’s work in Opus septipartitum is a skillful demonstration of late medieval moral casuistry, but he also made a direct contribution to the medieval language of rights. In order to emphasize the centrality of rights in conceptualizing economics, Summenhart began Opus septipartitum with a preliminary treatise in which the subject matter was the rights of the individuals. His discussion was not confined to the juridical iura