Treści filozoficzno-moralne w traktacie "O Lichwie..." ks. Marcina Śmigleckiego SJ (1563–1618)
Philosophico-moral issues in the treaty "On Usury", by Fr. Martin Smiglecki SJ (1563–1618)

Summary/Abstract: On Usury, the treaty by Martin Śmiglecki SJ, was the first strictly scientific aempt to show the economic and social background of the bourgeois and peasant social stratum in Poland and Lithuania at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries. The author, being an excellent logician, expressed his views in a very precise way, limiting his technical (philosophico-legal) language to a minimum, so that his treatise would be understandable to readers from a range of social positions and circumstances. Its careful analysis of the socio-economic situation and clear formulation of its postulates enabled it to function, over the course of two centuries, as a practical manual imparting guidance to the ruling class as they sought to maintain a just and fair stance in their dealings with the burghers and peasants. Śmiglecki’s ideas have become a reference point for many generations of professors of moral philosophy and folk preachers seeking to raise social issues in their own works.

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