Money as Incentive and Risk in the Carnival Comedies of Hans Sachs (1494–1576)

Summary

The Europeans' use of money as a medium of exchange for transactions began soon after the twelfth century and continued throughout the commercial revolution (under Italian leadership) even though a barter system prevailed for a long time. Transhistorically, money in its relation to themes or intrigues has had a role in literary works, not yet in the carnival comedies of the fifteenth century, but certainly in Hans Sachs's writings. Indeed, money has inspired or preoccupied moralists as well as poets (Rutebeuf, Oswald von Wolkenstein, Rabelais, Michel de Montaigne, and Molière), novelists and chroniclers, politicians, ideologists, reformers, economists, and revolutionaries. And yet one is struck by the fact that before the Renaissance, rich writers and artists are not mentioned in historical accounts. Wealth, treated negatively by Plato and St. Augustine, was both a curse linked to the devil and usury (radix malorum) and a blessing, especially when redistributed through charitable giving. Often, as in several of Sachs's carnival plays, money becomes an incentive to action though remains, by and large, a risk for the giver or recipient, as we shall demonstrate in this essay. Money is thus controversial.