سارقو الزمن : دراسة في تطور العقليات في أوروبا خلال عصر النهضة

Abstract EN

The issue of changes in mentality between the Middle Ages and the modern period has consistently engaged historians; in particular Jacques Le Goff, who worked on the issue of the development of religious and economic life and its effects on Christian mentalities.

In one of his most important studies, he notes how, during the phase of economic change, European society shifted from prohibition to acceptance of lending of money with interest.

He also observed the change in the geography of the afterworld in the second half of the twelfth century with the appearance of Purgatory as a new space between Heaven and Hell.

This study attempts to answer the following questions: How did the Catholic Church create a belief in Purgatory? What was the position of Protestant reformers on it? What is its take on charging interest and on indulgence? And how did Christian merchants and bankers pull the carpet from under Jewish moneylenders at the end of the Middle ages? The study also delves into the relationship between the belief in Purgatory and the new economic structures that gradually took shape at the beginning of the Renaissance; how Christian Europeans became free in their financial dealings after the Church had banned the practice for decades; and how the Renaissance of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries paved the way for Western Europe to enter the modern period.