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Confession and Bookkeeping

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Confession and Bookkeeping Synopsis

A fascinating exploration of the connection between profit making and morality, this book illustrates how modern accounting had its roots in the sacrament of confession.

Double-entry bookkeeping (DEB), modern capitalism's first and foremost calculative technology, was "invented" during the Middle Ages when profit making was morally stigmatized. James Aho examines the problematic of moneymaking and offers an explanatory understanding of the paradoxical coupling of profit seeking and morality by situating DEB in the religious circumstances from which it emerged, specifically the newly instituted sacrament of penance, that is, confession.

Confession impacted the consciences of medieval businessmen both through its sacramental form and through its moral teachings. The form of confession produced widespread habits of moral scrupulosity (leading to compulsive record keeping); the content of confession taught that commerce itself was morally suspect. Scrupulous businessmen were thus driven to justify their affairs to church, commune, and themselves. With the aid of DEB, moneymaking was "Christianized" and Christianity was made more amenable to the pursuit of wealth. Although DEB is typically viewed exclusively as a scientifically neutral account of the flow of money through a firm, it remains as it was originally devised, a rhetorical argument.

About This Edition

ISBN: 9780791465455
Publication date:
Author: James A Aho
Publisher: SUNY Press an imprint of State University of New York Press
Format: Hardback
Pagination: 131 pages
Genres: Social groups: religious groups and communities
European history: medieval period, middle ages
Christianity