Disputation — Bontempi, Palladium Theologicum V · from Schola Thomistica
Disputation V: On Buying and Selling
These Contracts, among others, are the more celebrated, since nearly the whole commerce of human society subsists on them; they are nonetheless most perilous, both on account of the defects that very often lie hidden in the thing sold unknown to the buyer; and on account of the avarice of merchants, which, cloaked under this specious pretext, sells their wares through fair means and foul, and heaps up for itself the Denarii of the poor, by selling worse goods to them at a dearer price; these things are chiefly practiced in places where there is no tax on price; but everyone is permitted with impunity to exchange his goods either according to the buyer's necessity, or according to his own pleasure.
Hi Contractus inter caeteros celebriores sunt, cum totum fere humanae societatis commercium ex eis subsistat; periculosissimi tamen sunt, tum propter vitia, saepenumero in re vendibili inscio emptore latentia; tum propter avaritiam mercatorum, quae specioso hoc praetextu palliata, per fas, et nefas suas merces venditat, cumulatque sibi pauperum Denarios, viliores res charius ipsis vendendo; haec maxime actitantur in locis, ubi nulla sit pretii taxatio; sed cuique impune permittitur, res suas vel pro emptoris necessitate, vel pro suo libito commutare.
Within this disputation
- Question I: What buying and selling are
- Question II: Which persons can buy, and sell
- Question III: Which things can be sold
- Question IV: Of how many kinds is the price of things
- Question V: Whether, for certain causes, it is lawful to reduce below the minimum price, or raise above the maximum
- Question VI: Whether on account of ceasing profit, or emerging loss, the price can be raised above the maximum
- Question VII: Whether it is lawful to sell above the highest price when payment is deferred, rather than for ready money
- Question VIII: Whether the contracts called stocolia and barocolia in Italian, and mohatra in Spanish, are lawful
- Question IX: To what extent buying and selling in monopolies is unlawful
- Question X: Whether the seller is bound to disclose a grave defect of the thing
- Question XI: Whether a thing sold, not yet delivered, perishes to the buyer
- Question XII: On the rescission of a sale and purchase on account of fraud, etc.
- Question XIII: Whether a sale with a pact of repurchase is lawful