The appearance of Max Weber’s masterpiece The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904–05) sparked an intensive debate on the impact of Reformation on economic issues, including the analysis of the relationship between Protestantism and the rise of modern capitalism (Fischoff Reference Fischoff1944). This debate has first involved Weber’s contemporaries, principally economists, historians of economic thought, philosophers, and social scientists. According to Weber (Reference Weber1904–05), from an economic perspective, the distinguishing features of Protestantism that make it different from Catholic doctrine are the following: the idea of work as a calling (beruf); the fact that from the assumption of the devasting effects of Original Sin, Protestantism dismissed the opportunity that man deserved God’s grace thanks to deeds and works; the idea that the acquisition of wealth is a sign of election.

Paolo Santori significantly entitled his book Thomas Aquinas and the Civil Economy Tradition: The Mediterranean Spirit of Capitalism. This title well emphasizes that capitalism also has a Mediterranean spirit that has been neglected by the dominant literature (Hamilton Reference Zamagni and Finn2000). Identifying support in the most recent works of Luigino Bruni (Reference Bruni2015, Reference Bruni and Schwarzkopfm2020), Bruni and John Millbank (Reference Bruni and Millbank2019), and Stefano Zamagni (Reference Zamagni and Finn2010), Santori suggested a new and original perspective on the theological origins of Western capitalism.

In this regard, Santori’s working hypothesis is that it would be “reductive to attribute to the ‘Protestant ethic’ the different formations of capitalism in the Western world. Instead, it is vital to acknowledge the differences in the ways in which the market is lived, enterprises are created and conducted, and civic life in general is understood in different regions” (from inside book cover copy). From this acknowledgment, Santori suggested that the other soul of Western capitalism is Mediterranean.

The origins of the Mediterranean spirit of capitalism should be located between the thirteenth and the eighteenth centuries, such as from Thomas Aquinas to the eighteenth-century civil economy tradition, while this tradition is geographically located in southern Europe. I consider this geographical focus very relevant because Santori provided something more than a historical analysis of the Mediterranean origins and development of capitalism. He also drew a well-defined “geographical mapping” of the other soul of capitalism through his essay.

In this historical and geographical analysis, on the one hand, Santori hypothesized and explored the theological origins of civil economy, considering either how much this tradition is in debt to Aquinas or its differences with the latter; on the other hand, he wondered about what Aquinas and civil economy added to classical and neoclassical economy. Santori used a two-fold approach for showing analogies and differences between Aquinas and the eighteenth-century civil economy. In particular, the author analyzed and retrospectively adopted the leading categories of civil economy (for instance, the doctrine of the just price, its understanding of the commerce, and the idea of common good) to Aquinas’s thought (in particular, his economic teachings).

Although this is seemingly a risky reading, Santori has been very careful to avoid anachronism and assumed three premises (that he nicely defined as “antidotes”) against this potential problem, such as: (i) not to force Aquinas’s works for confirmations of his working hypothesis; (ii) to highlight the differences between Aquinas and civil economy, especially with Antonio Genovesi; and (iii) to demonstrate that Aquinas’s leading concepts were crucial in Genovesi’s economic and social analysis. I think it should be stressed that the third premise becomes one of the main results of Santori’s thesis. Thus, this point deserves to be further explored.

The author pointed out that Aquinas and Genovesi were both influenced by the Aristotelian tradition of the zoon politikon (social animal). This social nature makes people “seek their own good,” but they are also naturally inclined “towards the promotion of the good of the other and the good of the society in which they live” (p. 15). Although Mediterranean tradition acknowledged that human nature is wounded by the effect of the original sin (like Protestantism), it supported that people are still oriented to virtuous behavior and they may cultivate virtues by helping others towards happiness as a consequence of human social nature.

Aquinas and Genovesi rejected both egoism and altruism, basing their respective anthropology on the relational virtue of reciprocity. This virtue is foundational for mutual assistance, the core of civil life. It follows that reciprocity should be exercised in politics and/or market dynamics towards the promotion of common good. This assumption has two main consequences: in economics, the Mediterranean spirit of capitalism leads to a mutual concern in market dynamics because “mutual assistance manifests in market exchanges along with self-interest” (p. 20); in political life, the institutions’ main role should become the promotion of common good.

Hence, this contribution of Aquinas and civil economy to the history of economic thought cannot be neglected because these authors introduced missing concepts in classical and neoclassical economy, such as those of common good, mutual assistance, public happiness, public trust, reciprocity, and virtue.

In this respect, Santori pointed out that all the “dimensions that we naturally associate with gifts—gratuitousness, authenticity, trust, genuine sociality, intrinsic motivation—permeate the economic realm of contract based on self-interest” (p. 142). In Chapter 6, Santori expressed this non-conflictual existence of gifts and contracts in economic dynamics through the very eye-catching formula of “gift and contracts intertwined” (p. 142).

In the Mediterranean tradition, the market is a place for virtue and mutual assistance where self-interested behaviors and contracts may coexist with more ethical categories and concepts, like those of cooperation and gift, including a deep concern for common good. The analysis of these categories and concepts are useful, in turn, for better understanding the peculiarity of economic institutions that emerged in southern Europe—for example, in Italy. In this regard, Santori considered the cases and phenomena of cooperatives, mutualism, rural banks, and small-family firms.

We may conclude that Santori fully confirmed his working hypothesis, defining the distinguishing features of the other soul of Western capitalism. Certainly, southern Europe’s spirit of capitalism differs from that best-known described by Weber. Santori, however, successfully demonstrates that these two origins of capitalism are not different things; rather, they are two similar spirits that have some differences to each other. The author achieved his goal to offer a new, thought-provoking perspective on the theological origins of capitalism through an analysis that might be appealing for the community of the historians of economic thought. As stated in the epigraph, indeed, the analysis of the different spirits of capitalism is “a story that has only begun to be reconstructed” (p. 149).

But I also believe that this enquiry about the Mediterranean spirit of capitalism might offer the opportunity for a critical dialogue between this perspective on gift (where gifts and contracts are intertwined, as previously discussed) and institutional economics, such as what Angela Ambrosino et al. (Reference Angela, Caillé, Cedrini and Marchionatti2020) did for Marcel Mauss and his perspective on gift. It is not a case that Santori has already considered Mauss’s (Reference Mauss2002) perspective on gift and reciprocity in his Chapter 3, devoted to Aquinas’s social and economic teachings.

Such a dialogue between the Mediterranean spirit of capitalism and institutional economics would be extremely useful for better defining how the formula of “gift and contracts intertwined” is more than a richer understanding of the market compared with the Physiocrats and Scottish Enlightenment’s view. Indeed, this formula might be concretely applied to contemporary economic reality.