Credit, debt, and social relations in the late Roman West, c. AD 300–500

This thesis sheds new light on the study of financial life in the late-antique Roman West (4th to mid-5th centuries). The issue of finances in Late Antiquity has been extensively studied, particularly as a response to 19th-century scholarship that defended a reversion to a natural economy in the Roman Empire after the crisis of the 3rd century. However, the majority of studies hitherto have focused on public finances, such as taxation, monetisation, and inflation. While this scholarship offered a new perspective on the prosperity of the late-antique economy, it largely overlooked the private financial affairs of that period. This thesis addresses this gap. It provides an updated perspective on the role of credit in the late-antique West. This doctoral research investigates the extent to which credit permeated social, political, and cultural events. In doing so, it demonstrates that credit was much more than a simple financial transaction; it shaped and was shaped by social relationships. The thesis explores instances in which credit cut society vertically and horizontally, and its potential to bind individuals and/or institutions in hierarchical relationships. It also shows how credit could, at the same time, foster social and economic dependency as well as social mobility, depending on the context. This thesis is divided into four chapters. Focusing on economic and financial phenomena, it starts with a discussion of how the credit markets were organised after the crisis of the 3rd century, and how they evolved throughout the centuries. After that, two chapters are dedicated to demonstrating how non-economic phenomena, particularly social relationships, influenced credit arrangements. The last chapter turns the coin and explores the social and economic consequences of the dark side of credit: debt. Ultimately, this thesis argues that credit was an integral element of late-antique society, intertwined across all sectors.