ABSTRACT
The lexis of economic thought is a subject that has recently attracted the interest of Italian historians. One line of research, shown by G. Todeschini's recent compendium/ has concentrated on medieval economic doctrine, the multiplicity of meanings communicated by the sources and their capacity to transmit ideas. In the Middle Ages the interpretation, meaning and limitations of the links between moral and economic behaviour were essentially conditioned by an ecclesiastical society. An interest in language has therefore raised the problem of how to decipher the medieval texts and to enlighten the economic issues through linguistic analysis of the theological-moral sources. An important contribution to this historical approach is Clavero's work published in 1991,2 which reassesses certain Spanish ethical-economic texts from the linguistic point of view and underlines the importance of this methodology in reconstructing the economic dimension. At the same time, it has initiated a debate on the problem of this type of source by viewing it not just in relation to the theological-moral treatise literature.
