ABSTRACT
Fear, myth, fantasy and revulsion toward money, its actors, transactions, and institutions are an integral part of financial and economic culture, defined by Helga Schultz “as the whole of the cognitive, affective and evaluative orientation, i.e. as the values, mentalities and attitudes toward economic structures”. Clearly, as Niall Ferguson charmingly put it, “as evolutionary biologists have demonstrated, homo sapiens is not homo economicus”. In Christian Europe since the twelfth century, the rich man must justify his wealth within the church, society, and the state. Fundamental to Judeo Christian and Islamic beliefs is the role of charity within the community, direct contribution to the Church from the twelfth to sixteenth centuries, or philanthropy in modern times, deemed necessary for redemption.
