Page 98 - Latent Defect or Excessive Price?Exploring Early Modern Legal Approach to Remedying Defects in Goods Exchanged for Money - Bruijn

CHAPTER THREE
Another question is how one can determine that the just price for a thing is 100 and not, say. 50 or 150. That was not an easy task, as appears from Mercado's deliberations in which he calls the just price of things 'more prone to change than the winds, as experience teaches it'.90 What constitutes a just price?91 According to scholars writing for the forum internum it is in the first place the price as it is fixed by the competent authorities.92 In absence of decrees prescribing what one was allowed to ask for his wares, the price had to be determined by looking at the common market value, which Roman law formula now constitutes the 'natural' just price. In keeping with D. 35.2.63, Covarrubias has the following:
'The just price of whatever thing is not determined by someone's affection or personal wiles but by the common estimation of man. Hence, a thing is worth so much as it can commonly be to a man who knows its condition without there being fraud or delict'.93
By and large, scholars writing for the forum internum reject a subjective price determination. Konrad Summenhart († 1502)94, a theologian to whom Castilian scholars frequently refer, ponders that an objective assessment is to be preferred, '... because nobody is a good judge in his own case because of the irregular love for one's own welfare that corrupts one's capacity to judge... '.95 We find this sentiment translated into a price estimation based on the thing's current market price in Martín de Azpilcueta's (1492-1586) Enchiridion96, Vitoria's treatise on usury97, and in Molina's De justitia.98 De la Calle,
constituydo. Natural se dize el que asi no es constituydo, por lo qual no consiste en punto indivisible,
sino arbitrario...';
90 Mercado, Sum, lib. II, cap. VIII, fo. 45: 'mas variable, según la experiencia enseña, que el viento'.
91 For medieval and early modern theory on just pricing see also: García y García y Alonso Rodríguez, 'El
pensamiento económico', p. 207, 218; Decock, Theologians, p. 522ff.
92 De la Calle, Instrucción, fo. 16v; Medina, De poenitentia, p. 195: 'si authoritate publica principis, vel
communitatis, seu alterius vicem eius tenentis, sit taxatum rebus venalibus pretium, illud est reputandum iustum pretium'; Soto, De Iustitia, to ST 2.2, q. 77, a. 3, p. 196: 'Atque hic est sensus l. pretia, ff. ad leg. Falc. \[D. 35.2.63 \] Ubi habetur pretia rerum non ex affectu aut utilitate singulorum sed communiter fingi. Hoc est, non secundum privatorum existimationem, sed secundum communem prudentiam constitutui. Et eodem alludit simile verbum l. in lege 4, eod. tit. \[D. 35.2.4\] ubi habetur rem non aestimari pretio formali, id est, a contrahentibus formato, sed secundum praesens, puta communi foro currens'.
93 Covarrubias, Opera omnia, vol. 2, 2.3, no. 4, fo. 53: '... iustum cuiusque rei pretium non ex cuiuslibet affectione aut sumptus constat, sed ex communi hominum aestimatione perpenditur. Itaque tantum valet res, quantum absque fraude et iniuria communiter potest homini scienti eius conditionem'.
94 For biographical information and references to secundary literature about this scholar see Decock,
Theologians,
p. 54, no. 204.
95 Summenhart, De contractibus, p. 265 \[left column\]: 'Quia nemo bonus iudex est in causa propria propter
inordinatum amorem ad propriam commoditatem, qui pervertit iudicium'.
96 Azpilcueta, Enchiridion, cap. 23, no. 78, fo. 334v.: 'Dixi communiter ad excludendum pretium quo unus
vel alter rem aestimat, l. pretia rerum, ff. ad. l. Falcid. \[D. 35.2.63\]'; for biographical details see E. Tejero
Tejero, 'Azpilcueta, Martín de', in: DBE, vol. 6, p. 430-433.
97 Appendix to Vitoria's, Contratos y usura, p. 287 (Declaraciones de los teólogos de París): '...ninguno
atribuya a sí mismo el poner del precio, sino la comunidad de la bolsa, que es aquel lugar donde los mercaderes se juntan'; Appendix to Vitoria's, Contratos y usura, p. 306 (Dissensiones): 'Los precios de todos estos cambios son como corre en la plaza'.
98 Molina, Opera omnia, vol. 2, disp. 348, no. 8, p. 245: 'Etenim rerum pretia non ex lucro mercatorum, ac
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