sense, made for social stability. The
following passage from Trithemius, written at the end of the fifteenth
century, is interesting as showing how consistently the doctrine of
St. Thomas was adhered to two hundred years after his death, and
also that the failure of the rich to put into practice the moderate
communism of St. Thomas was the cause of the rise of the heretical
communists, who attacked the very foundations of property itself: 'Let
the rich remember that their possessions have not been entrusted to
them in order that they may have the sole enjoyment of them, but
that they may use and manage them as property belonging to mankind at
large. Let them remember that when they give to the needy they
only give them what belongs to them. If the duty of right use and
management of property, whether worldly or spiritual, is neglected, if
the rich think that they are the sole lords and masters of that which
they possess, and do not treat the needy as their brethren, there
must of necessity arise an inner shattering of the commonwealth. False
teachers and deceivers of the people will then gain influence, as has
happened in Bohemia, by preaching to the people that earthly property
should be equally distributed among all, and that the rich must
be forcibly condemned to the division of their wealth. Then follow
lamentable conditions and civil wars; no property is spared; no right
of ownership is any longer recognised; and the wealthy may then
with justice complain of the loss of possessions which have been
unrighteously taken from them; but they should also seriously ask
themselves the question whether in the days of peace and order they
recognised in the administration of these goods the right of their
superior lord and owner, namely, the God of all the earth.'[1]

[Footnote 1: Quoted in Janssen, _op. cit._, vol. ii. p. 91.]

It must not, however, be imagined for a moment that the community
of user advocated by the scholastics had anything in common with the
communism recommended by modern Socialists. As we have seen above,
the scholastic communism did not at all apply to the procuring and
dispensing of material things, but only to the mode of using them.
It is not even correct to say that the property of an individual was
_limited_ by the duty of using it for the common good. As Rambaud
puts it: 'Les devoirs de charite, d'equite naturelle, et de simple
convenance sociale peuvent affecter, ou mieux encore, commander un