I'm a student studying religion and culture and I'm interested in the development of formations of credit/debt/and damnation in medieval theology. Unfortunately, while I have a decent background in medieval theology, I don't have a great one in medieval history. I'm convinced, though, that it's mostly fruitless to study the development of concepts without linking them to the practices they render intelligible. Where should I start?
The go-to book on this is Jacques Le Goff's Your Money or Your Life: Economy and Religion In The Middle Ages (Zone Books, 1988), which is an English translation of French medievalist Le Goff's La Bourse et la vie, economie et religion au Moyen Age. From the publisher's summary:
[...] a concise investigation of the problem that usury posed for the medieval Church, which had long condemned the lending of money for interest. Le Goff describes how, as the structure of economic life inevitably began to include financial loans, the Church refashioned its theology in order to condemn the usurer not to hell but merely to purgatory.
This book followed on from Le Goff's important work The Birth of Purgatory which documented how purgatory was invented and developed in the middle ages.