Benedictine Spirituality, Place-Based Sustainability, and Accounting – Lessons from a Medieval Abbey

Benedictine spirituality undoubtedly presents several aspects tightly linked to a sustainable view of human activity. During the Middle Ages, Benedictine monasteries became places where the whole community could thrive socially and economically while respecting the environment, in a way that we would now refer to as place-based sustainability grounded on spirituality. Drawing on archival evidence, this paper investigates the Benedictine Saint Peter’s Abbey in Perugia, Italy, in the late Middle Ages, focusing on accountability and accounting. It is argued that the adoption of a much more sophisticated accounting method than that used at the time by many businesses run by private families and merchants was closely linked to a spiritual search for the whole community’s wellbeing, from the perspective of place-based sustainability. Some lessons for modern corporations are drawn from this corner of the remote past.