Reputation in the fifteenth century credit market; some tales from the ecclesiastical courts of York

This article explores the language used to defend reputation in instances of defamation, debt and theft presented before the ecclesiastical courts of the Archbishopric of York in the latter part of the medieval period. Finding a circulating language of trust and household credibility in the court papers, the argument concludes that the commodification of reputation was not a phenomenon brought about by the Reformation but that a reputation mechanism was intrinsic to the medieval market embedded in informal institutions, social norms and cultural dictates and enforced in the courts.