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This chapter examines the provisions made for the enforcement of sumptuary law, the instances of prosecutions that have so far been discovered, and the possible reasons for the ultimate failure of sumptuary legislation. It shows that rulers employed various methods in order to ensure that all the relevant members of the population were aware that sumptuary laws were in force and what these laws prohibited, and that they were properly enforced. It adds that the majority of prosecutions that were discovered dealt with women who had violated the clothing laws. It argues that the primary cause of failure of sumptuary laws was associated with the job for which the legislation was designed. It explains that legislative regulation of fashion proved impossible to the legislators for they still had to identify luxurious clothing by employing specific fashion terminology. It also presents several criticisms made against sumptuary laws.

This chapter aims to evaluate the nature of ‘sumptuary laws’ up to 1500 and thereby associate them to the circumstances, the framework of ideas, and the habit of mind that gave rise to them. It mentions some of the previous analyses conducted with the sumptuary laws. It examines all known sumptuary laws in Italy enacted over a three-century period over forty towns across the peninsula. It argues that the failure of the laws was not usually caused by the lack of desire to implement them, but to a combination of other factors such as the inappropriateness of legislation as a tool with which to control luxury consumption and the aggravation of the legislative problem by a lack of desire of an outright condemnation of luxury consumption. It clarifies that it was the context of use, by whom and for what purpose, that determined the approval or censure of luxury.

This chapter examines the existence of the conciliar pronouncement of the Council of Lyon in 1274, as well as the historians' interpretation of Malespini's evidence. It explains that whilst the detailed examination of a single statement by Malespini might seem mere antiquarianism, its significance for the historiography of sumptuary law is greater than it may seem at first appearance. It adds that the existence or otherwise of conciliar sumptuary law is necessary in clarifying the position and influence of the Church in the revival and passage of secular sumptuary legislation in late medieval Italy.

This chapter explores the sumptuary laws on food enacted during the Reformation era. Both Catholics and Protestants enacted sumptuary legislation to ensure that individual members of society did not stray into the religious practices of and convert to the rival religion. Legislators in Catholic areas tended to focus on the type and amount of food eaten. These provisions frequently restricted meats, especially red meats and wild game. By the mid sixteenth century, Catholic legislators were concerned not simply with the type of meat but also the amount of meat that gluttonous diners consumed. Both Catholic and Protestant sumptuary laws discouraged general overeating, limiting the number of courses and plates that could be served. Moreover, many laws in Protestant areas restricted expensive items like rare meats, wines, as well as sweet desserts and sugary confections.

Pufendorf’s theory of moral entities imposes a normative grid upon an indifferent world and articulates the positive, non-metaphysical nature of morality. This chapter focuses especially on the function of moral quantities, which set the prices of things and the esteem of persons. It clarifies the moral economy constituted by these values through an examination of Pufendorf’s view of sumptuary laws and their role in the state. The need to calculate particular values within a broader normative context shows also how Pufendorf’s method is both demonstrative and casuistic.

This chapter examines three related phenomena in contemporary China. The first is the Chinese central government's recent revival of direct, top-down sumptuary law. The purpose of such laws in China, as elsewhere, was two-fold: first, to prevent wasteful competitive consumption that might drain the nation's resources and through its extravagance incite social unrest; and second, to preserve the integrity of the society's sumptuary code, its system of consumption-based social differentiation. The second, more grassroots development is the rapid and widespread emergence in the past decade of “shanzhai,” the term given to a wide array of sometimes licit but usually illicit copying and appropriationist practices in China. The third recent development is the increasing number and effectiveness of intellectual property lawsuits and administrative enforcement actions brought by foreign luxury goods producers against Chinese defendants.

Rousseau’s account of inequality and property is examined, drawing on the Second Discourse and its account of the simultaneous emergence of inequality and social conflict, but also on Emile, Corsica, the Confessions and other texts. Inequality creates dependence (and arrogance), but also difference and separateness, and it makes men aggressive and acquisitive. Remedies for inequality in the Social Contract and other texts are discussed and assessed.

American law is characterized by increasing intolerance of individual sovereignty to make choices regarding which substances to consume. While the modern governmental power to prohibit ingestion of certain substances is essentially unlimited, most of this power is exercised illegitimately, in a way that is contrary to the limited purpose of government and the principle of residual individual sovereignty. The purported rationale for drug, alcohol, and other sumptuary laws is unabashed paternalism, but this paternalism is highly incomplete: it prohibits individuals from consuming some potentially harmful substances and allows them to consume others with no limitation. The inconsistency from substance to substance suggests that public morality, not paternalistic protection, is the real purpose behind sumptuary laws.

Chapter 3 locates William Thomas’s (d.1554) translation of a succinct but significant moment of the AUC concerning the repeal of the Lex Oppia, a sumptuary law targeting women in particular. The episode shows the women of Rome taking to the streets to demand the law’s repeal, forcing senators and tribunes alike to acknowledge their protest. Thomas thus chose to adapt one of the most arresting examples of women’s engagement in Roman politics. By choosing Livy as a champion of female autonomy, he went firmly against the contemporary grain, vying against more frequent appeals to the AUC as a means of censuring women’s dress and behaviour. Thomas was most probably alerted to this way of reading Livy during his extensive travel in Italy. During the Quattrocento, there had emerged a series of speeches and tracts concerning the status of women, which had similarly harnessed Livy in the defence of womankind. This chapter explores how Thomas was able combine these arguments with his own reading of classical history, producing a bold intervention in the Renaissance querelle des femmes.

In this chapter a poem of the Cato dealing with the sin of usury is situated within its historical context, from the pronouncements of Plato and Aristotle, Pliny’s essay on the subject, the writings of the Church Fathers, and the opinions of Medieval jurisconsults and scholastics. Beza’s stance on usury as presented in the poem appears harsher than even those of Calvin. A survey of the realities in Geneva during his tenure there, however, reveals that he too had flexibility in his principles so long as Christian charity was not violated. The chapter also analyzes poems on greed and envy and concludes that Genevan sumptuary laws attempted to eliminate both vices by managing displays of wealth. Greed, envy, usury, and ill-gotten gain all undermine the peace of mind, order, and mutual love that characterize a godly society.

Mass consumption has been regarded in much of the social and economic sciences as a critical feature of modernity, and the consumption associated with non-western and past societies has been explained through a language of ritual, feasting, and ceremony. Contrary to the positing of insatiable wants and desires driven by, and achieved through, consumption, the chapter argues that if there are any universal characteristics underpinning consumer cultures it is the desire for the moral balancing of virtue and excess. The chapter explores moral economies of indulgence and frugality, and effects of moral licensing (using the example of dieting), and argues these moral balancing acts expressed through consumption are neither a personal deficiency nor a contemporary phenomena — but happen across the range of human actions in daily life, cultures, and times. Implications for trying to achieve sustainable consumption are addressed, including an argument for sumptuary laws.

This chapter concludes the book by examining the extent to which shops and bars were deeply integrated into the social and structural underpinnings of Roman urbanism. It looks more closely at the very things being retailed in bars: so, something of the menu of the Roman food and drink outlet. It also considers the role of shops and bars in the social and economic life of the city, and the extent to which these types of spaces serve as an index of urban living conditions. The aim of the chapter, indeed of the book, is not simply to argue for the “importance” of retail outlets to Roman life. It is rather to stimulate more and better ways to integrate studies of Roman retail into our growing understanding of cities and their urban communities.