After a brief historical reconstruction of the emergence of the market economy as a model of social order in Europe, dating back to the eleventh century--the century of the commercial revolution--the paper focuses on the decisive contribution of the Franciscan school of thought to furnish the theoretical infrastructure of the new mode of organizing the economic sphere. The argument proceeds discussing the reasons why already at the end of the sixteenth century the civil market economy progressively gave way to the capitalist conception of the market that became dominant at the time of the Industrial Revolution. The exposition closes, suggesting the main reasons why in the last two decades the civil economy perspective is gaining new ground, in particular, why the category of the common good is attracting more and more attention among both economists and policy-makers.