Vienne, presided over by Pope Clement V, declared that if any one "shall pertinaciously presume to affirm that the taking of interest for money is not a sin, we decree him to be a heretic, fit for punishment." This infallible utterance bound the dogma with additional force on the conscience of the universal Church.
Nor was this a doctrine enforced only by rulers; the people were no less strenuous. In 1390 it was enacted by the city authorities of London that "if any person shall lend or put into the hands of any person gold or silver to receive gain thereby, such person shall have the punishment for usurers." And in the same year the Commons prayed the king that the laws of London against usury might have the force of statutes throughout the realm.
In the fifteenth century the Council of the Church at Salzburg excluded from communion and burial any who took interest for money, and this was a very general rule throughout Germany.
An exception was, indeed, sometimes made: some canonists held that Jews might be allowed to take interest, since they were to be damned in any case, and their monopoly of money-lending might prevent Christians from losing their souls by going into the business. Yet even the Jews were from time to time punished for the crime of usury, and, both as regards Jews and Christians, punishment was bestowed on the dead as well as the living; the bodies of dead money-lenders being here and there dug up and cast out of consecrated ground.
The popular preachers constantly declaimed against all who took interest. The mediæval anecdote books for pulpit use are especially full on this point. Jacques de Vitry tells us that demons on one occasion filled a dead money-lender's mouth with red-hot coins; Cæsar, of Heisterbacho, declared that a toad was found thrusting a piece of money into a dead usurer's heart; in another case, a devil was seen pouring molten gold down a dead money-lender's throat.[1]
- ↑ For an enumeration of councils condemning the taking of interest for money, see Liégois, Essai sur l'histoire et la législation de l'usure, Paris, 1865, p. 78; also the Catholic Dictionary as above. For curious additional details and sources regarding mediæval horror of usurers, see Ducange, Glossarium, etc., article Caorcini. The date, 306, for the Council of Elvira is that assigned by Hefele. For the decree of Alexander III, see citation from the Latin text in Lecky. For a long catalogue of ecclesiastical and civil decrees against taking of interest, see Petit, Traité de l'Usure, Paris, 1840. For the reasoning at bottom of this, see Cunningham, Christian Opinion upon Usury, London, 1884. For the Salzburg decrees, see Zillner, Salzburgische Culturgeschichte, p. 232; and for Germany generally, see Neumann, Geschichte des Wuchers im Deutschland, Halle, 1865, especially p. 22 et seq.; also Roscher, National Oeconomie. For effect of mistranslation of the passage of Luke in the Vulgate, see Döllinger, p. 170, and especially pp. 224, 225. For the capitularies of Charlemagne against usury, see Liégois, p. 77. For Peter Lombard, see his Lib. Sententiarum, lib. iii, dist. XXXVII, 3. For St. Thomas Aquinas, see his works, Migne, vol.
