This theological hostility to the taking of interest was imbedded firmly in the canon law. Again and again it defined usury to be the taking of anything of value beyond the exact original amount of a loan; and under sanction of the universal Church it denounced this as a crime and declared all persons defending it to be guilty of heresy. What this meant the world knows but too well.
The whole evolution of European civilization was greatly hindered by this conscientious policy. Money could only be loaned in most countries at the risk of incurring odium in this world and damnation in the next; hence there was but little capital and few lenders. The rates of interest became at times enormous; as high as forty per cent in England, and ten per cent a month in Italy and Spain. Commerce, manufactures, and general enterprise were dwarfed, while pauperism flourished.
Yet worse than these were the moral results. Doing what one believes is evil is only second in bad consequences to doing what is really evil; hence, all lending and borrowing, even for the most legitimate purposes and at the most reasonable rates, tended to debase the character of both borrower and lender. The prohibition of interest for the use of money in continental Europe promoted luxury and discouraged economy, the rich, who were not engaged in business, finding no easy way of employing their savings productively.
One evil effect is felt in all parts of the world to this hour. The Jews, so strong in will and acute in intellect, were virtually drawn or driven out of all other industries or professions by the theory that their race, being accursed, was only fitted for the accursed profession of money-lending.[1]
- ↑ For evil economic results, and especially for the rise of the rate of interest in England and elsewhere at times to forty per cent, see Cunningham, Growth of English Industry and Commerce, Cambridge, 1890, p. 189; and for its rising to ten per cent a month,
iii, Paris, 1889, question 78, pp. 586 et seq., citing the Scriptures and Aristotle, and especially developing Aristotle's metaphysical idea regarding the "barrenness" of money. For a very good summary of St. Thomas's ideas, see Pearson, pp. 30 et seq. For Dante, see in Canto XI of the Inferno a revelation of the amazing depth of the hostility to the taking of interest. For the London law of 1390 and the petition to the king, see Cunningham, Growth of English Industry and Commerce, pp. 210 and 326; also the Abridgment of the Records in the Tower of London, p. 339. For the theory that Jews, being damned already, might be allowed to practice usury, see Liégois, Histoire de l'Usure, p. 82. For St. Bernard's view, see Epist. CCCLXIII, in Migne, tome clxxxii, p. 567. For ideas and anecdotes for preachers' use, see Joannes de San Geminiano, Summa de Exemplis, Antwerp, 1629, fol. 493, a; also an edition of Venice, 1584, pp. 132 and 159; but especially for multitudes of examples, see the Exempla of Jacques de Vitry, edited by Prof. T. F. Crane, of Cornell University, London, 1890, pp. 203 et seq. For the canon law in relation to usance, see a long line of authorities cited in Die Wucherfrage, St. Louis, 1869, pp. 92 et seq., and especially Decret. Gregor., lib. v, lit. 19, cap. iii, and Clementin, lib. v, lit. 5, sec. 2; see also the Corpus Juris Canonici, Paris, 1618, pp. 227, 228. For the position of the English Church, see Gibson's Corpus Juris Ecclesiastici Anglicani, pp. 1070, 1071, and 1106.
