Another mode of obtaining relief was tried. Subtle theologians devised evasions of various sorts. Two among these inventions of the schoolmen obtained much notoriety.
The first was the doctrine of "damnum emergens": if a man, in order to loan money, was obliged to withdraw it from profitable business, and so suffer loss, it was claimed that he might demand of the borrower compensation for such loss. Equally cogent was the doctrine of "lucrum, cessans": if a man, in order to loan money, was obliged to diminish his income from productive enterprises, it was claimed that he might receive in return, in addition to his money, an amount exactly equal to this diminution in his income.
But such evasions were looked upon with little favor by the great body of theologians, and the name of St. Thomas Aquinas was cited against them.
Opposition on scriptural grounds to the taking of interest was not confined to the older Church. Protestantism was led by Luther and several of his associates into the same line of thought and practice. Said Luther: "To exchange anything with any one and gain by the exchange is not to do a charity, but to steal. Every usurer is a thief worthy of the gibbet. I call those usurers who lend money at five or six per cent." But it is only just to say that at a later period Luther took a much more moderate view. Melanchthon, defining usury as any interest whatever, condemned it again and again; and the Goldberg Catechism of 1558, for which he wrote a preface and recommendation, declares every person taking interest for money a thief; from generation to generation this doctrine was upheld by the more eminent divines of the Lutheran Church in all parts of Germany.
The English reformers showed the same hostility to interest bearing loans. Under Henry VIII the law of Henry VII against taking interest had been modified for the better; but the revival of religious feeling under Edward VI caused in 1553 the passage
laumin, Dictionnaire, article Intérét. For the renewed opposition to the taking of interest in England, see Craik, History of British Commerce, chap. vi. The statute cited fs 3 Henry VII, chap. vi. It is found in Gibson's Corpus Juris Eccles. Anglic, p. 1071. For the adverse decree of Leo X, see Liégois, p. V6. See also Lecky, Rationalism, vol. ii. For the dragging out of the usurer's body at Piacenza, see Burckhardt, The Renaissance in Italy, London, 1878, vol. ii, p. 339. For public opinion of similar strength on this subject in England, see Cunningham, p. 239; also Pike, History of Crime in England, vol. i, pp. 127, 193. For good general observations on the same, see Stephen, History of Criminal Law in England, London, 1883, vol. iii, pp. 195-197. For usury laws in Castile and Aragon, see Bédarride, pp. 191, 192. For exceedingly valuable details as to the attitude of the mediæval Church, see Léopold Delisle, Études sur la Classe Agricole en Normaudie au Moyen Âge, Evreux, 1851, pp. 200 et seq., also p. 468. For penalties in France, see Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, in Master of the Rolls series, especially vol. iii, pp. 191, 192.
