Religion and the Rise of Capitalism

a quite different order of economic activities from that represented by loans from great banking-houses to the merchants and potentates who were their clients. Its object was simple and direct⁠—to prevent the well-to-do moneylender from exploiting the necessities of the peasant or the craftsman; its categories, which were quite appropriate to that type of transaction, were those of personal morality. It was in these commonplace dealings among small men that oppression was easiest and its results most pitiable. It was for them that the Church’s scheme of economic ethics had been worked out, and with reference to them, though set at naught in high places, it was meant to be enforced, for it was part of Christian charity.

It was enforced partly by secular authorities, partly, in so far as the rivalry of secular authorities would permit it, by the machinery of ecclesiastical discipline. The ecclesiastical legislation on the subject of usury has been so often analyzed that it is needless to do more than allude to it. Early Councils had forbidden usury to be taken by the clergy.64 The Councils of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries forbid it to be taken by clergy or laity, and lay down rules for dealing with offenders. Clergy who lend money to persons in need, take their possessions in pawn, and receive profits beyond the capital sum lent, are to be deprived of their office.65 Manifest usurers are not to be admitted to communion or Christian burial; their offerings are not to be accepted; and ecclesiastics who fail to punish them are to be suspended until they make satisfaction to their bishop.66 The high-water mark of the ecclesiastical attack on usury was probably reached in the legislation of the Councils of Lyons (1274) and of Vienne (1312). The former reenacted the measures laid down by the third Lateran Council (1175), and supplemented them by rules which virtually made the moneylender an outlaw. No individual or society, under pain of excommunication or interdict, was to let houses to usurers, but was to expel them (had they been admitted) within three months. They were to be refused confession, absolution and Christian burial until they had made restitution, and their wills were to be invalid.67 The legislation of the Council of Vienne was even more sweeping. Declaring that it has learned with dismay that there are communities which, contrary to human and divine law, sanction usury and compel debtors to observe usurious contracts, it declares that all rulers and magistrates knowingly maintaining such laws are to incur excommunication, and requires the legislation in question to be revoked within three months. Since the true nature of usurious transactions is often concealed beneath various specious devices, moneylenders are to be compelled by the ecclesiastical authorities to submit their accounts to examination. Any person obstinately declaring that usury is not a sin is to be punished as a heretic, and inquisitors are to proceed against him tanquam contra diffamatos vel suspectos de hæresi.68

It would not be easy to find a more drastic example, either of ecclesiastical sovereignty, or of the attempt to assert the superiority of the moral law to economic expediency, than the requirement, under threat of excommunication, that all secular legislation sanctioning usury shall be repealed. But, for an understanding of the way in which the system was intended to work, the enactments of Councils are perhaps less illuminating than the correspondence between the papal Curia and subordinate ecclesiastical authorities on specific cases and questions of interpretation. Are the heirs of those who have made money by usury bound to make restitution? Yes, the same penalties are to be applied to them as to the original offenders. The pious object of ransoming prisoners is not to justify the asking of a price for a loan. A man is to be accounted a usurer, not only if he charges interest, but if he allows for the element of time in a bargain, by asking a higher price when he sells on credit. Even when debtors have sworn not to proceed against usurers, the ecclesiastical authorities are to compel the latter to restore their gains, and, if witnesses are terrorized by the protection given to usurers by the powerful, punishment can be imposed without their evidence, provided that the offence is a matter of common notoriety. An archbishop of Canterbury is reminded that usury is perilous, not only for the clergy, but for all men whatever, and is warned to use ecclesiastical censures to secure the restoration, without the deduction of interest, of property which has been pawned. Usurers, says a papal letter to the archbishop of Salerno, object to restoring gains, or say that they have not the means; he is to compel all who can to make restitution, either to those from whom interest was taken, or to their heirs; when neither course is possible, they are to give it to the poor; for, as Augustine says, non remittitur peccatum, nisi restituitur ablatum. At Genoa, the Pope is informed, a practice obtains of undertaking to pay, at the end of a given term, a higher price for wares than they were worth at the moment when the sale took place. It is not clear that such contracts are necessarily usurious; nevertheless, the sellers run into sin, unless there is a probability that the wares will have changed in value by the time that payment is made; “and therefore your fellow-citizens would show a wise regard for their salvation if they ceased making contracts of the kind, since the thoughts of men cannot be concealed from Almighty God.”69

It is evident from the number of doubtful cases referred to Rome for decision that the law with regard to usury was not easily administered. It is evident, also, that efforts were made to offer guidance in dealing with difficult and technical problems. In the book of common forms, drawn