sacristan’s debt. More borrowing was needed to cover the loan amount with the result that, after some years, the debt owing to Benedict was a staggering 1200 pounds.31
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Trading in sacred pawns was commonplace but some Jews feared and despised it. Rumors were spread that once in the custody of the Jews, the pawned Christian objects were used sacrilegiously. Although he traded pawns for money, Peter the Venerable lamented the holy vessels “held captive” by Jewish pawnbrokers, which, he claimed, were used for despicable and unspeakable purposes. And it was not only Christians who deplored the pawning of religious items as security for a loan. Rabbi Jacob Tam, a Jewish community leader in twelfth-century northern France, was also hostile to the practice and forbade the commerce of “Prayer books of the Church.” In Tam’s case, possessing Christian items was an act of idolatry and the trade of “cult” artifacts was a sin punishable by God. Not only did he rage against the pawnbrokers who traded in Christian sacred objects, he also reviled usury as a sin against God and urged moneylenders and pawnbrokers to turn away from such an ungodly trade. Rabbi Eliezer ben Nathan of Mainz looked at the issue with a different perspective. He thought so little of the pledged Christian sacred items that taking a Christian religious item as a pawn was of no importance. To Eliezer, the items so sacred to Christians were not intrinsically holy to Jews, but, rather, goods attached to a “cult.” Taking a cross as a pawn was the same as taking a necklace or a set of cutlery. In his eyes, to suggest otherwise was to give credence to Christian beliefs.32
Within a century, in many areas of Western Europe, people were becoming used to a credit-based economy. A thirteenth-century Jewish scholar from southern France, Meir ben Simeon of Narbonne, expressed his astonishment at the ongoing Christian opposition to usury:
who can imagine society without loans? …. Since your wealthy [Christians] refrain from lending free of interest, how will the common people and the needy make a living? Or isn’t true that many [of these less privileged people] bring livelihood to their households through a loan of money to purchase one single [cow] for plowing or a bit of cereal or wheat for sowing and [also] for the protection of their families?
Technical innovations, such as the mechanical clock, the spinning wheel, and the astronomical compass were possible thanks to capital, as was entrepreneurship, the growing knowledge of foreign trade, strategies, calculations, better record keeping, and the learning of other languages so as to better participate in that trade. The credit economy fostered alliances as the exchange of a greater array of goods interconnected the new European nations that had been forming since the ←17 | 18→eleventh century. Greater economic interdependence was seen as a possible path to peaceful relations between the nations that so often were at war.33
Monarchs, in particular, took out vast loans. The costly construction of Notre Dame began in 1160 under one French king, Louis VII, while another, Louis IX (1214–1270), redeemed the Crown of Thorns, which was deposited in Notre Dame during the nineteenth century. Before it was offered to the French king by Baldwin II, the emperor of Constantinople, it had been a pledge in the hands of the Venetians against an enormous loan. Rulers spent vast sums of money on military campaigns, running their households, wages, ever more luxurious clothing that marked a person’s status, buildings, gifts, and hospitality. The two main sources of governmental income were taxes, which were unpopular, and loans, which made the rulers debtors. As they took on larger loans more frequently, the subject of usury became a battlefield over which popes and secular rulers tested their power and a subject for popular protest.
The idea that usury was a form of theft was not picked up by secular governments and there is no indication that secular authorities punished usurers as thieves. Nor did the secular authorities regard those who gained from usury in a secondary fashion—that is, not the usurer but someone who benefited from the profits of usury—as a criminal. Given the pressing need for capital, monarchs and other authorities were not always willing to give in to the anti-usury faction’s call for strict adherence to the laws forbidding interest loans. But this conflict of opinion was complicated by the blurred lines between royal jurisdiction and clerical jurisdiction. It was difficult to know exactly where each began, ended, or overlapped and these discrepancies led to intermittent conflict between the pope, determined to retain his power over kings, and rulers, who were eager to wrest free from the tight grip of Rome.34
Any economic activity on the part of monarchs—whether borrowing or imposing taxes—was usually an ad hoc response to political events rather than consistent policy. If it suited their financial or political needs, or if they were pious, monarchs gladly towed the ecclesiastical line by upholding anti-usury laws and sometimes officiating usury law cases. The benefits of this tactic were the monarch’s ability to confiscate property and issue fines to proven usurers which added much needed revenue to the treasury. For foreigners, and that included Jews, conviction of usury might also mean expulsion as well as the appropriation of property. In general, monarchs followed canon law, depending on their relationship with the pope. But in comparison to the benefits of loans, there is no evidence that kings made a substantial enough profit when they banned usury. In late twelfth-century England, the property and debt contracts of a dead ←18 | 19→usurer came within the jurisdiction of the king, but there is no indication that kings actively appropriated the land of the deceased moneylender. The impetus to disrupt and prohibit usury generally came not from the kings but from sectors of society that were adversely affected by moneylending—those in debt they could not repay their loans, other moneylenders eager to gain a monopoly and push out competition, and those in the Church who objected to what they claimed were its harmful moral, social, and economic effects.35
If their need for funds was not met, monarchs tended to turn a blind eye to usury laws and customs, as did nobles, clergymen, and the peasantry. When protests over more tax demands grew dangerous, the monarchs turned instead to the moneylender to borrow the capital necessary to fund their battles, lavish banquets, briberies, and gifts. While they paid lip service to the papacy’s anti-usury regulations and even their own anti-usury laws, monarchs throughout Europe were holding out their hand for an interest-bearing loan. That is, until the moneylender was more trouble than they were worth.
Notes
1.Britnell, The Commercialisation of English Society, 72; Michel Mollat and Philippe Wolff, The Popular Revolutions of the Late Middle Ages (London: Allen & Unwin, 1973), 34; Georges Duby, The Early Growth of the European Economy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1974), 235.
2.Britnell, The Commercialisation of English Society, 7, 128.
3.Francois Louis Ganshot and Adriaan Verhulst, “France, The Low Countries, and Western Germany” in Cambridge Economic History of Europe, I: The Agrarian Life of the Middle Ages (Cambridge: CUP, 1966), ed. M.M. Postan, 332–33; Adriaan Verhulst, The Carolingian Economy (Cambridge: CUP, 2002), 128; Duby, The Early Growth of the European Economy, 157–59, 161, 165–67, 169, 229; Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks, Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: CUP, 2006), Kindle ed., chap.1.
4.James Davis, “The Ethics of Arbitrage and Forestalling Across the Late Medieval World,” in Simon and James E. Shaw, eds., Market Ethics and Practices, c. 1300–1850 (Abingdon UK & New York: Routledge 2018), Kindle ed., chap. 1
5.Charlemagne’s empire
