not to engage in moneylending, except with “strangers.” So while Christians interpreted the text to mean usury was forbidden to all Christians, Jews censured usury only between Jews and not between Jews and non-Jews, so long as the Jew was the creditor. In practise, however, Jews were not only creditors but borrowers, too, from both Jews and Christians.14
The connection between Jews and moneylending was notable in the early Church. To the fourth-century archbishop of Constantinople John Chrysostom, moneylenders and Jews were synonymous, and he denounced them as plundering, covetous thieves who cheated in trade. He also complained about the aristocrats “jacking up of prices,” and decorating their villas than doing “anything with some sense in it.” The influential fifth-century Syrian bishop, Theodoretos of Kyross, ←7 | 8→accused Jewish moneylenders of accumulating wealth at the expense of Christians while Isaac of Antioch cautioned Christians not to imitate the Jews who “fast, and devour profits … pray, and absorb the usurers … and devour the flesh of the poor.” To such critics, making a profit off moneylending was simply financial exploitation; whether the particular transaction was amicable and honest or coercive and extortionate was irrelevant.15
The Council of Nicea, in 325, had issued an edict banning usury (labeling it “filthy lucre”), but this applied only to the clergy. It was not until the early twelfth century, as towns grew and the capital market expanded, that the subject of usury became urgent and members of the Church pushed for a complete ban. It was nothing less than a sin against God, said the Cistercian abbot Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153), and he rejected any attempt by lay and religious rulers to come to some sort of accommodation with it. Cardinal Robert of Courcon (c.1160–1219), who became the formative chancellor at the University of Paris, thought usury was “universally infecting society,” and called for an unequivocal ban. Not only was usury unneighborly and anti-social, not only was it motivated by greed and was against charity, it was nothing less than theft. The Italian monk Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109) warned people not to become rich by “theft and usury and fraud.” His pupil, Anselm of Lucca, continued with this analogy, calling for the return of usuries to the borrower because they were stolen goods. Their countryman, theologian Peter Lombard (1100–1160), quoted Aristotle when he placed usury under “furtum” (civic, but not criminal, theft) in his influential Book of Sentences. The French scholastic theologian, William of Auxerre (1145–1231), acknowledged profit as legitimate if it was gained with moral honesty but he was disgusted by the way in which moneylending was conducted as if it was a legitimate profession. In his mind, usury was the theft of time. As time was God’s possession, so the usurer who added future interest onto a loan was charging for the use of time and, in essence, stealing from God. The twelfth-century poem Les Vers de la Mort (Verses of Death) was written by the minstrel-turned-monk Hélinand de Froidmont and he, too, equated usury with theft.
The usurer says: I know very well
That what I have stolen is not mine
I am a dishonorable sinner
Because I keep, against the law
That which belongs to another, in which I have no part.
←8 | 9→
Accepting a profit from a loan was no different to breaking into a home and taking someone’s money or goods. It was the same as stealing livestock from your neighbor. With money in greater circulation and more interest loans transacted, usury became a matter of social justice for its critics.16
In 1139, usury was officially pronounced a sin for every Christian by the Second Lateran Council. According to the Church, usury tainted not only the moneylender but anyone who benefited from the profits of usury, a stance at odds with most secular authorities. Even alms were not allowed if the money had been made from usury, although how much this rule was followed is impossible to know.17
Interest loans were a thorny issue for the Church and it was clear that monasteries and clergymen indulged in usury in contradiction of edicts forbidding the practice. There were those in the Church who believed they had to adapt to the new financial world and urged compromise, such as regulating a lower interest rate. Given the fact that the Church was both a creditor and borrower, buying and selling land and goods, collecting tithes and other revenue from its properties and agriculture, which provided the money for its parish services, this was a pragmatic and self-preserving concession. The papacy therefore sought to redefine usury with clear instructions on what was legal and moral and what crossed the line and became sinful and harmful to the common good.
Up until the Third Lateran Council in 1179, Luke’s curt admonition about usury had been negligible in the discussion of it, and it was debatable whether or not it was a command to ban usury completely and forever. The council guided by Pope Alexander III made Luke’s brief utterance the reference point for the Church, and the definition of usury was broadened to include credit that was sold at a higher price than cash sales. While acknowledging that usury was ubiquitous in spite of moral outrage, the Church now employed the weapon of denying usurers a Christian burial. Of course, this only concerned Christians but that was the main concern of the Church. Jewish moneylending was a matter of Church policy only insofar as it affected Christians.18
In 1185, when Uberto Crivelli became pope, taking the name Urban III, he went further than his predecessors by claiming that usury was simply the “intention to gain.” Nearly two decades later, Pope Innocent III, in a letter to the French bishops entitled On Usury, wrote:
We believe that you know how pernicious the vice of usury is, since, in addition to the ecclesiastical laws which have been issued against it, the prophet says that those who put their money out at interest are to be excluded from the ←9 | 10→tabernacle of the Lord [Psalms 15:5] And the New Testament, as well as the Old, forbids the taking of interest, since the Truth [Christ] himself says: “Lend, hoping for nothing again.” [Luke 6:35] …. We command you all by this apostolic writing not to permit those who are known as usurers to clear themselves by any subterfuge or trick when they are charged with the crime.
Usury was trickery and deception practiced upon the desperate and uninformed. Yet, despite his condemnation, Innocent understood the important role moneylending played in the Church’s and the wider society’s economic life. He therefore advised a cautious enforcement of the Lateran Council decrees, concerned that if the numerous usurers were forbidden their profession “many churches would have to be shut down.”19
Innocent presided over the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 which prohibited Jews from charging exorbitant interest. Ostensibly, this was to guard Christians against the dangers of moneylending, but it begged the question: What was considered exorbitant? And why were risk and availability of capital not taken into consideration, as they were in other economic transactions, such as the sale of goods? Profits were not guaranteed but dependent upon a multitude of factors—changes in coinage or the circulation of money, debasement of currency, unforeseen political events including war, bankruptcies, changes in the balance of payments, manipulation of the exchange rate, and many other things. But in the case of interest loans, risk was not valued. Canon 67 of the Council stated:
The more the Christian religion is restrained from usurious practices, so much the more does the perfidity of the Jews grow in these matters, so that within a short time they are exhausting the resources of Christians. Wishing, therefore, to see that Christians are not savagely oppressed by Jews in this matter, we ordain by this synodal decree that if Jews in future, on any pretext, extort oppressive and excessive interest
