2.19. FROM LEVITICUS TO POLITICAL
ECONOMY
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF HOSTILITY
TO LOANS AT INTEREST.
AMONG questions on which the supporters of right reason in
political and social science have only conquered theological
opposition after centuries of war, is the taking of interest on
loans. In hardly any struggle has rigid adherence to the letter of
our sacred books been more prolonged and injurious.
Certainly, if the criterion of truth, as regards any doctrine, be
that of St. Vincent of Lerins—that it has been held in the Church
"always, everywhere, and by all"—then on no point may a Christian
of these days be more sure than that every savings institution,
every loan and trust company, every bank, every loan of capital by
an individual, every means by which accumulated capital has been
lawfully lent even at the most moderate interest, to make men
workers rather than paupers, is based on deadly sin.
The early evolution of the belief that taking interest for money is
sinful presents a curious working together of metaphysical,
theological, and humanitarian ideas.
In the main centre of ancient Greek civilization, the loaning of
money at interest came to be accepted at an early period as a
condition of productive industry, and no legal restriction was
imposed. In Rome there was a long process of development: the greed
of creditors in early times led to laws against the taking of
interest; but, though these lasted long, that strong practical
sense which gave Rome the empire of the world substituted finally,
for this absolute prohibition, the establishment of rates by law.
Yet many of the leading Greek and Roman thinkers opposed this
practical settlement of the question, and, foremost of all,
Aristotle. In a metaphysical way he declared that money is by
nature "barren"; that the birth of money from money is therefore
"unnatural"; and hence that the taking of interest is to be
censured and hated. Plato, Plutarch, both the Catos, Cicero,
Seneca, and various other leaders of ancient thought, arrived at
much the same conclusion—sometimes from sympathy with oppressed
debtors; sometimes from dislike of usurers; sometimes from simple
contempt of trade.
From these sources there came into the early Church the germ of a
theological theory upon the subject.
But far greater was the stream of influence from the Jewish and
Christian sacred books. In the Old Testament stood various texts
condemning usury—the term usury meaning any taking of interest:
the law of Moses, while it allowed usury in dealing with strangers,
forbade it in dealing with Jews. In the New Testament, in the
Sermon on the Mount, as given by St. Luke, stood the text "Lend,
hoping for nothing again." These texts seemed to harmonize with the
most beautiful characteristic of primnitive Christianity; its
tender care for the poor and oppressed: hence we find, from the
earliest period, the whole weight of the Church brought to bear
against the taking of interest for money.
The great fathers of the Eastern Church, and among them St. Basil,
St. Chrysostom, and St. Gregory of Nyssa,—the fathers of the
Western Church, and among them Tertullian, St. Ambrose, St.
Augustine, and St. Jerome, joined most earnestly in this
condemnation. St. Basil denounces money at interest as a "fecund
monster," and says, "The divine law declares expressly, `Thou shalt
not lend on usury to thy brother or thy neighbour.'" St. Gregory of
Nyssa calls down on him who lends money at interest the vengeance
of the Almighty. St. Chrysostom says: "What can be more
unreasonable than to sow without land, without rain, without
ploughs? All those who give themselves up to this damnable culture
shall reap only tares. Let us cut off these monstrous births of
gold and silver; let us stop this execrable fecundity." Lactantius
called the taking of interest "robbery." St. Ambrose declared it as
bad as murder, St. Jerome threw the argument into the form of a
dilemma, which was used as a weapon against money-lenders for
centuries. Pope Leo the Great solemnly adjudged it a sin worthy of
severe punishment.
This unanimity of the fathers of the Church brought about a
crystallization of hostility to interest-bearing loans into
numberless decrees of popes and councils and kings and legislatures
throughout Christendom during more than fifteen hundred years,
and the canon law was shaped in accordance with these. At first
these were more especially directed against the clergy, but we soon
find them extending to the laity. These prohibitions were enforced
by the Council of Arles in 314, and a modern Church apologist
insists that every great assembly of the Church, from the Council
of Elvira in 306 to that of Vienne in 1311, inclusive, solemnly
condemned lending money at interest. The greatest rulers under the
sway of the Church—Justinian, in the Empire of the East;
Charlemagne, in the Empire of the West; Alfred, in England; St.
Louis, in France—yielded fully to this dogma. In the ninth century
Alfred went so far as to confiscate the estates of money-lenders,
denying them burial in Consecrated ground; and similar decrees were
made in other parts of Europe. In the twelfth century the Greek
Church seems to have relaxed its strictness somewhat, but the Roman
Church grew more severe. St. Anselm proved from the Scriptures that
the taking of interest is a breach of the Ten Commandments. Peter
Lombard, in his Sentences, made the taking of interest purely and
simply theft. St. Bernard, reviving religious earnestness in the
Church, took the same view. In 1179 the Third Council of the
Lateran decreed that impenitent money-lenders should be excluded
from the altar, from absolution in the hour of death, and from
Christian burial. Pope Urban III reiterated the declaration that
the passage in St. Luke forbade the taking of any interest
whatever. Pope Alexander III declared that the prohibition in this
matter could never be suspended by dispensation.
In the thirteenth century Pope Gregory IX dealt an especially
severe blow at commerce by his declaration that even to advance on
interest the money necessary in maritime trade was damnable usury;
and this was fitly followed by Gregory X, who forbade Christian
burial to those guilty of this practice; the Council of Lyons meted
out the same penalty. This idea was still more firmly fastened upon
the world by the two greatest thinkers of the time: first, by St.
Thomas Aquinas, who knit it into the mind of the Church by the use
of the Scriptures and of Aristotle; and next by Dante, who pictured
money-lenders in one of the worst regions of hell.
About the beginning of the fourteenth century the "Subtile Doctor"
of the Middle Ages, Duns Scotus, gave to the world an exquisite
piece of reasoning in evasion of the accepted doctrine; but all to
no purpose: the Council of Vienne, presided over by Pope Clement V,
declared that if any one "shall pertinaciously presume to affirm
that the taking of interest for money is not a sin, we decree him
to be a heretic, fit for punishment." This infallible utterance
bound the dogma with additional force on the conscience of the
universal Church.
Nor was this a doctrine enforced by rulers only; the people were
no less strenuous. In 1390 the city authorities of London enacted
that, "if any person shall lend or put into the hands of any person
gold or silver to receive gain thereby, such person shall have the
punishment for usurers." And in the same year the Commons prayed
the king that the laws of London against usury might have the force
of statutes throughout the realm.
In the fifteenth century the Council of the Church at Salzburg
excluded from communion and burial any who took interest for money,
and this was a very general rule throughout Germany.
An exception was, indeed, sometimes made: some canonists held that
Jews might be allowed to take interest, since they were to be
damned in any case, and their monopoly of money-lending might
prevent Christians from losing their souls by going into the
business. Yet even the Jews were from time to time punished for the
crime of usury; and, as regards Christians, punishment was bestowed
on the dead as well as the living—the bodies of dead money-lenders
being here and there dug up and cast out of consecrated ground.
The popular preachers constantly declaimed against all who took
interest. The medieval anecdote books for pulpit use are especially
full on this point. Jacques de Vitry tells us that demons on one
occasion filled a dead money-lender's mouth with red-hot coins;
Cesarius of Heisterbach declared that a toad was found thrusting a
piece of money into a dead usurer's heart; in another case, a devil
was seen pouring molten gold down a dead money-lender's throat.
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 holds
to be 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 both borrower and lender. The prohibition of lending at
interest in continental Europe promoted luxury and discouraged
economy; the rich, who were not engaged in business, finding no
easy way of employing their incomes productively, spent them
largely in ostentation and riotous living.
One evil effect is felt in all parts of the world to this hour. The
Jews, so acute in intellect and strong in will, 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
abhorred profession of money-lending.
These evils were so manifest, when trade began to revive throughout
Europe in the fifteenth century, that most earnest exertions were
put forth to induce the Church to change its position.
The first important effort of this kind was made by John Gerson.
His general learning made him Chancellor of the University of
Paris; his sacred learning made him the leading orator at the
Council of Constance; his piety led men to attribute to him The
Imitation of Christ. Shaking off theological shackles, he
declared, "Better is it to lend money at reasonable interest, and
thus to give aid to the poor, than to see them reduced by poverty
to steal, waste their goods, and sell at a low price their personal
and real property."
But this idea was at once buried beneath citations from the
Scriptures, the fathers, councils, popes, and the canon law. Even
in the most active countries there seemed to be no hope. In
England, under Henry VII, Cardinal Morton, the lord chancellor,
addressed Parliament, asking it to take into consideration loans of
money at interest. The result was a law which imposed on lenders at
interest a fine of a hundred pounds besides the annulment of the
loan; and, to show that there was an offence against religion
involved, there was added a clause "reserving to the Church,
notwithstanding this punishment, the correction of their souls
according to the laws of the same."
Similar enactments were made by civil authority in various parts of
Europe; and just when the trade, commerce, and manufactures of the
modern epoch had received an immense impulse from the great series
of voyages of discovery by such men as Columbus, Vasco da Gama,
Magellan, and the Cabots, this barrier against enterprise was
strengthened by a decree from no less enlightened a pontiff than Leo X.
The popular feeling warranted such decrees. As late as the end of
the Middle Ages we find the people of Piacenza dragging the body of
a money-lender out of his grave in consecrated ground and throwing
it into the river Po, in order to stop a prolonged rainstorm; and
outbreaks of the same spirit were frequent in other countries.
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 lender
suffered loss by the failure of the borrower to return a loan at a
date named, compensation might be made. Thus it was that, if the
nominal date of payment was made to follow quickly after the real
date of the loan, the compensation for the anticipated delay in
payment had a very strong resemblance to interest. Equally cogent
was the doctrine of "lucrum cessans": if a man, in order to lend
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 favour by the great
body of theologians, and the name of St. Thomas Aquinas was
triumphantly 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 1552 the passage of the
"Bill of Usury." In this it is said, "Forasmuch as usury is by the
word of God utterly prohibited, as a vice most odious and
detestable, as in divers places of the Holy Scriptures it is
evident to be seen, which thing by no godly teachings and
persuasions can sink into the hearts of divers greedy,
uncharitable, and covetous persons of this realm, nor yet, by any
terrible threatenings of God's wrath and vengeance," etc., it is
enacted that whosoever shall thereafter lend money "for any manner
of usury, increase, lucre, gain, or interest, to be had, received,
or hoped for," shall forfeit principal and interest, and suffer
imprisonment and fine at the king's pleasure.
But, most fortunately, it happened that Calvin, though at times
stumbling over the usual texts against the taking of interest for
money, turned finally in the right direction. He cut through the
metaphysical arguments of Aristotle, and characterized the
subtleties devised to evade the Scriptures as "a childish game with
God." In place of these subtleties there was developed among
Protestants a serviceable fiction—the statement that usury means
illegal or oppressive interest. Under the action of this fiction,
commerce and trade revived rapidly in Protestant countries, though
with occasional checks from exact interpreters of Scripture. At the
same period in France, the great Protestant jurist Dumoulin brought
all his legal learning and skill in casuistry to bear on the same
side. A certain ferretlike acuteness and litheness seem to have
enabled him to hunt down the opponents of interest-taking through
the most tortuous arguments of scholasticism.
In England the struggle went on with varying fortune; statesmen on
one side, and theologians on the other. We have seen how, under
Henry VIII, interest was allowed at a fixed rate, and how, the
development of English Protestantism having at first strengthened
the old theological view, there was, under Edward VI, a temporarily
successful attempt to forbid the taking of interest by law.
The Puritans, dwelling on Old Testament texts, continued for a
considerable time especially hostile to the taking of any interest.
Henry Smith, a noted preacher, thundered from the pulpit of St.
Clement Danes in London against "the evasions of Scripture" which
permitted men to lend money on interest at all. In answer to the
contention that only "biting" usury was oppressive, Wilson, a noted
upholder of the strict theological view in political economy,
declared: "There is difference in deed between the bite of a dogge
and the bite of a flea, and yet, though the flea doth lesse harm,
yet the flea doth bite after hir kinde, yea, and draweth blood,
too. But what a world this is, that men will make sin to be but a
fleabite, when they see God's word directly against them!"
The same view found strong upholders among contemporary English
Catholics. One of the most eminent of these, Nicholas Sanders,
revived very vigorously the use of an old scholastic argument. He
insisted that "man can not sell time," that time is not a human
possession, but something which is given by God alone: he declared,
"Time was not of your gift to your neighbour, but of God's gift to
you both."
In the Parliament of the period, we find strong assertions of the
old idea, with constant reference to Scripture and the fathers. In
one debate, Wilson cited from Ezekiel and other prophets and
attributed to St. Augustine the doctrine that "to take but a cup of
wine is usury and damnable." Fleetwood recalled the law of King
Edward the Confessor, which submitted usurers to the ordeal.
But arguments of this sort had little influence upon Elizabeth and
her statesmen. Threats of damnation in the next world troubled them
little if they could have their way in this. They re-established
the practice of taking interest under restrictions, and this, in
various forms, has remained in England ever since. Most notable in
this phase of the evolution of scientific doctrine in political
economy at that period is the emergence of a recognised difference
between usury and interest. Between these two words, which had so
long been synonymous, a distinction now appears: the former being
construed to indicate oppressive interest, and the latter just
rates for the use of money. This idea gradually sank into the
popular mind of Protestant countries, and the scriptural texts no
longer presented any difficulty to the people at large, since there
grew up a general belief that the word "usury," as employed in
Scripture, had always meant exorbitant interest; and this in
spite of the parable of the Talents. Still, that the old
Aristotelian quibble had not been entirely forgotten, is clearly
seen by various passages in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice. But
this line of reasoning seems to have received its quietus from Lord
Bacon. He did not, indeed, develop a strong and connected argument
on the subject; but he burst the bonds of Aristotle, and based
interest for money upon natural laws. How powerful the new current
of thought was, is seen from the fact that James I, of all monarchs
the most fettered by scholasticism and theology, sanctioned a
statute dealing with interest for money as absolutely necessary.
Yet, even after this, the old idea asserted itself; for the bishops
utterly refused to agree to the law allowing interest until a
proviso was inserted that "nothing in this law contained shall be
construed or expounded to allow the practice of usury in point of
religion or conscience." The old view cropped out from time to time
in various public declarations. Famous among these were the
Treatise of Usury, published in 1612 by Dr. Fenton, who restated
the old arguments with much force, and the Usury Condemned of John
Blaxton, published in 1634. Blaxton, who also was a clergyman,
defined usury as the taking of any interest whatever for money,
citing in support of this view six archbishops and bishops and over
thirty doctors of divinity in the Anglican Church, some of their
utterances being very violent and all of them running their roots
down into texts of Scripture. Typical among these is a sermon of
Bishop Sands, in which he declares, regarding the taking of
interest: "This canker hath corrupted all England; we shall doe God
and our country true service by taking away this evill; represse it
by law, else the heavy hand of God hangeth over us and will strike us."
RETREAT OF THE CHURCH, PROTESTANT
AND CATHOLIC.
But about the middle of the seventeenth century Sir Robert Filmer
gave this doctrine the heaviest blow it ever received in England.
Taking up Dr. Fenton's treatise, he answered it, and all works like
it, in a way which, however unsuitable to this century, was
admirably adapted to that. He cites Scripture and chops logic after
a masterly manner. Characteristic is this declaration: "St. Paul
doth, with one breath, reckon up seventeen sins, and yet usury is
none of them; but many preachers can not reckon up seven deadly
sins, except they make usury one of them." Filmer followed Fenton
not only through his theology, but through his political economy,
with such relentless keenness that the old doctrine seems to have
been then and there practically worried out of existence, so far as
England was concerned.
Departures from the strict scriptural doctrines regarding interest
soon became frequent in Protestant countries, and they were
followed up with especial vigour in Holland. Various theologians in
the Dutch Church attempted to assert the scriptural view by
excluding bankers from the holy communion; but the commercial
vigour of the republic was too strong: Salmasius led on the forces
of right reason brilliantly, and by the middle of the seventeenth
century the question was settled rightly in that country. This work
was aided, indeed, by a far greater man, Hugo Grotius; but here was
shown the power of an established dogma. Great as Grotius was—and
it may well be held that his book on War and Peace has wrought
more benefit to humanity than any other attributed to human
authorship—he was, in the matter of interest for money, too much
entangled in theological reasoning to do justice to his cause or to
himself. He declared the prohibition of it to be scriptural, but
resisted the doctrine of Aristotle, and allowed interest on certain
natural and practical grounds.
In Germany the struggle lasted longer. Of some little significance,
perhaps, is the demand of Adam Contzen, in 1629, that lenders at
interest should be punished as thieves; but by the end of the
seventeenth century Puffendorf and Leibnitz had gained the victory.
Protestantism, open as it was to the currents of modern thought,
could not long continue under the dominion of ideas unfavourable to
economic development, and perhaps the most remarkable proof of this
was presented early in the eighteenth century in America, by no
less strict a theologian than Cotton Mather. In his Magnalia he
argues against the whole theological view with a boldness,
acuteness, and good sense which cause us to wonder that this can be
the same man who was so infatuated regarding witchcraft. After an
argument so conclusive as his, there could have been little left of
the old anti-economic doctrine in New England.
But while the retreat of the Protestant Church from the old
doctrine regarding the taking of interest was henceforth easy, in
the Catholic Church it was far more difficult. Infallible popes and
councils, with saints, fathers, and doctors, had so constantly
declared the taking of any interest at all to be contrary to
Scripture, that the more exact though less fortunate interpretation
of the sacred text relating to interest continued in Catholic
countries. When it was attempted in France in the seventeenth
century to argue that usury "means oppressive interest," the
Theological Faculty of the Sorbonne declared that usury is the
taking of any interest at all, no matter how little; and the
eighteenth chapter of Ezekiel was cited to clinch this argument.
Another attempt to ease the burden of industry and commerce was
made by declaring that "usury means interest demanded not as a
matter of favour but as a matter of right." This, too, was solemnly
condemned by Pope innocent XI.
Again an attempt was made to find a way out of the difficulty by
declaring that "usury is interest greater than the law allows."
This, too, was condemned, and so also was the declaration that
"usury is interest on loans not for a fixed time."
Still the forces of right reason pressed on, and among them, in the
seventeenth century, in France, was Richard Simon. He attempted to
gloss over the declarations of Scripture against lending at
interest, in an elaborate treatise, but was immediately confronted
by Bossuet. Just as Bossuet had mingled Scripture with astronomy
and opposed the Copernican theory, so now he mingled Scripture
with political economy and denounced the lending of money at
interest. He called attention to the fact that the Scriptures, the
councils of the Church from the beginning, the popes, the fathers,
had all interpreted the prohibition of "usury" to be a prohibition
of any lending at interest; and he demonstrated this interpretation
to be the true one. Simon was put to confusion and his book condemned.
There was but too much reason for Bossuet's interpretation. There
stood the fact that the prohibition of one of the most simple and
beneficial principles in political and economical science was
affirmed, not only by the fathers, but by twenty-eight councils of
the Church, six of them general councils, and by seventeen popes,
to say nothing of innumerable doctors in theology and canon law.
And these prohibitions by the Church had been accepted as of divine
origin by all obedient sons of the Church in the government of
France. Such rulers as Charles the Bald in the ninth century, and
St. Louis in the thirteenth, had riveted this idea into the civil
law so firmly that it seemed impossible ever to detach it.
As might well be expected, Italy was one of the countries in which
the theological theory regarding usury—lending at interest—was
most generally asserted and assented to. Among the great number of
Italian canonists who supported the theory, two deserve especial
mention, as affording a contrast to the practical manner in which
the commercial Italians met the question.
In the sixteenth century, very famous among canonists was the
learned Benedictine, Vilagut. In 1589 he published at Venice his
great work on usury, supporting with much learning and vigour the
most extreme theological consequences of the old doctrine. He
defines usury as the taking of anything beyond the original loan,
and declares it mortal sin; he advocates the denial to usurers of
Christian burial, confession, the sacraments, absolution, and
connection with the universities; he declares that priests
receiving offerings from usurers should refrain from exercising
their ministry until the matter is passed upon by the bishop.
About the middle of the seventeenth century another ponderous folio
was published in Venice upon the same subject and with the same
title, by Onorato Leotardi. So far from showing any signs of
yielding, he is even more extreme than Vilagut had been, and quotes
with approval the old declaration that lenders of money at interest
are not only robbers but murderers.
So far as we can learn, no real opposition was made in either
century to this theory, as a theory; as to practice, it was
different. The Italian traders did not answer theological argument;
they simply overrode it. In spite of theology, great banks were
established, and especially that of Venice at the end of the
twelfth century, and those of Barcelona and Genoa at the beginning
of the fifteenth. Nowhere was commerce carried on in more complete
defiance of this and other theological theories hampering trade
than in the very city where these great treatises were published.
The sin of usury, like the sin of commerce with the Mohammedans,
seems to have been settled for by the Venetian merchants on their
deathbeds; and greatly to the advantage of the magnificent churches
and ecclesiastical adornments of the city.
By the seventeenth century the clearest thinkers in the Roman
Church saw that her theology must be readjusted to political
economy: so began a series of amazing attempts to reconcile a view
permitting usury with the long series of decrees of popes and
councils forbidding it.
In Spain, the great Jesuit casuist Escobar led the way, and rarely
had been seen such exquisite hair-splitting. But his efforts were
not received with the gratitude they perhaps deserved. Pascal,
revolting at their moral effect, attacked them unsparingly in his
Provincial Letters, citing especially such passages as the
following: "It is usury to receive profit from those to whom one
lends, if it be exacted as justly due; but, if it be exacted as a
debt of gratitude, it is not usury." This and a multitude of
similar passages Pascal covered with the keen ridicule and
indignant denunciation of which he was so great a master.
But even the genius of Pascal could not stop such efforts. In the
eighteenth century they were renewed by a far greater theologian
than Escobar—by him who was afterward made a saint and proclaimed
a doctor of the Church—Alphonso Liguori.
Starting with bitter denunciations of usury, Liguori soon developed
a multitude of subtle devices for escaping the guilt of it.
Presenting a long and elaborate theory of "mental, usury" he
arrives at the conclusion that, if the borrower pay interest of
his own free will, the lender may keep it. In answer to the
question whether the lender may keep what the borrower paid, not
out of gratitude but out of fear—fear that otherwise loans might
be refused him in future—Liguori says, "To be usury it must be
paid by reason of a contract, or as justly due; payment by reason
of such a fear does not cause interest to be paid as an actual
price." Again Liguori tells us, "It is not usury to exact
something in return for the danger and expense of regaining the
principal." The old subterfuges of "Damnum emergens" and "Lucrum
cessans" are made to do full duty. A remarkable quibble is found in
the answer to the question whether he sins who furnishes money to
a man whom he knows to intend employing it in usury. After citing
affirmative opinions from many writers, Liguori says,
"Notwithstanding these opinions, the better opinion seems to me to
be that the man thus putting out his money is not bound to make
restitution, for his action is not injurious to the borrower, but
rather favourable to him," and this reasoning the saint develops at
great length.
In the Latin countries this sort of casuistry eased the relations
of the Church with the bankers, and it was full time; for now there
came arguments of a different kind. The eighteenth century
philosophy had come upon the stage, and the first effective onset
of political scientists against the theological opposition in
southern Europe was made in Italy—the most noted leaders in the
attack being Galiani and Maffei. Here and there feeble efforts were
made to meet them, but it was felt more and more by thinking
churchmen that entirely different tactics must be adopted.
About the same time came an attack in France, and though its
results were less immediate at home, they were much more effective
abroad. In 1748 appeared Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws. In this
famous book were concentrated twenty years of study and thought by
a great thinker on the interests of the world about him. In
eighteen months it went through twenty-two editions; it was
translated into every civilized language; and among the things on
which Montesquieu brought his wit and wisdom to bear with especial
force was the doctrine of the Church regarding interest on loans.
In doing this he was obliged to use a caution in forms which seems
strangely at variance with the boldness of his ideas. In view of
the strictness of ecclesiastical control in France, he felt it
safest to make his whole attack upon those theological and economic
follies of Mohammedan countries which were similar to those which
the theological spirit had fastened on France.
By the middle of the eighteenth century the Church authorities at
Rome clearly saw the necessity of a concession: the world would
endure theological restriction no longer; a way of escape must be
found. It was seen, even by the most devoted theologians, that mere
denunciations and use of theological arguments or scriptural texts
against the scientific idea were futile.
To this feeling it was due that, even in the first years of the
century, the Jesuit casuists had come to the rescue. With exquisite
subtlety some of their acutest intellects devoted themselves to
explaining away the utterances on this subject of saints, fathers,
doctors, popes, and councils. These explanations were wonderfully
ingenious, but many of the older churchmen continued to insist upon
the orthodox view, and at last the Pope himself intervened.
Fortunately for the world, the seat of St. Peter was then occupied
by Benedict XIV, certainly one of the most gifted, morally and
intellectually, in the whole line of Roman pontiffs. Tolerant and
sympathetic for the oppressed, he saw the necessity of taking up
the question, and he grappled with it effectually: he rendered to
Catholicism a service like that which Calvin had rendered to
Protestantism, by shrewdly cutting a way through the theological
barrier. In 1745 he issued his encyclical Vix pervenit, which
declared that the doctrine of the Church remained consistent with
itself; that usury is indeed a sin, and that it consists in
demanding any amount beyond the exact amount lent, but that there
are occasions when on special grounds the lender may obtain such
additional sum.
What these "occasions" and "special grounds" might be, was left
very vague; but this action was sufficient.
At the same time no new restrictions upon books advocating the
taking of interest for money were imposed, and, in the year
following his encyclical, Benedict openly accepted the dedication of
one of them—the work of Maffei, and perhaps the most cogent of all.
Like the casuistry of Boscovich in using the Copernican theory for
"convenience in argument," while acquiescing in its condemnation by
the Church authorities, this encyclical of Pope Benedict broke the
spell. Turgot, Quesnay, Adam Smith, Hume, Bentham, and their
disciples pressed on, and science won for mankind another great
victory.
Yet in this case, as in others, insurrections against the sway of
scientific truth appeared among some overzealous religionists. When
the Sorbonne, having retreated from its old position, armed itself
with new casuistries against those who held to its earlier
decisions, sundry provincial doctors in theology protested
indignantly, making the old citations from the Scriptures, fathers,
saints, doctors, popes, councils, and canonists. Again the Roman
court intervened. In 1830 the Inquisition at Rome, with the
approval of Pius VIII, though still declining to commit itself on
the doctrine involved, decreed that, as to practice, confessors
should no longer disturb lenders of money at legal interest.
But even this did not quiet the more conscientious theologians. The
old weapons were again furbished and hurled by the Abbe Laborde,
Vicar of the Metropolitan Archdiocese of Auch, and by the Abbe
Dennavit, Professor of Theology at Lyons. Good Abbe Dennavit declared
that he refused absolution to those who took interest and to
priests who pretend that the sanction of the civil law is sufficient.
But the "wisdom of the serpent" was again brought into requisition,
and early in the decade between 1830 and 1840 the Abbate Mastrofini
issued a work on usury, which, he declared on its title-page,
demonstrated that "moderate usury is not contrary to Holy
Scripture, or natural law, or the decisions of the Church." Nothing
can be more comical than the suppressions of truth, evasions of
facts, jugglery with phrases, and perversions of history, to which
the abbate is forced to resort throughout his book in order to
prove that the Church has made no mistake. In the face of scores of
explicit deliverances and decrees of fathers, doctors, popes, and
councils against the taking of any interest whatever for money, he
coolly pretended that what they had declared against was
exorbitant interest. He made a merit of the action of the Church,
and showed that its course had been a blessing to humanity. But his
masterpiece is in dealing with the edicts of Clement V and Benedict
XIV. As to the first, it will be remembered that Clement, in accord
with the Council of Vienne, had declared that "any one who shall
pertinaciously presume to affirm that the taking of interest for
money is not a sin, we decree him to be a heiretic fit for
punishment," and we have seen that Benedict XIV did not at all
deviate from the doctrines of his predecessors. Yet Mastrofini is
equal to his task, and brings out, as the conclusion of his book,
the statement put upon his title-page, that what the Church
condemns is only exorbitant interest.
This work was sanctioned by various high ecclesiastical dignitaries,
and served its purpose; for it covered the retreat of the Church.
In 1872 the Holy Office, answering a question solemnly put by the
Bishop of Ariano, as solemnly declared that those who take eight
per cent interest per annum are "not to be disquieted"; and in 1873
appeared a book published under authority from the Holy See,
allowing the faithful to take moderate interest under condition
that any future decisions of the Pope should be implicitly obeyed.
Social science as applied to political economy had gained a victory
final and complete. The Torlonia family at Rome to-day, with its
palaces, chapels, intermarriages, affiliations, and papal favour
—all won by lending money at interest, and by liberal gifts, from
the profits of usury, to the Holy See—is but one out of many
growths of its kind on ramparts long since surrendered and
deserted.
The dealings of theology with public economy were by no means
confined to the taking of interest for money. It would be
interesting to note the restrictions placed upon commerce by the
Church prohibition of commercial intercourse with infidels, against
which the Republic of Venice fought a good fight; to note how, by
a most curious perversion of Scripture in the Greek Church, many of
the peasantry of Russia were prevented from raising and eating
potatoes; how, in Scotland, at the beginning of this century, the
use of fanning mills for winnowing grain was widely denounced as
contrary to the text, "The wind bloweth where it listeth," etc., as
leaguing with Satan, who is "Prince of the powers of the air," and
therefore as sufficient cause for excommunication from the Scotch
Church. Instructive it would be also to note how the introduction
of railways was declared by an archbishop of the French Church to
be an evidence of the divine displeasure against country innkeepers
who set meat before their guests on fast days, and who were now
punished by seeing travellers carried by their doors; how railways
and telegraphs were denounced from a few noted pulpits as heralds
of Antichrist; and how in Protestant England the curate of
Rotherhithe, at the breaking in of the Thames Tunnel, so
destructive to life and property, declared it from his pulpit a
just judgment upon the presumptuous aspirations of mortal man.
The same tendency is seen in the opposition of conscientious men to
the taking of the census in Sweden and the United States, on
account of the terms in which the numbering of Israel is spoken of
in the Old Testament. Religious scruples on similar grounds have
also been avowed against so beneficial a thing as life insurance.
Apparently unimportant as these manifestations are, they indicate
a widespread tendency; in the application of scriptural
declarations to matters of social economy, which has not yet
ceased, though it is fast fading away.
Worthy of especial study, too, would be the evolution of the modern
methods of raising and bettering the condition of the poor,—the
evolution, especially, of the idea that men are to be helped to
help themselves, in opposition to the old theories of
indiscriminate giving, which, taking root in some of the most
beautiful utterances of our sacred books, grew in the warm
atmosphere of medieval devotion into great systems for the
pauperizing of the labouring classes. Here, too, scientific modes
of thought in social science have given a new and nobler fruitage
to the whole growth of Christian benevolence.