USURY AND THE JEWS
ANOTHER cause of the hatred inspired by the mediaeval Jew was usury, a
term which was then synonymous with money-lending generally.
For an age accustomed to regard lending money at interest as a purely
economic transaction, the rate of interest as an economic phenomenon
obeying the law of demand and supply, and the whole thing as a question
of commerce rather than of ethics, it is not easy to understand the
theological wrath vented on money-lenders in old times. Yet in the
Middle Ages trade in money was treated as a heinous sin, and those
engaged in this occupation, to us perfectly legitimate, as criminals of
the deepest dye. Dante, in whom “ten silent centuries found a voice,”
expresses the mediaeval feeling on the subject by placing Cahors, a
city of Provence, notorious in the thirteenth century as a nest of
usurers, beside Sodom in Hell:
“E pero lo minor giron suggella,
Del segno suo e Sodomma e Caorsa.”[56]
It was a superstition of very ancient growth, and its origin can be
traced back to the constitution of primitive society. In the youth
of the human race, when the members of each community looked upon
themselves as members of one family, it was naturally very bad form
for those who had more than they needed to refuse a share of their
superfluity to a brother in want. The sentiment, once rooted, continued
from generation to generation, and survived the tribal system in which
it arose. From a social law it became a religious tenet, and inspired
legislators lent to it the sanction of their authority. It is found
incorporated both in the Old Testament and in the Koran. Moses said:
“Thou shalt not lend upon usury to thy brother; usury of money, usury
of victuals, usury of anything that is lent upon usury;”[57] and, many
centuries after, the Psalmist sang: “Lord, who shall abide in thy
tabernacle? Who shall dwell in thy holy hill?... He that putteth not
out his money to usury.”[58] Mohammed, following Moses, emphatically
declares that “They who devour usury shall not arise from the dead,
but as he ariseth whom Satan hath infected with a touch: this shall
happen to them because they say, Truly selling is but as usury: and
yet God hath permitted selling and forbidden usury. He therefore who,
when there cometh unto him an admonition from his Lord, abstaineth from
usury for the future, shall have what is past forgiven him, and his
affair belongeth unto God. But whoever return to usury, they shall be
the companions of Hell fire, they shall continue therein for ever.”[59]
Philosophy in this case failed to rise superior to theology. Plato
regards usury as a source of distress, discontent and unrest, usurers
as creating, by their extortions, a dangerous class of “drones and
paupers” in the State,[60] and in his laws forbids “lending money at
interest.”[61] Although the Greek for interest is “offspring” (τόκος),
Aristotle pronounced that money was “barren,” and therefore to derive
profit from lending it out was to put it to an unnatural use.[62] The
tradition was carried on through succeeding ages, and Plutarch in the
midst of his numerous labours found time to denounce usurers.
The Fathers of the Church adopted a sentiment which accorded so
well with the communistic ideals of early Christianity, and St.
Chrysostom anathematizes money-lenders as men who “traffic in other
people’s misfortunes, seeking gain through their adversity: under
the pretence of compassion they dig a pit for the oppressed.”[63] The
Mediaeval Church, as was natural, inherited the venerable doctrine
of the sinfulness of lending money at interest and of speculative
trade, and prohibited such transactions in theory. But in practice
the prohibition was found impossible; nay, in many cases, injurious.
No capitalist would part with his money, or tradesman with his goods,
without profit. In the absence of loans and middlemen commerce would
come to a standstill, and large numbers of people would be doomed to
choose between a sinful life and virtuous starvation. The dilemma was
an awkward one, but not too awkward for scholastic subtlety, and the
sophists of the Church devoted much time and ingenuity to hair-breadth
distinctions, attempting to explain the inexplicable and to reconcile
the irreconcilable, by arguing that rent for a house or a horse was
lawful, but interest on money unlawful, and, like their brethren of
the law, they tried to avoid practical mischief by the sacrifice of
intellectual sincerity. The scholastic position, being absurd, met with
general acceptance.
However, in the earlier Middle Ages there was little temptation for
transgression, little scope for commercial speculation, while, on the
other hand, casuistry afforded abundant devices for evasion. The Church
was, as a rule, content to enforce the law on clerics, but towards
laymen she was more lenient. Nay, she encouraged traders to buy and
sell goods unaltered, despite St. Chrysostom’s sentence that such
traders are “ejected from the temple of God.” And yet she refused, as
much as Mohammed did, to accept the commonsense view that “selling is
but as usury,” and, while sanctioning the one, continued to condemn
the other. But so long as the Papacy was too weak to persecute, the
condemnation remained a dead letter, the Church being obliged to
connive at a sin which she was powerless to conquer.
Meanwhile, as European society developed, money-lending went on
increasing. And what would now be regarded as the inevitable
accompaniment of material activity was then denounced as a symptom
of moral degeneracy. At the same time the power of the Church grew,
and her eagerness to suppress what she considered a sin grew with her
ability. Under Gregory VII., the hurler of thunderbolts, the Papacy
entered upon that career of political conquest which achieved its
highest triumphs under Innocent III. ♦1083♦ Gregory had been on the
throne for ten years when one of those missiles fell upon usurers,
a term which, it must be remembered, in that age applied to all
money-lenders alike. The warfare inaugurated by Hildebrand was carried
on with unabated vigour by his successors. A decree issued by the
Lateran General Council of 1139 deprived usurers of the consolations
of the Church, denied them Christian burial, and doomed them to infamy
in this life and to everlasting torment in the next. The religious
enthusiasm aroused by the Crusades, and the economic ruin which they
threatened, accentuated the common prejudice against the outlaws of
the Church. Many of the holy warriors were obliged to resort to the
usurer’s hoard for the expenses of these campaigns, and the Church felt
that it was her duty to see that her champions were not left destitute
and homeless. Pope after Pope, throughout the twelfth century, from
Eugenius III. onwards, absolved Crusaders from their financial
embarrassments, and Innocent III. went so far as to ordain that the
Jews should be compelled to refund to their debtors any interest that
might have already been paid to them.
The prejudice was further strengthened and disseminated by the
religious Orders of St. Francis and St. Dominic, which soon attained
a degree of official and unofficial influence calculated to enforce
their precepts. Members of both orders compiled moral codes, which were
accepted throughout Western Christendom as manuals of Christian ethics
and guides of Christian conduct. One of the principal sins condemned
in those books was usury, and the doctrine, thundered from the pulpit,
preached in the market-place, and whispered in the confessional,
carried with it all the weight which attaches to the words of persons
invested with the power of loosing and binding in this world and in
the world to come.
And yet, despite pontifical anathemas and public opinion, things
pursued their natural course, and usurers were to be found even among
the tenants of ecclesiastical and monastic estates, until Gregory X.,
in 1274, issued a Bull forbidding the letting of lands or houses to
the accursed tribe. But though the pious execrated the money-lender,
the needy could not dispense with his services. The chief effect of
the prohibition of money-lending, and of the superstitious disrepute
in which it was held, was to force this important branch of economic
life into the hands of the least respectable members of the community.
Usury was by no means eschewed by the Christians, as Dante shows. But
the masses of mediaeval Europe, especially in the north and centre,
were too superstitious to brave the ban of the Church, too stupid and
ignorant and thriftless to succeed in a business requiring dexterity,
alertness, and economy. Thus trade in money, as most other kinds
of European trade, fell from the very first into the hands of the
Jews--the only people who had capital to lend and no caste to lose.
Moreover, there was little else for the Jew to do in feudal Europe. The
laws and the prejudices which in many countries forbade him to own land
or to engage in various handicrafts and trades on one hand, and his own
religious scruples on the other, narrowed his range of activity, and
the current of energy and intelligence, compressed into one channel,
ran with proportionately greater force. The reputation of the Jews for
usury dates from the sixth century. But money-lending really became
their characteristic pursuit since the commencement of the persecution
already narrated. Then the Jews, by the periodical enactments of
councils and the frequent publications of ecclesiastical edicts, were
excluded from the markets, and thus, being unable to compete with the
Christian merchants, were driven to deal only in second-hand articles,
while others, possessed of some capital but forbidden to invest it in
goods, were compelled to put it out to interest.
As has been seen, the money-lending transactions of the Jews had long
continued to be carried on with the connivance of the Church and under
the protection of the State, many princes being only too glad to avail
themselves of the Jews’ skill in pecuniary dealings for the improvement
of their own finances. Under mediaeval conditions of financial
administration the Jew was literally indispensable to the State. The
sovereigns of Europe, as yet unversed in the mysteries of systematic
taxation, needed a class of men who would for their own sake collect
money from the king’s subjects and keep it, as it were, in trust for
the king’s treasury. At the worst, the Jews in a mediaeval country
might be described as sponges which imbibed the wealth of the nation
and then were squeezed for the benefit of the crown. At the best, they
fulfilled the function of the clouds which collect the water in small
drops and then yield it back to the earth in rich showers, the rainfall
being only too often accelerated by artificial explosives. In either
case it was the duty of a Jew to be wealthy.
The growing wealth of the Jews must have always excited the envy and
the cupidity of their neighbours. But it was not until the awakening
of religious bigotry by the Crusades and the Mendicant Orders that the
dormant animosity declared itself in wholesale persecution. Nor is the
violence of the popular feeling, apart from religious motives, quite
inexplicable or inexcusable. The Jews from the earliest times evinced a
fierce contempt for the Gentile. Despite the doctrine of universal love
inculcated by certain Hebrew teachers, the bulk of the community clung
to the older lesson. Jewish tolerance of outsiders, like Christian
tolerance, was the glory and the property of the few. A Jehuda Halevi
or a Maimonides might preach broad humanitarianism, but it would be
unreasonable to suppose that their preaching was more effective on
their co-religionists than the similar preaching of a Thomas Aquinas
or a St. Bernard was on theirs. And it is important not to forget that
in every-day life it is not the minds of the cultured few but the
instincts of the masses that count. With the ordinary mediaeval Jew,
as with the ordinary mediaeval Christian, charity not only began but
ended at home. The tribal spirit of their religion made the Jews hard
to the non-Jew and callous to his needs. Moses had already said: “Thou
shalt not lend upon usury to thy brother,” and Rabbinical law enforced
the commandment; but the prohibition was accompanied by a significant
permission: “Unto a stranger thou mayest lend upon usury,” an ominous
distinction of which the Jews took full advantage, though Jewish
moralists and Rabbis constantly opposed the extent to which reliance
was placed upon it.
The racial and religious antagonism, in which the Jew found himself
engaged from his earliest contact with the nations, widened the gulf.
The grievous persecution to which he found himself periodically
exposed since his advent in Europe further embittered his soul,
and sore experience taught him that peace could only be purchased
by gold. He had nothing but avarice to oppose to the fanaticism of
those under whom he lived, and he strove to raise a wall of gold
between himself and tyranny. He took shelter behind his shekels,
and, naturally, endeavoured by all means, fair or foul, to make that
shelter as effective as he could. Even supposing that the Jew omitted
no opportunity of fleecing the Gentile, he was more than justified in
doing so--he was compelled by the Gentile’s own treatment of him. It
was the Gentile who taught the Jew the supreme virtue of money as a
preservative against oppression, exile, and death; and he had no right
to complain of the disciple’s wonderful quickness in learning his
lesson and “bettering the instruction.” His hatred of the Gentile, thus
combined with love of gain and love of life, rendered him impervious to
compassion. The Gentile merited little mercy at the hands of the Jew,
and he got no more than he merited. The exploitation of the Gentile,
begun as a necessity and promoted as a means of self-defence, thus
found an abiding place among the lower orders of the mediaeval Jews.
Besides, in the Middle Ages borrowing for commercial purposes was
rare. As a rule, a loan was resorted to only on an emergency, and the
interest was determined by the necessity of the borrower. Under the
circumstances exorbitant rates were unavoidable. The discouragement
of money-lending, coupled with the scarcity of capital, by limiting
competition, would in any case have tended to raise the normal rate
of interest to a distressing height,[64] in obedience to the law of
demand and supply which now is one of the commonplaces of political
economy. The uncertainty of recovery raised it to a greater height
still. Like the Christian bankers in the Turkey of not long ago, the
Jewish money-lenders of the Middle Ages must have lent their money
at considerable risk, sometimes amounting to certainty of loss. The
mediaeval baron, far more than the mediaeval burgess, was largely
beholden to the Jew both in peace and in war. The pomp and pride of
chivalry could not be maintained without money. For the pageant of
a tournament, as for the more costly splendour of a campaign, the
usurer’s purse was appealed to. But, if the baron found himself obliged
to coax and flatter the Jew and to submit to exorbitant terms when he
wanted a loan, he revenged himself when he had the Jew in his power.
Such opportunities were not rare, and then the borrower repayed himself
with interest. The conditions of the transaction were such as to tempt
avarice, but not to encourage moderation. A loan to a mediaeval pasha
was a speculation which might result either in wealth or in penury and
death.
This _a priori_ reasoning is amply confirmed by history. Among the
Jews’ clients none were more conspicuous than the sovereigns of
Christendom; and the devices to which these crowned robbers descended
in their attempts to reconcile expediency with conscience would be
highly amusing were they less tragic. ♦1169♦ King Louis VII. of
France, though a Crusader, protected the Jews and disregarded the
decree of the Lateran Council, which forbade them to employ Christian
servants. His example was at first followed by his son Philip Augustus,
who, however, gradually changed his attitude. Though nominally Lord
Paramount of France, the French King in reality could call nothing but
a small tract of the country his own; the royal domain being surrounded
by the territories of the great feudatory Dukes and Counts. Philip
wished to convert this theoretical suzerainty into actual possession,
and to this end he needed money. The wealth of the Jews suggested to
him a short-cut to the accomplishment of his desire. Though not the
only usurers in the kingdom, the Jews were the most unpopular. He,
therefore, caused a number of them to be cast into prison, and held
them to ransom. ♦1180♦ On paying 1500 marks, they were set at liberty.
The success of the experiment induced Philip to try operations on a
larger scale. ♦1181♦ A few months later he conceived the happy thought
of ridding himself of his sins and of his debts at once by cancelling
the claims of the Jews, by compelling them to give up the pledges held
by them, by confiscating their real property, and by expelling them
from his Kingdom. ♦1198♦ Some years after, in consistency with the
principle of expedience, he thought it advisable to mortify the Pope
and to enrich himself by recalling the exiles, and forbidding them to
leave his dominions.
Louis IX., as became a king and a saint of unquestionable
respectability, released all his subjects of one-third of the money
which they owed to the Jews “for the salvation of his own soul, and
those of his ancestors,” and, in 1253, he sent from Palestine an order
banishing all Jews, except those who would take to legitimate commerce
and handicrafts.
Philip the Fair, whose cruel rapacity and vindictiveness were
exemplified in the ruin of the Knights Templars, accompanied as it was
by the torture and cremation of their persons and the confiscation
of their treasures, showed the same tyrannical and predatory spirit
towards the Jews. ♦1306♦ They had just concluded their severe fast
on the Day of Lamentation in remembrance of the destruction of the
Temple, when the King’s constables seized them, young and old, women
and children, and dragged them all to prison, where they were told
that they should quit the country within a month, under penalty of
death. They were plundered of all their possessions, save the clothes
which they wore and one day’s provisions, and were turned adrift--some
hundred thousand souls--leaving to the King cartloads of gold, silver,
and precious stones. A few embraced Christianity, and some who ventured
to tarry after the prescribed date suffered death; but the majority
chose to lose all, and quit the country in which their forefathers had
lived from time immemorial, rather than be false to their faith. Their
communal buildings and immoveable property were confiscated, and Philip
the Fair made a present of a synagogue to his coachman.
Most of the exiles settled in the neighbourhood, waiting for a
favourable opportunity of returning to their devastated homes. Nor had
they to wait long. ♦1315♦ Financial necessity overcame fanaticism, and
nine years later Philip’s successor, Louis X., was glad to have them
back and to help them in the collection of the moneys due to them, on
condition that two-thirds of the sums collected should be surrendered
to the Royal Exchequer.
In Germany, also, the Emperors time and again performed their duty to
the Church by cancelling their debts to the Jews. But it would be a
mistake to suppose that piety was an indispensable cloak for plunder.
A law enacted in France condemned Jewish converts to Christianity to
loss of all their goods for the benefit of the King or their Lord
Paramount; for it was felt that conversion would exempt the victims
from extortion. Thus even the interests of religion were at times
subordinated to rapacity.