From the many questions on which the supporters of right reason
in Political and Social Science have only conquered conscientious
opposition after centuries of war, I select the taking of interest on
loans; in hardly any struggle has rigid adherence to the Bible as a
scientific text-book been more prolonged or injurious.[132]
Certainly, if the criterion of truth, as regards any doctrine, be
that it has been believed 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 the masses of men workers rather than paupers, is
based on deadly sin.
The fathers of the Christian Church received from the ancient world a
strong prejudice against any taking of interest whatever; in Greece,
Aristotle had condemned it; in Rome it was regarded during many
generations as a crime.[133]
But far greater, in the early Church, was the influence of certain
texts in the Old and New Testaments. Citations from Leviticus,
Deuteronomy, the Psalms, Ezekiel, and St. Luke, were universally held
to condemn all loans at interest.[134]
On these texts the doctrine and legislation of the universal Church,
as regards interest for money, were based and developed. The fathers
of the Eastern Church, and among them St. Basil, St. Chrysostom, and
St. Gregory Nazianzen; the fathers of the Western Church, and among
them Tertullian, St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, and St. Jerome, joined
most earnestly in this condemnation. 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 agriculture
shall reap only tares. Let us cut off these monstrous births of gold
and silver; let us stop this execrable fecundity." St. Jerome threw the
argument into the form of a dilemma, which was used as a weapon against
money-lenders for centuries.[135]
This entire agreement of the fathers of the Church led to the
crystallization of the 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. In the ninth century,
Alfred, in England, confiscated the estates of money-lenders, and
denied 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 only grew
more and more severe. St. Bernard, reviving religious earnestness in
the Church, was especially strenuous in denouncing loans at interest;
and, in 1179, the Third Council of the Lateran decreed that every
impenitent money-lender should be excluded from the altar, from
absolution in the hour of death, and from Christian burial!
In the thirteenth century this mistaken idea was still more firmly
knit into the thought of the Church by St. Thomas Aquinas; hostility
to loans at interest had been poured into his mind, not only from the
Scriptures, but from Aristotle.
At the beginning of the fourteenth century 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."[136]
The economical and social results of this conscientious policy were
exceedingly unfortunate. 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; hence came enormous
rates of interest; thereby were commerce, manufactures, and general
enterprise dwarfed, while pauperism flourished.
But even worse than this were the moral results. For nations to do
what they believe is evil, is only second in bad consequences to their
doing what is really evil: all lending and borrowing, even for the
most legitimate purposes and at the most reasonable rates, tended
to debase the character of both borrower and lender.[137] And these
moral evils took more definite shapes than might at first be thought
possible. Sismondi, one of the most thoughtful of modern political
philosophers and historians, declares that the prohibition of interest
for the use of money in Continental Europe did very much to promote a
passion for luxury and to discourage economy; the rich who were not
engaged in business finding no easy way of employing their savings
productively.[138]
These evils became so manifest, when trade began to revive throughout
Europe in the fifteenth century, that most earnest efforts were made to
induce the Church to change its position.
The first important effort of this kind was made by John Gerson. His
general learning had made him Chancellor of the University of Paris;
his sacred learning made him the leading theologian and 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."[139]
But this idea was at once suppressed by the Church--buried beneath
citations from Scripture, the fathers, councils, popes, and the
canon law. Even in the most active countries there seemed no hope.
In England, under Henry VII., Cardinal Morton, the lord-chancellor,
addressed Parliament, asking them to take into consideration loans of
money at interest, and 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."[140] Similar enactments were made by civil authority in various
parts of Europe, and, as a climax, just as the trade and commerce and
manufactures of the modern epoch had received an immense impulse from
the great series of voyages of discovery, by such as Columbus, Vasco de
Gama, Magellan, and the Cabots, this barrier against enterprise was
strengthened by a decree from Pope Leo X.[141]
But this mistaken policy was not confined to the older Church. The
Reformed Church 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."[142]
The English Reformers showed the same tendency. Under Henry VIII., the
law of Henry VII. against taking interest had been modified; 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., 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.[143]
But, most fortunately, it happened that Calvin turned in the right
direction, and there was developed among Protestants the serviceable
fiction that "usury" means _illegal_ or _oppressive_ interest. Under
cover of this fiction commerce and trade revived rapidly in Protestant
countries, though with occasional checks from exact interpreters of
Scripture.
But, in the older Church, the more correct though less fortunate
interpretation of the sacred texts relating to interest continued.
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 judgment.
Another attempt to ease the burden on industry and commerce was made by
declaring that "usury means interest demanded not as matter of favor
but as matter of right." This, too, was solemnly condemned by Pope
Innocent XI.
Again the army of right reason pressed forward, declaring that "usury
is interest greater than the law allows." This, too, was condemned, and
the declaration that "usury is interest on loans not for a fixed time"
was condemned by Pope Alexander VII.
Still the attacking forces pressed on, and among them, in the
seventeenth century, in France, was Richard Simon: he attempts to
gloss over the strict interpretation of Scripture in this matter by an
elaborate treatise: he is immediately confronted by Bossuet.
It seems hardly possible that one of the greatest intellects of a
period so near us could have been so doubly deceived. Yet Bossuet,
the glory of the French Church, one of the keenest and strongest of
thinkers, not only mingled Scripture with astronomy, and opposed the
Copernican theory, but also mingled Scripture with political economy,
and denounced the lending of money at interest. He declared that
the Scriptures, the councils of the Church from the beginning, the
popes, the fathers, all interpreted the prohibition of "usury" to be a
prohibition of any lending at interest, and Bossuet demonstrated this
interpretation as the true one. Simon was put to confusion, and his
book condemned.[144]
There was but too much reason for Bossuet's interpretation. The
prohibition of this, 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.[145]
But about the middle of the eighteenth century the evil could be
endured no longer--a way of escape _must_ be found. The army opposed
to the Church had become so formidable, that the Roman authorities
saw that a concession must be made. In 1748 appeared Montesquieu's
_Spirit of the Laws_; in it were concentrated twenty years' study and
thought of a great thinker on the necessities of the world about him.
In eighteen months it went through twenty-two editions, and it was
translated into every civilized language; this work attacked, among
other abuses, the position of the Church regarding interest for money.
The Church authorities had already taken the alarm. Benedict XIV. saw
that the best thing for him--nay, the only thing--was a surrender under
form of a compromise. In a brief he declared substantially that the law
of the Church was opposed to the taking of interest on loans; and
then, after sundry non-committal and ambiguous statements, he hinted
that there were possible exceptions to the rule.
Like the casuistry of Boscovich in using the Copernican theory for
"convenience in argument," while acquiescing in its condemnation by the
Church, this casuistry of Benedict broke the spell. Turgot, Adam Smith,
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 over-zealous religionists. When
the Sorbonne, having retreated from its old position, armed itself
with sundry new casuistries against those who held to its earlier
decisions, provincial doctors in theology protested indignantly, making
the old citations from the Scriptures, fathers, saints, doctors, popes,
councils, and canonists. And even as late as 1830, when the Roman
court, though declining to commit itself on the doctrine involved,
decreed that confessors should no longer disquiet lenders of money at
legal interest, the old weapons were again furbished and hurled by the
Abbé Laborde, Vicar of the Metropolitan Archdiocese of Auch, and by
the Abbé Dennavit, Professor of Theology at Lyons. Good Abbé 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.[146]
But the peace on this question is too profound to be disturbed by
such outcries. The Torlonia family at Rome, to-day, with its palaces,
chapels, intermarriages, affiliations, and papal favor, all won by
lending money at interest, and by devotion to the Roman See, is a
growth on ramparts long since surrendered and deserted.