An Essay on Mediaeval Economic Teaching Part 13

Clement of Alexandria expressly limits his disapprobation of usury to the case of loans between brothers, whom he defines as 'partic.i.p.ators in the same word,' _i.e._ fellow-Christians; and in any event it is clear that he regards it as sin against charity, but not against justice.[3]

[Footnote 1: Acts xv. 29.]

[Footnote 2: _Didache_, ch. i.; Cleary, _op. cit._, p. 39.]

[Footnote 3: _Stromata_, ii. 18.]

Tertullian is one of the first of the Fathers to lay down positively that the taking of usury is sinful. He regards it as obviously wrong for Christians to exact usury on their loans, and interprets the pa.s.sage of St. Luke, to which we have referred, as a precept against looking for even the repayment of the princ.i.p.al.[1] On the other hand, Cyprian, writing in the same century, although he declaims eloquently and vigorously against the usurious practices of the clergy, does not specifically express the opinion that the taking of usury is wrong in itself.[2]

[Footnote 1: _Ad Marcion_, iv. 17.]

[Footnote 2: _Le Lapsis_, ch. 5-6; Cleary, _op. cit._, pp. 42-3.]

Thus, during the first three centuries of Christianity, there does not seem to have been, as far as we can now ascertain, any definite and general doctrine laid down on the subject of usury. In the year 305 or 306 a very important step forward was taken, when the Council of Elvira pa.s.sed a decree against usury. This decree, as given by Ivo and Gratian, seems only to have applied to usury on the part of the clergy, but as given by Mansi it affected the clergy and laity alike.

'Should any cleric be found to have taken usury,' the latter version runs, 'let him be degraded and excommunicated. Moreover, if any layman shall be proved a usurer, and shall have promised, when corrected, to abstain from the practice, let him be pardoned. If, on the contrary, he perseveres in his evil-doing, he is to be excommunicated.'[1]

Although the Council of Elvira was but a provincial Council, its decrees are important, as they provided a model for later legislation.

Dr. Cleary thinks that Mansi's version of this decree is probably incorrect, and that, therefore, the Council only forbade usury on the part of the clergy. In any event, with this one possible and extremely doubtful exception, there was no conciliar legislation affecting the practice of usury on the part of the laity until the eighth century.

Certain individual popes censured the taking of usury by laymen, and the Council of Nice expressed the opinion that such a practice was contrary to Christ's teaching, but there is nowhere to be found an imperative and definite prohibition of the taking of usury except by the clergy.[2]

[Footnote 1: Cleary, _op. cit._, p. 43.]

[Footnote 2: Cleary, _op. cit._, pp. 44-8.]

The inconclusive result of the Christian teaching up to the middle of the fourth century is well summarised by Dr. Cleary: 'Hitherto we have encountered mere prohibitions of usury with little or no attempt to a.s.sign a reason for them other than that of positive legislation.

Most of the statements of these early patristic writers, as well as possibly all of the early Christian legislative enactments, deal solely with the practice of usury by the clergy; still, there is sufficient evidence to show that in those days it was reprobated even for the Christian laity, for the _Didache_ and Tertullian clearly teach or presuppose its prohibition, while the oec.u.menical Council of Nice certainly presupposed its illegality for the laity, though it failed to sustain its doctrinal presuppositions with corresponding ecclesiastical penalties. With the exception of some very vague statements by Cyprian and Clement of Alexandria, we find no attempt to state the nature of the resulting obligation--that is to say, we are not told whether there is an obligation of obedience, of justice, or of charity. The prohibition indeed seems to be regarded as universal; and it may very well be contended that for the cases the Fathers consider it was in fact universal--for the loans with which they are concerned, being necessitous, should be, in accordance with Christian charity, gratuitous--even if speculatively usurious loans in general were not unjust.'[1]

[Footnote 1: _Op. cit._, pp. 48-9.]

The middle of the fourth century marked the opening of a new period--'a period when oratorical denunciations are profuse, and when consequently philosophical speculation, though fairly active, is of too imaginative a character to be sufficiently definite.'[1]

St. Basil's _Homilies on the Fourteenth Psalm_ contain a violent denunciation of usury, the reasoning of which was repeated by St.

Gregory of Nyssa[2] and St. Ambrose.[3] These three Fathers draw a terrible picture of the state of the poor debtor, who, hara.s.sed by his creditors, falls deeper and deeper into despair, until he finally commits suicide, or has to sell his children into slavery. Usury was therefore condemned by these Fathers as a sin against charity; the pa.s.sage from St. Luke was looked on merely as a counsel in so far as it related to the repayment of the princ.i.p.al, but as a precept so far as it related to usury; but the notion that usury was in its very essence a sin against justice does not appear to have arisen. The natural sterility of money is referred to, but not developed; and it is suggested, though not categorically stated, that usury may be taken from wealthy debtors.[4]

[Footnote 1: Cleary, _op. cit._, p. 49.]

[Footnote 2: _Contra Usurarios_.]

[Footnote 3: _De Tobia_.]

[Footnote 4: Cleary, _op. cit._, p. 52.]

The other Fathers of the later period do not throw very much light on the question of how usury was regarded by the early Church. St.

Hilary[1] and Jerome[2] still base their objection on the ground of its being an offence against charity; and St. Augustine, though he would like to make rest.i.tution of usury a duty, treats the matter from the same point of view.[3] On the other hand, there are to be found patristic utterances in favour of the legality of usury, and episcopal approbations of civil codes which permitted it.[4] The civil law did not attempt to suppress usury, but simply to keep it within due bounds.[5] The result of the patristic teaching therefore was on the whole unsatisfactory and inconclusive. 'Whilst patristic opinion,'

says Dr. Cleary, 'is very p.r.o.nounced in condemning usury, the condemnation is launched against it more because of its oppressiveness than for its intrinsic injustice. As Dr. Funk has pointed out, one can scarcely cite a single patristic opinion which can be said clearly to hold that usury is against justice, whilst there are, on the contrary, certain undercurrents of thought in many writers, and certain explicit statements in others, which tend to show that the Fathers would not have been prepared to deal so harshly with usurers, did usurers not treat their debtors so cruelly.... Of keen philosophical a.n.a.lysis there is none.... On the whole, we find the teachings of the Fathers crude and undeveloped.'[6]

[Footnote 1: In Ps. xiv.]

[Footnote 2: _Ad Ezech._]

[Footnote 3: Cleary, _op. cit._, p. 56.]

[Footnote 4: _Ibid._ pp. 56-7.]

[Footnote 5: _Justinian Code_, iv. 32.]

[Footnote 6: _Op. cit._, pp. 57-9. On the patristic teaching on usury, see Espinas, _Op. cit._, pp. 82-4; Roscher, _Political Economy_, s.

90; Antoine, _Cours d'Economie sociale_, pp. 588 _et seq_.]

The practical teaching with regard to the taking of usury made an important advance in the eighth and ninth centuries, although the philosophical a.n.a.lysis of the subject did not develop any more fully. A capitulary canon made in 789 decreed 'that each and all are forbidden to give anything on usury'; and a capitulary of 813 states that 'not only should the Christian clergy not demand usury, laymen should not.' In 825 it was decreed that the counts were to a.s.sist the bishops in their suppression of usury; and in 850 the Synod of Ticinum bound usurers to rest.i.tution.[1] The underlying principles of these enactments is as obscure as their meaning is plain and definite. There is not a single trace of the keen a.n.a.lysis with which Aquinas was later to illuminate and adorn the subject.

[Footnote 1: These are but a few of the enactments of the period directed against usury (Cleary, _op. cit._, p. 61; Favre, _Le pret a interet dans l'ancienne France_).]

-- 4. _The Mediaeval Prohibition of Usury_.

The tenth and eleventh centuries saw no advance in the teaching on usury. The twelfth century, however, ushered in a new era. 'Before that century controversy had been mostly confined to theologians, and treated theologically, with reference to G.o.d and the Bible, and only rarely with regard to economic considerations. After the twelfth century the discussion was conducted on a gradually broadening economic basis--appeals to the Fathers, canonists, philosophers, the _jus divinum_, the _jus naturale_, the _jus humanum_, became the order of the day.'[1] Before we proceed to discuss the new philosophical or scholastic treatment of usury which was inaugurated for all practical purposes by Aquinas, we must briefly refer to the ecclesiastical legislation on the subject.

[Footnote 1: Bohm-Bawerk, _Capital and Interest_, p. 19.]

In 1139 the second Lateran Council issued a very strong declaration against usurers. 'We condemn that disgraceful and detestable rapacity, condemned alike by human and divine law, by the Old and the New Testaments, that insatiable rapacity of usurers, whom we hereby cut off from all ecclesiastical consolation; and we order that no archbishop, bishop, abbot, or cleric shall receive back usurers except with the very greatest caution, but that, on the contrary, usurers are to be regarded as infamous, and shall, if they do not repent, be deprived of Christian burial.'[1] It might be argued that this decree was aimed against immoderate or habitual usury, and not against usury in general, but all doubt as regards the att.i.tude of the Church was set at rest by a decree of the Lateran Council of 1179. This decree runs: 'Since almost in every place the crime of usury has become so prevalent that many people give up all other business and become usurers, as if it were lawful, regarding not its prohibition in both Testaments, we ordain that manifest usurers shall not be admitted to communion, nor, if they die in their sins, be admitted to Christian burial, and that no priest shall accept their alms.'[2] Meanwhile, Alexander III., having given much attention to the subject of usury, had come to the conclusion that it was a sin against justice. This recognition of the essential injustice of usury marked a turning-point in the history of the treatment of the subject; and Alexander III.

seems ent.i.tled to be designated the 'pioneer of its scientific study.'[3] Innocent III. followed Alexander in the opinion that usury was unjust in itself, and from his time forward there was but little further disagreement upon the matter amongst the theologians.[4]

[Footnote 1: Cleary, _op. cit._, p. 64.]

[Footnote 2: _Ibid._]

[Footnote 3: Cleary, _op. cit._, p. 65.]

[Footnote 4: _Ibid._, p. 68.]

In 1274 Gregory X., in the Council of Lyons, ordained that no community, corporation, or individual should permit foreign usurers to hire houses, but that they should expel them from their territory; and the disobedient, if prelates, were to have their lands put under interdict, and, if laymen, to be visited by their ordinary with ecclesiastical censures.[1] By a further canon he ordained that the wills of usurers who did not make rest.i.tution should be invalid.[2]

This brought usury definitely within the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts.[3] In 1311 the Council of Vienne declared all secular legislation in favour of usury null and void, and branded as heresy the belief that usury was not sinful.[4] The precise extent and interpretation of this decree have given rise to a considerable amount of discussion,[5] which need not detain us here, because by that time the whole question of usury had come under the treatment of the great scholastic writers, whose teaching is more particularly the subject matter of the present essay.

[Footnote 1: _Liber s.e.xtus_, v. 5, 1.]

[Footnote 2: _Ibid._, c. 2.]

[Footnote 3: Ashley, _op. cit._, vol. i. pt. i. p. 150.]

[Footnote 4: _Clementinarum_, v. 5, 1.]

[Footnote 5: Cleary, _op. cit._, pp. 74-8.]

Even as late as the first half of the thirteenth century there was no serious discussion of usury by the theologians. William of Paris, Alexander of Hales, and Albertus Magnus simply p.r.o.nounced it sinful on account of the texts in the Old and New Testaments, which we have quoted above.[1] It was Aquinas who really put the teaching on usury upon the new foundation, which was destined to support it for so many hundred years, and which even at the present day appeals to many sympathetic and impartial inquirers. Mr. Lecky apologises for the obscurity of his account of the argument of Aquinas, but adds that the confusion is chiefly the fault of the latter;[2] but the fact that Mr.

Lecky failed to grasp the meaning of the argument should not lead one to conclude that the argument itself was either confused or illogical.

The fact that it for centuries remained the basis of the Catholic teaching on the subject is a sufficient proof that its inherent absurdity did not appear apparent to many students at least as gifted as Mr. Lecky. We shall quote the article of Aquinas at some length, because it was universally accepted by all the theologians of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, with whose opinions we are concerned in this essay. To quote later writings is simply to repeat in different words the conclusions at which Aquinas arrived.[3]

[Footnote 1: Jourdain, _op. cit._, p. 15.]

[Footnote 2: _Rise and Influence, of Rationalism in Europe_, vol. ii.