Welcome sisters, brothers. Today I want to speak to you of good and evil!
What is usury? It is a charge made for the use of money. More or less, it means lending of money at interest, and medieval economic systems were dead set against it. Why? Because it threatened to wreck communities, and the medieval man and woman were community-minded to an extent that is difficult to imagine in our individualistic days. The medieval city states referred to themselves as communes. Life was lived as a community rather than a collection of warring competing individuals.
The idea of “the common good” can be found in the New Testament. St Paul says: “Let all our actions be for the good of everybody, and especially those who belong to the household of the faith.” This constant emphasis on community was taken up by medieval ethical systems, and “the common good” was a frequently repeated phrase in medieval legal documents.
In the 13th Century, we find Thomas Aquinas defining “law” as: “an ordinance of reason for the common good, made by him who has care of the community.” Against this “common good” stands usury. Aquinas says: “Making a charge for lending money is unjust in itself, for one party sells the other something non-existent and this obviously sets up an inequality which is contrary to justice”. Usury is by its very nature “unjust”. It was not just a crime, it was a sin. A sin that the Bible railed against – in Leviticus, for example: “Do not exact interest from your countrymen either in money or in kind, but out of fear of God let him live with you.”
Another medieval manuscript, the Tabula exemplorum, also from the 13th century, talks of usury as “an endless sin”. It says: “every man stops working on holidays, but the oxen of usury work (boves usurarii) unceasingly and thus offend God and all the saints; and, since usury is an endless sin, it should in like manner be endlessly punished.” The victims of usury have been dehumanized into cattle. For them, there is no rest.
Still, usury did take place: the new burghers of the free cities, buzzing with work and trade, needed credit. And commercial credit was accepted. But the various councils — Lateran, Lyon, Vienna — strenuously objected to it when it was directed downwards, towards the poor. Today’s equivalent would be those ads on daytime TV for loan consolidation companies, which prey on the weak and alone.
In the wake of the Reformation, the idea of usury became normalized, its sinfulness melted away. By the time we come to the 18th Century, Benjamin Franklin can say “time is money” and “credit is money”. For him, welfare for the poor is “a premium for the encouragement of idleness.” He doesn’t like to see the poor “easy in poverty” – rather they should be “driven” out of it. Hardly a Biblical sentiment. The verse before the one in Leviticus quoted above reads: “When one of your fellow countrymen is reduced to poverty and is unable to hold out beside you, extend to him the privileges of an alien or a tenant, so that he may continue to live with you.” Don’t drive him out with a stick, for his own good!
Today, “love thy neighbour” has been replaced with “beat the competition”. We work hard (the oxen of usury work that we are), we fret, we are fearful, we buy stuff, we throw it away, and we are lonely. Better that we follow St Augustine, who said: ‘Love, and do what you like.’ Send out love, and the rest will follow of its own accord.
Love is the antidote to usury. The 18th century English mystic William Law writes: “by love I mean a larger principle of the soul, founded in reason and piety, which makes us tender, kind and gentle to all our fellow creatures as creatures of God, and for his sake.” This is neighbourliness, a concern for “the common good”.
How can Tesco’s present itself as community-minded, or a friend to the poor, when it lends money at interest? Tesco’s is an exploiter of the poor, like a bank it hoards excess value, which it has extracted from the poor and distributes it among its shareholders. It undercuts on price and holds suppliers to ransom. It would have been seen as a colossal evil in 1350. In fact, it simply could not have existed: it was impossible. Tesco’s is just too sinful.
Well, brothers and sisters, it appears that Occupy LSX is asking usurers to repent once again – just as they were asked in the Middle Ages. Today’s condemnation of the bankers is the direct descendant of the medieval culture’s hatred of the usurers. So I say to you: love thy neighbour. And when you ask ‘how shall I love my neighbour’? I say, love thy neighbour!
By Tom Hodgkinson