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“The Shadowy Realm of Usury”

From the eleventh to the thirteenth century, new towns sprung up over Europe along the high roads and coastlines, subject to royal or seigniorial authority. They became centers for tax collecting, the trading of surplus goods, and the circulation of money. A multitude of newly-constructed monumental cathedrals and abbeys in the contemporary Gothic style soared towards the heavens, built at great expense for the good of the soul. Bridges, canals, and roads were constructed, all of which aided the transport of people and goods. As pilgrims made their often arduous journeys to view the body parts of saints in cathedrals, and theologians anxiously contemplated the omens in the skies, amber, honey, beeswax, glassware, basalt, metal jewelry, pottery, wool, and wine were carried across Europe. Tastes grew for more exotic items, and so spices (cumin, ginger, cardamom, and saffron) and luxurious textiles, such as silk and toile, arrived at ports from the Mediterranean, Africa, and the Levant. Aristocrats filled their drafty castles with tapestries, lit them with tallow candles, and decorated them with ever more comfortable furniture. They adorned themselves with more colorful and sumptuous textiles and jewels and bought armor to protect themselves in war.¹

The late medieval world was one of hierarchy, privilege, servitude, and dependency. Private fortunes were concentrated in the hands of the monarchs and nobility and would continue to be for centuries to come. Up to the tenth century, ←1 | 2→the region was covered by forests and marshes, moors and heaths, and much of it was woefully unproductive. Life consisted of a network of obligations and duties with everyone born into their place in life as part of a feudal society. The economy was based on self-sufficiency, barter, and service-in-kind, that gave the individual little, if any, ability to sell their labor freely. Founded on vassalage and inherited land held by the king and his favored nobles, fiefdoms were granted from lords to their vassals in return for personal service and allegiance. These self-sufficient manorial estates were worked by the villeins—peasants who were subject to the lords—and serfs (a term that came from the Latin servus meaning slave) who were bonded to the feudal estate. But between the twelfth and early fourteenth centuries, those feudal ties would be weakened. Even by the late eleventh century, many goods were being exchanged not by barter but according to the law of the market.²

In France, the unsystematic Carolingian villa economy evolved into a loosely structured type of manorial estate called a seigneurie. The small royal domain centered around Paris was surrounded by powerful lords who ruled, among other regions, Toulouse, Normandy, Champagne, Anjou, Brittany, Burgundy, and Aquitaine who were vassals of the king of France. In Italy, councils of prelates or nobles ruled over its patchwork land of independent duchies, kingdoms, and republics. England’s power, from the time of the Norman invasion in 1066, was more concentrated in the hands of its kings, although the weakness of a particular monarch was often the opportunity for powerful barons to exert their strength and demand certain rights and liberties. At the pinnacle of every society was the Church, the wealth of which lay in the extensive demesnes that had been transferred or bequeathed to monasteries and abbeys. Within the Church, there was a vast difference between the archbishops at the top and the poor rural priests who had more in common with the peasants. Nobles were equally varied with the highest lords in control of vast estates and holding immense power while, at the other end of the scale, were poor, low-status knights. Among the peasants, there were those who were wealthy enough to rent land out to tenants while others were landless and barely survived from day to day. But in a world of hierarchy, where status trumped wealth, it was more advantageous to be a poor priest or lowly knight than a rich peasant.³

Subsistence farming left the population at the mercy of the weather. If a crop failed, it could mean famine, which, in turn, often brought disease, malnutrition, plague and death, especially for the young, old, and weak. Feudalism reached its height in the eleventh century, but the economy was transforming. Change varied from manor to manor, town to town, and country to country and, as many ←2 | 3→historians have noted, there was no sudden divide between the manorial economy and the earliest stages of capitalism. Even as the instruments and methods of a capital-based economy were being implemented, it remained a highly structured economy that was “embedded in a system of mutual social responsibility.” Even so, in the middle of the eleventh century deeds of gift, including land, started to give way to title deeds contingent on money payment and coinage became a more common method of payment.⁴

Economic developments are perhaps best viewed as a continuum with distinct periods of expansion and decline. The eleventh to the beginning of the fourteenth century was a time of expansion. A milder, drier climate fostered more bountiful harvests and led to surplus produce that was sold at local, and increasingly, overseas markets. More coins were minted on a more regular basis and in larger amounts. Monasteries such as the one at Cluny increased their use of money and a larger number of peasants were paid in coinage. This greater circulation of cash prompted capital formation and paid for new and improved agricultural techniques and machinery, metal working, and new settlements. With more money available, nobles hired better craftsmen and day workers, and instituted farming on a bigger scale which yielded more surplus. The population grew and people demanded a greater amount of goods—whether meat, wool, timber, or leather—as well as a wider variety as overseas traders began to channel exotic spices and new textiles into Western Europe.⁵

As one historian observed, the economy of Western Europe experienced a “broad, sustained, and rapid development.” After centuries of brutal invasions by Vikings, Hungarians, and the Slavic Wends, European society enjoyed relative peace and sufficiently stable conditions to allow for sustained economic expansion until the early part of the fourteenth century. Western Europe, the once poor relation of the glittering Eastern Byzantium Empire, was on the threshold of a significant and life-changing economic boom. Land was cleared, forests felled, and marshes drained to create more agricultural land to feed its growing population and create surplus produce to sell in domestic markets and, increasingly, overseas. New buildings altered the landscape, and ever larger number of people trudged over more and better roads and bridges. Castles and churches began to dominate the towns and cities—symbols of power, culture, wealth, and, on the other hand, the World to Come. Construction was often crude, but there was a lot of it.⁶

There was no power without wealth. Those with power—the monarch, the Church, and the nobility—were usually exempt from taxation and the economic burden in the form of taxation and fines generally fell on the rest of society. In the eleventh century, tallages, or tailles, tended to be imposed spasmodically ←3 | 4→in response to a particular need or event. As expenses grew, rulers looked at all possibilities to replenish their coffers to pay for their wars, household expenses, hospitality, building projects, and the daily running of the kingdom. By the thirteenth century, tallages were usually annual and fixed and yet it was a constant battle to garner more funds without incurring flight, protest, and revolt on the part of the tax-burdened populace. Anxious to avoid rebellion, and aware that taxation was an unpopular method of financing the realm, kings often turned to creditors for loans. But this had one major disadvantage. Moneylenders expected a profit on their cash advance and that, in the eyes of the Church and hence society, was usury.

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“One went furtively to visit the money lender as one went to visit a whore,” the French historian Fernand Braudel wrote, “but one went all the same.” Except that not everyone went furtively. Credit revitalized the economy of Western Europe from the eleventh century and made Europe the center of trade, commerce, and cultural innovation. It was credit, as the modern economist Joseph A. Schumpeter later observed, that was the basis of Western Europe’s economic growth from the eleventh century and the foundation of the capitalist system that developed over the following centuries. It removed the necessity of wealth from free enterprise by allowing those without much money to fund projects and buy merchandise. And it was a network of moneylenders that provided that crucial credit to everyone from the monarch to the peasant.⁷

When William of Normandy made the crossing to England, landing at Pevensey on September 28, 1066, he met his rival for the English crown, Harold Godwinson, on the battlefield. The Norman soldiers charged against the defensive shield wall erected by the English troops, and amid the grisly carnage Harold was hacked to death (according to the 1067 poem Carmen de Hastingae Proelio), perhaps after receiving an arrow in the eye (according to the Bayeaux tapestry). William the Bastard, as the English called him, was crowned king of England at Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day. It was said that a comet appeared but whether that was interpreted as a good sign or an evil omen is unknown.⁸

Accompanying the Norman conquerors on their successful invasion were a number of Jewish merchants, who initially settled in London. Exorbitant taxes, the source of much protest throughout Europe, were exacted upon them for the privilege of settlement, economic opportunity, and protection. This was not unique to Jews. New tenants on a lord’s land paid entry fines, sometimes fixed and ←4 | 5→sometimes dependent upon the quality of land and the length of the tenancy, and all foreigners paid settlement fees. London was a city full of migrants attracted by its vibrant trading and financial activity. It was the main center of both local and long-distance trade with many craftsmen. It was generally self-governing, its inhabitants electing their own mayors and sheriffs. Merchants ebbed and flowed from many countries, ships laden with merchandise seemed to arrive from every nation, and horses and carts filled with goods clogged the narrow streets. All cities built walls to control the flow of people and good and London’s city walls, erected by the Romans, were secured by seven gates: Aldgate, Aldersgate, Bishopsgate, Cripplegate, Ludgate, Moorgate, and Newgate. Street names reflected the goods sold: Cheapside and East Cheap (the name came from the Saxon word “chepe” meaning market), Poultry, Cornhill, Old Fish Street, Ermine Street, Honey Lane, and Milk Street. Two miles outside of the city, the palace of Westminster sat on the banks of the River Thames. Just outside the city walls, between Fleet Street and the River Thames, stood the New Temple, the English headquarters of the Knights Templars (the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon, to give them their full title), which served as the royal treasury during the reign of King John and where the wealthy deposited their money for safekeeping. To the north lay fields and meadows through which ran streams. Beyond the pastures, there was a great forest full of wild animals and thick foliage. The attractions of this bustling city went unappreciated by Richard of Devizes, a monk at Winchester. He objected to London as a place of “actors, jesters, smooth-skinned lads, Moors, flatterers, pretty boys, effeminates, pederasts, singing and dancing girls, quacks, belly-dancers, soceresses, extortioners, night-wanderers, magicians, mimes, beggars, buffoon.” His advice? “Do not live in London.”⁹

If Richard’s description was only a little correct, it is not surprising that Jews gathered in their own communities. We regard ghettoism today as a problem to be eradicated but the medieval world built on hierarchy, with the monarch at the pinnacle, was far removed from modern ideals of integrated “race,” “ethnicity” or “class.” Such segregation was often a privilege that was sought; it was expected that each group would live, and want to live, in their own sectors of town. Old Jewry was situated in the shadow of the ancient Saxon royal palace with another Jewry situated close to the White Tower built in 1078, which would become the most inner ward of the Tower of London. Jews newly-arrived in the city gravitated towards these Jewries where it was easier for Jewish leaders to control and maintain Jewish traditions and religious law and prevent interaction with non-Jews that might lead to undesirable liasons or even apostasy. It also gave them protection, when necessary, against those who were hostile towards them. ←5 | 6→Despite efforts by the most orthodox to keep the Jewish community isolated, however, interaction was common in the markets, in the streets, and in private homes. This was especially true for those who were involved in business and those who were less inclined toward strict religious observance. Soon Jews ventured to other market towns throughout England, settling in Oxford, Cambridge, York, Winchester, Lincoln, and Norwich. They preferred towns with mints, which suggests that they may have handled coinage for the Crown.¹⁰

Many of these Jews traded precious metals, which were in high demand from the eleventh century as gold and silver mining was revitalized, along with other commodities such as copper, tin, and alum, which was used to bind dye to cloth. As competition increased in these trades, the Jews in England began to narrow their professions and specialize in moneychanging and usury, although people at this time rarely stuck to one trade and most of these early bankers also worked as merchants, mint workers, and goldsmiths. As moneychangers, they calculated the values of the different currencies in circulation and, as moneylenders they lent capital at variable rates of interest. Their capital was a service, a product, to be sold like any other. Yet, the addition of an interest rate onto the principal loan amount made the transaction usurious. The practice of accepting valuable items as collateral, if the loan was large, or as insurance against default, if the sum was small, set some Jews up in pawnbroking. By the end of the twelfth century, pawnbroking, like usury itself, had become synonymous with Jews.¹¹

To most people in the twelfth century, and for centuries after, this form of profit was wickedly immoral. Those who were against usury did not necessarily believe that money was immoral in and of itself nor was all profit considered illegitimate. Clerics such as Thomas, the rector of Chobham (c.1160–c.1236), Alexander of Hales (1185–1245), and Peter Olivi (1248–1298) took into account risk and uncertainty as well as theft, fire and other possible losses a merchant might encounter. Wealth could be put to good use, for the betterment of the common weal and the poor, or it could be put to ill use. It could aid those in need, or it could drive people to greed, corruption, and all sorts of deviancy. If used unjustly, riches were antithetical to piety, the twelfth-century Parisian theologian Peter Comestor asserted. This stood in opposition to caritas, or charity, which was deemed to be the love of God as expressed through the love of oneself and one’s neighbors. The centrality of the poor (however they were defined) and mercy (from the Latin misericordia meaning “poor heart”) in Christian theology was in place by the fifth century and molded this twelfth-century virtue of charity. For the archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton (c.1150–1228) faith and charity were interwoven and it was a traditional view that the rich had an obligation to help the poor. For ←6 | 7→most religions, and for most people to this day, caring little about material goods is indicative of the truly spiritual. Renunciation of all material wealth had once been the mark of the virtuous, and it remained the pinnacle of sanctity. But by the late medieval period, it was sufficient for the rich to give up only as much of their wealth to fulfil their societal obligation but still retain enough to maintain their social standing. Charity not only benefited the recipient of that act of altruism, it was also morally beneficial to the giver, rewarding men and women with salvation in the World to Come. It was the source of virtue for the individual and society. That meant surplus goods should be distributed to those in need and money should be lent freely without interest for the common good.¹²

By demanding a profit off a loan, the usurer was committing a sin against caritas, according to the Church. A neighbor in need should be helped without the expectation of financial gain. Whether it involved simple or compound interest, usury was therefore inherently extortive, exploitative, and deceitful. Money was said to be conjured up “in the shadowy realm of usury, an unnatural vice.” It was “an instrument of exchange that [had,] devil-like, magical powers of luring people and then corrupting them.” It stood to reason, from this perspective, that if person A made money off a loan it was inevitably at the expense of person B, the borrower. A virtuous authority was therefore obliged to protect person B from the exploitative and sinister business dealings of person A.¹³

That assessment was not new as usurers had long been criminalized and its association with Jews stretched back to ancient times. In antiquity, Aristotle had denounced usury because he regarded money to be “barren” and unable to breed. It was therefore “unnatural” for money to beget money. In addition to agreeing with Aristotle’s misgivings, medieval theologians objected to usury on biblical grounds. One vague comment by Luke, that said a person should not lend expecting more in return, was bolstered by many admonitions in the Hebrew Bible about the evils of usury. Jews were not to engage in moneylending, except with “strangers.” So while Christians interpreted the text to mean usury was forbidden to all Christians, Jews censured usury only between Jews and not between Jews and non-Jews, so long as the Jew was the creditor. In practise, however, Jews were not only creditors but borrowers, too, from both Jews and Christians.¹⁴

The connection between Jews and moneylending was notable in the early Church. To the fourth-century archbishop of Constantinople John Chrysostom, moneylenders and Jews were synonymous, and he denounced them as plundering, covetous thieves who cheated in trade. He also complained about the aristocrats “jacking up of prices,” and decorating their villas than doing “anything with some sense in it.” The influential fifth-century Syrian bishop, Theodoretos of Kyross, ←7 | 8→accused Jewish moneylenders of accumulating wealth at the expense of Christians while Isaac of Antioch cautioned Christians not to imitate the Jews who “fast, and devour profits … pray, and absorb the usurers … and devour the flesh of the poor.” To such critics, making a profit off moneylending was simply financial exploitation; whether the particular transaction was amicable and honest or coercive and extortionate was irrelevant.¹⁵

The Council of Nicea, in 325, had issued an edict banning usury (labeling it “filthy lucre”), but this applied only to the clergy. It was not until the early twelfth century, as towns grew and the capital market expanded, that the subject of usury became urgent and members of the Church pushed for a complete ban. It was nothing less than a sin against God, said the Cistercian abbot Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153), and he rejected any attempt by lay and religious rulers to come to some sort of accommodation with it. Cardinal Robert of Courcon (c.1160–1219), who became the formative chancellor at the University of Paris, thought usury was “universally infecting society,” and called for an unequivocal ban. Not only was usury unneighborly and anti-social, not only was it motivated by greed and was against charity, it was nothing less than theft. The Italian monk Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109) warned people not to become rich by “theft and usury and fraud.” His pupil, Anselm of Lucca, continued with this analogy, calling for the return of usuries to the borrower because they were stolen goods. Their countryman, theologian Peter Lombard (1100–1160), quoted Aristotle when he placed usury under “furtum” (civic, but not criminal, theft) in his influential Book of Sentences. The French scholastic theologian, William of Auxerre (1145–1231), acknowledged profit as legitimate if it was gained with moral honesty but he was disgusted by the way in which moneylending was conducted as if it was a legitimate profession. In his mind, usury was the theft of time. As time was God’s possession, so the usurer who added future interest onto a loan was charging for the use of time and, in essence, stealing from God. The twelfth-century poem Les Vers de la Mort (Verses of Death) was written by the minstrel-turned-monk Hélinand de Froidmont and he, too, equated usury with theft.

The usurer says: I know very well

That what I have stolen is not mine

I am a dishonorable sinner

Because I keep, against the law

That which belongs to another, in which I have no part.

←8 | 9→

Accepting a profit from a loan was no different to breaking into a home and taking someone’s money or goods. It was the same as stealing livestock from your neighbor. With money in greater circulation and more interest loans transacted, usury became a matter of social justice for its critics.¹⁶

In 1139, usury was officially pronounced a sin for every Christian by the Second Lateran Council. According to the Church, usury tainted not only the moneylender but anyone who benefited from the profits of usury, a stance at odds with most secular authorities. Even alms were not allowed if the money had been made from usury, although how much this rule was followed is impossible to know.¹⁷

Interest loans were a thorny issue for the Church and it was clear that monasteries and clergymen indulged in usury in contradiction of edicts forbidding the practice. There were those in the Church who believed they had to adapt to the new financial world and urged compromise, such as regulating a lower interest rate. Given the fact that the Church was both a creditor and borrower, buying and selling land and goods, collecting tithes and other revenue from its properties and agriculture, which provided the money for its parish services, this was a pragmatic and self-preserving concession. The papacy therefore sought to redefine usury with clear instructions on what was legal and moral and what crossed the line and became sinful and harmful to the common good.

Up until the Third Lateran Council in 1179, Luke’s curt admonition about usury had been negligible in the discussion of it, and it was debatable whether or not it was a command to ban usury completely and forever. The council guided by Pope Alexander III made Luke’s brief utterance the reference point for the Church, and the definition of usury was broadened to include credit that was sold at a higher price than cash sales. While acknowledging that usury was ubiquitous in spite of moral outrage, the Church now employed the weapon of denying usurers a Christian burial. Of course, this only concerned Christians but that was the main concern of the Church. Jewish moneylending was a matter of Church policy only insofar as it affected Christians.¹⁸

In 1185, when Uberto Crivelli became pope, taking the name Urban III, he went further than his predecessors by claiming that usury was simply the “intention to gain.” Nearly two decades later, Pope Innocent III, in a letter to the French bishops entitled On Usury, wrote:

We believe that you know how pernicious the vice of usury is, since, in addition to the ecclesiastical laws which have been issued against it, the prophet says that those who put their money out at interest are to be excluded from the ←9 | 10→tabernacle of the Lord [Psalms 15:5] And the New Testament, as well as the Old, forbids the taking of interest, since the Truth [Christ] himself says: “Lend, hoping for nothing again.” [Luke 6:35] …. We command you all by this apostolic writing not to permit those who are known as usurers to clear themselves by any subterfuge or trick when they are charged with the crime.

Usury was trickery and deception practiced upon the desperate and uninformed. Yet, despite his condemnation, Innocent understood the important role moneylending played in the Church’s and the wider society’s economic life. He therefore advised a cautious enforcement of the Lateran Council decrees, concerned that if the numerous usurers were forbidden their profession “many churches would have to be shut down.”¹⁹

Innocent presided over the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 which prohibited Jews from charging exorbitant interest. Ostensibly, this was to guard Christians against the dangers of moneylending, but it begged the question: What was considered exorbitant? And why were risk and availability of capital not taken into consideration, as they were in other economic transactions, such as the sale of goods? Profits were not guaranteed but dependent upon a multitude of factors—changes in coinage or the circulation of money, debasement of currency, unforeseen political events including war, bankruptcies, changes in the balance of payments, manipulation of the exchange rate, and many other things. But in the case of interest loans, risk was not valued. Canon 67 of the Council stated:

The more the Christian religion is restrained from usurious practices, so much the more does the perfidity of the Jews grow in these matters, so that within a short time they are exhausting the resources of Christians. Wishing, therefore, to see that Christians are not savagely oppressed by Jews in this matter, we ordain by this synodal decree that if Jews in future, on any pretext, extort oppressive and excessive interest from Christians, then they are to be removed from contact with Christians until they have made adequate satisfaction for the immediate burden. The Christians also … shall be compelled by ecclesiastical censure to abstain from commerce with them. We enjoin upon princes not to be hostile to Christians on this account, but rather to be zealous in restraining Jews from so great oppression.

One of those “cruel oppressions” condemned by the council was licensed pawnbroking carried out by Jews, especially in France and Flanders.²⁰

To opponents of usury, charging a profit on loans corrupted society and consumed its victims as viciously as the wolf ripped apart its prey. It savaged the ←10 | 11→simple, devout people in their lust for wealth or pleasure, like “beasts of the forest [ways of the flesh]…which devour the Church and the faithful soul.” With a small number of Jews prominent in the moneylending business in Western Europe and Christians forbidden to enter into it, usury was labeled a Jewish profession. It was considered an “immoral” profession, only suitable to people who had denied Christ. We cannot know if there were Christians at this time who, on a non-professional and clandestine basis, lent money at interest to their friends and neighbors. If there were, then they would simply be labeled as “judaizers.” Every usurer was, for all intents and purposes, a Jew.²¹

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Demand for credit was growing and it would not be long before Christians would clamor to enter into the field of moneylending, even if it was officially prohibited to practice usury by religious and secular authorities. But, until that time, this meant that for a brief time at the end of the eleventh and early-twelfth century Jews were dominant in the field of moneylending in Western Europe. This is one reason why, despite the long and hostile association between Jews and usury that stretched back to antiquity, it was not until the twelfth century that serious debates about interest loans occurred in Western Europe. It was not until that time that the Lateran councils began to proscribe usury and issue punishment for those involved.

The reason for these changes in policy towards moneylending was the great economic change and expansion in Western Europe, whereby money in the form of coinage was more abundant and a larger number of interest loans were conducted as the demand for capital increased. In a short space of time, interest loans were to become an integral part of Western European societies that were slowly and unevenly adopting a surplus-rich, capital-based economy. Weekly markets linked the urban areas to the isolated rural villages, offering local everyday necessities to the townspeople and peasants. On a grander scale, fairs were annual or biannual events that became the hub of international finance and trade, with important fairs arranged in Troyes, Provins, Bar-sur-Aube, Lagny, Aix-la-Chapelle (Aachen), Geneva, Cologne, Frankfurt, Bruges, Stourbridge and the hilly French province of Champagne. By the thirteenth century, an initiative by the authorities was needed to get markets and fairs recognized, with the time and place regulated, and these authorities also had the right to close down any market or fair if they were unlicensed. Feast days and trade were intertwined as people flocked to the fairs, often held on saints’ days, to buy and sell goods and make other deals. They were ←11 | 12→entertained by jongleurs who performed acrobatics, magic tricks, and juggling, as well as strolling players and musicians, while vendors sold food and drinks. These trading venues not only benefitted the merchants and traders. They became a vital source of revenue for the local authorities, who profited from taxes, rents, and other fees, as well as the religious houses, which were given the right to weigh and tax the goods. So crucial were these events that great effort was taken to prevent any disruption of the market and fair so that those conducting business could do so in peace.²²

Many people today would agree with the French theologian and philosopher Peter Abelard (1079–1142) that Jews took up the “immoral” trade of moneylending because they had little or no choice. Yet it was often the case that Jewish moneylenders fought to retain their privileges and position as bankers, which does not indicate a forced profession that Jews were driven into due to a lack of other choices. Throughout Europe, Jews worked in a variety of professions, including as metal workers, vintners, dyers, glass workers, miners, smiths, tailors, butchers, bakers, sailors, and physicians. Only a small number of Jews ever sat at the banker’s bench and an even smaller number only sat at the banker’s bench as people commonly held two or more overlapping occupations. In addition, this monopoly was short-lived, which dispels the myth that only Jews were moneylenders. During the twelfth century, Christians, particularly Italians, entered into moneylending in significant numbers including the Riccardi of Lucca, Betti of Lucca, Ballardi of Lucca, Frescobaldi, and Spini. Italians who lent money to monarchs generally took their profits in the form of commercial advantages rather than a cash return on the principal. Cahors from southern France were so influential in banking that the Benedictine monk of St. Albans and chronicler Matthew Paris (c.1200–1259) equated the word “Caursines” (Cahors) with moneylender. They cloaked “their usury under the show of trade,” Paris wrote, plying their “horrible-nuisance” with “heavy rates of interest.” Paris had no love for any usurer, who, with the help of “the extortions of the pope and the cheating of the king” had enslaved England in a sea of debt. Criticism was also directed at the the Lombards, although there seems to be little difference between Cahors and Lombards and the two words appear to be used interchangeably. The Lombards had control over the moneylending trade in many lands and, like the Jews and the Cahors, they were reviled for their “ill-gotten gains.”²³

With the growth in trade and commerce boosting the need for more bankers and their ready money, the ranks of usurers were swelled by these Christians who eagerly entered the financial trade in defiance of papal and royal prohibitions. This again suggests that moneylending was not a forced occupation but one that ←12 | 13→many Jews and Christians expected would provide them with a good living. So long as people paid their debts, moneylending could indeed be a highly profitable business. Interest rates were set at an average of 40 to 45 percent and could reach as high as 60 percent. The steep rates were determined by the high taxes imposed on foreigners for settlement and other tallages, and the risk involved in lending money—the possibility of default as well as the chance that the currency would be debased and inflation would make each coin less valuable on repayment. On the other hand, debased coinage benefited the debtor, who received the loan at a higher value and repaid his debt with devalued coins.²⁴

In sum, Jews were not solely moneylenders nor were they unique players in the business of moneylending even if they were dominant for a short period of time. They did not, as traditional accounts often claim, invent banking or capitalism single-handedly and there was nothing to link the religion of Judaism and moneylending, as the nineteenth-century economist Werner Sombart claimed. At the same time, the fact that the number of Jews involved in moneylending was small in comparison to the Jewish population, does not make the presence of those individual Jewish moneylenders a “myth,” or irrelevant.²⁵

In the Church’s efforts to keep Christians free from the sin of usury, an effort doomed to failure after the Italian Christians took up usury, the Jewish moneylenders played a key role. Theoretically, they provided the capital necessary for economic growth while ensuring that Christians kept their souls pure and their hands clean, spiritually untainted by the “immoral” profession. Christians could benefit from the results of usury, but they could not be seen to be practicing it. They could take loans off Jews while condemning them for immoral practices. They could assure themselves that participation in such a vile profession substantiated claims that Jews were spiritually bereft. It was a grand deceit. Because almost everyone—directly or indirectly—was involved in usury.

* * *

Roman law was in the early stages of being rediscovered and being taught in the universities at Bologna and Paris. The Romans had ruled that the cost of a transaction was determined by the agreement between the buyer and the seller, and it had allowed usury so long as it was under 12 percent. This only referred to simple interest—a single payment of a set percentage. Compound interest had been forbidden in the Roman Empire as an immoral, unprincipled, and ruthless practice, which was how the Church defined all usury. Until written contracts ←13 | 14→became commonplace, loan agreements were based on a man’s word and disputes were settled by witnesses willing (or bribed) to testify to the truthfulness or mendacity of the creditor and debtor.²⁶

Mutuum contracts were loans of fungibles—items that could be returned to the creditor in the same state, such as jewelry or clothing. A commodatum contract was one that dealt with non-fungibles (such as houses) that had a return in excess of the principal because it was a loan for use. Although coins were categorized as fungibles, interest-bearing loans were fast becoming necessities in business transactions. To get around charges of usury that might land a moneylender in prison or with hefty fines, profits from interest payments were disguised in a variety of ways, and increasingly convoluted loan charters were devised in order to hide the payment of interest from the authorities. Late charges were added to time dated contracts, which, though legal, were seen as ploys to gain usurious profit, which, of course, they were. Damages were assessed, deposit charges issued, and a myriad of complicated contracts were drawn up that included partnerships, mortgages, sea loans, loans on exchange, dry exchange, and forward contracts, all with the aim of concealing the fact that interest was charged and paid. Other ways to mask interest payment and escape the usury laws was to execute a fake sale at an inflated value and then resell at a lower price, a practice called chevisance (meaning an unlawful agreement or contract). While the legal system was still rudimentary, it was relatively easy for the usurer to avoid detection. As the law became more sophisticated, contracts had to become even more complicated in order to avoid the lender’s possible prosecution for usury.²⁷

As trade increased, new banking methods were developed to fit a changing and more dynamic economy that was spreading further afield. It became standard for business at markets and fairs to be conducted within a chain of credit transactions as buyers bought goods on credit and then sold to a merchant who also needed credit for his purchase. One of the earliest and most revolutionary developments in early pre-industrial capitalism was the bill of exchange. These new promissory notes included the terms of the loan, the repayment schedule, and the hidden interest rate. With these bills, merchants could make cash-free transactions. Credit notes offered the merchant-moneylenders another way to disguise interest payments as they could be easily concealed in the exchange rate, with the lender simply inflating the exchange rate to his benefit. In addition to the bills of exchange, other innovations shaped the rudimentary capitalist world. The emergence of Christian Humanism that used and assimilated Greek and Roman texts that were now rediscovered and translated, contributed to the late medieval changes in commerce and finance. Despite Aristotle’s distaste for usury, it was ←14 | 15→the mid-twelfth century translation of the first three logical texts of his Organon that encouraged the questioning, systematization, and categorization that aided loan transaction by reformulating bookkeeping and finance. Merchants began to specialize in various industries and commodities, markets were organized, weights, measures, and exchange began to be standardized, and transportation was improved both on roads and seas. With these changes, the new money economy flourished, that is, coinage, whether gold, silver, or copper, as money can equally be bits of paper, shells, stones, or, in today’s world, virtual cryptocurrency. Laws were introduced and action taken to protect buyers against unscrupulous traders who sold them short of a product, gave them inferior or fake goods, or deceived the customer in countless other ways, such as engrossing (hoarding). There were always fears that the unscrupulous would manipulate supplies either individually or in collusion with others, to fix prices or hoard goods until the price was driven up by scarcity. It was a concern that never disappeared and resurfaced time and again, particularly during times of dearth or for political gain. On the books, the penalty for such frauds was imprisonment and the confiscation of all the convict’s goods to the Crown, although the law was more stringently imposed when harvests were bad.²⁸

Everyone—kings, queens, nobles, clergymen, tradesmen, and peasants—borrowed money. The papacy may have called usury a sin, Jewish trickery, and detrimental to the common good, but the Church needed money, and lots of it. In the eleventh century, Godfrey of Bouillon pledged an allodial property to Bishop Otbert of Liège in return for a loan of 1,300 silver marks and 3,000 gold marks, while the archbishop of Cologne secured credit from Jewish moneylenders. Thirty years after William’s landing in England, the first crusade was called by Pope Urban II (Odo of Châtillon) to retake the Holy Land from the Muslims who had conquered the Levant in the seventh century. What was supposed to be a mission for God did not always attract people for that cause alone. With wages intermittent, some of the crusaders were more intent on enriching themselves than on pleasing God and looting was rife. The attacks on Jews mainly in towns along the Rhine were violent plunders. To what degree the attack was motivated by religious animosity and how much was due to greed is impossible to say. It seems safe to assume that the two were often mingled to a greater or lesser degree.

All orders of society were expected to support the crusade both morally and financially, but this costly expedition could not be undertaken without recourse to loans. Knights often had to mortgage their estates in order to obtain the money necessary to fight and maintain their families during the time they were away. When the second crusade loomed in 1147, after the fall of Edessa to the Muslim ←15 | 16→armies, there was a pressing need to help people in debt so that they could embark on the crusade. Pope Eugenius III (Bernardo da Pisa) had already issued a bull in 1145 which included the plight of crusaders who were “oppressed by debt.” While crusaders should not be concerned with “precious clothes or elegant appearance or dogs or hawks or other things that are signs of lasciviousness … multicoloured clothes or minivers or gilded or silvered arms …” they should be able to could begin their “holy … journey with a pure heart” and free -from usury on past loans. If a crusader or someone acting on their behalf was bound to a usurious contract by an oath or pledge then he was absolved of that debt by apostolic authority. Peter the Venerable (1092–1156), the abbot of Benedictine abbey of Cluny and the first to translate the Quran into Latin, had another idea about how to raise funds for the campaign. He urged Louis VII of France (r. 1137–1180) to make the Jews contribute to the campaign expenses. Peter despised moneylenders who, he said, preyed on the poor and desperate. For that reason, they were no better than thieves. “Robbers as they are,” he implored, “this is the very occasion to compel them to disgorge!”²⁹

Peter’s hatred for moneylenders may have resulted from his own need for loans. He pawned valuable items from the sacristy at Cluny, to both Jewish and Christian creditors. In 1147, while he derided moneylenders for filling their storage bins and wine cellars and reaping significant riches at the expense of the weak and impoverished, he sought aid from the Jewish moneylenders of Mâcon. When his monastery fell short of funds again, he turned to Henry of Blois, the bishop of Winchester and younger brother of England’s King Stephen, who gave the monastery 2,000 marks to pay their debts and another 7,000 marks six years later. Even the cross donated to Cluny by Henry was stripped of its gold.³⁰

Over the course of the twelfth century, it became standard for the economy of the abbey of Cluny to be run on credit. Monks were supposed to live comfortably in accordance with their status and churches and monasteries were to be richly adorned to honor God. The Cistercian monasteries were also well immersed in the everyday world of moneylending. Bishops and other clerics all over Europe pledged chalices, statues, crosses, rings, robes, bells, books, lamps, and altar panels, among many other items, as collateral in return for much needed funds. In one case, William, the sacristan of a monastery, secretly took out a compound interest loan for forty marks from Benedict, a Jewish moneylender. When the debt came due, Benedict returned to the monastery for the 100 pounds now owed and it was only at that point that the other monks and the abbot learned of the sacristan’s debt. More borrowing was needed to cover the loan amount with the result that, after some years, the debt owing to Benedict was a staggering 1200 pounds.³¹

←16 | 17→

Trading in sacred pawns was commonplace but some Jews feared and despised it. Rumors were spread that once in the custody of the Jews, the pawned Christian objects were used sacrilegiously. Although he traded pawns for money, Peter the Venerable lamented the holy vessels “held captive” by Jewish pawnbrokers, which, he claimed, were used for despicable and unspeakable purposes. And it was not only Christians who deplored the pawning of religious items as security for a loan. Rabbi Jacob Tam, a Jewish community leader in twelfth-century northern France, was also hostile to the practice and forbade the commerce of “Prayer books of the Church.” In Tam’s case, possessing Christian items was an act of idolatry and the trade of “cult” artifacts was a sin punishable by God. Not only did he rage against the pawnbrokers who traded in Christian sacred objects, he also reviled usury as a sin against God and urged moneylenders and pawnbrokers to turn away from such an ungodly trade. Rabbi Eliezer ben Nathan of Mainz looked at the issue with a different perspective. He thought so little of the pledged Christian sacred items that taking a Christian religious item as a pawn was of no importance. To Eliezer, the items so sacred to Christians were not intrinsically holy to Jews, but, rather, goods attached to a “cult.” Taking a cross as a pawn was the same as taking a necklace or a set of cutlery. In his eyes, to suggest otherwise was to give credence to Christian beliefs.³²

Within a century, in many areas of Western Europe, people were becoming used to a credit-based economy. A thirteenth-century Jewish scholar from southern France, Meir ben Simeon of Narbonne, expressed his astonishment at the ongoing Christian opposition to usury:

who can imagine society without loans? …. Since your wealthy [Christians] refrain from lending free of interest, how will the common people and the needy make a living? Or isn’t true that many [of these less privileged people] bring livelihood to their households through a loan of money to purchase one single [cow] for plowing or a bit of cereal or wheat for sowing and [also] for the protection of their families?

Technical innovations, such as the mechanical clock, the spinning wheel, and the astronomical compass were possible thanks to capital, as was entrepreneurship, the growing knowledge of foreign trade, strategies, calculations, better record keeping, and the learning of other languages so as to better participate in that trade. The credit economy fostered alliances as the exchange of a greater array of goods interconnected the new European nations that had been forming since the ←17 | 18→eleventh century. Greater economic interdependence was seen as a possible path to peaceful relations between the nations that so often were at war.³³

Monarchs, in particular, took out vast loans. The costly construction of Notre Dame began in 1160 under one French king, Louis VII, while another, Louis IX (1214–1270), redeemed the Crown of Thorns, which was deposited in Notre Dame during the nineteenth century. Before it was offered to the French king by Baldwin II, the emperor of Constantinople, it had been a pledge in the hands of the Venetians against an enormous loan. Rulers spent vast sums of money on military campaigns, running their households, wages, ever more luxurious clothing that marked a person’s status, buildings, gifts, and hospitality. The two main sources of governmental income were taxes, which were unpopular, and loans, which made the rulers debtors. As they took on larger loans more frequently, the subject of usury became a battlefield over which popes and secular rulers tested their power and a subject for popular protest.

The idea that usury was a form of theft was not picked up by secular governments and there is no indication that secular authorities punished usurers as thieves. Nor did the secular authorities regard those who gained from usury in a secondary fashion—that is, not the usurer but someone who benefited from the profits of usury—as a criminal. Given the pressing need for capital, monarchs and other authorities were not always willing to give in to the anti-usury faction’s call for strict adherence to the laws forbidding interest loans. But this conflict of opinion was complicated by the blurred lines between royal jurisdiction and clerical jurisdiction. It was difficult to know exactly where each began, ended, or overlapped and these discrepancies led to intermittent conflict between the pope, determined to retain his power over kings, and rulers, who were eager to wrest free from the tight grip of Rome.³⁴

Any economic activity on the part of monarchs—whether borrowing or imposing taxes—was usually an ad hoc response to political events rather than consistent policy. If it suited their financial or political needs, or if they were pious, monarchs gladly towed the ecclesiastical line by upholding anti-usury laws and sometimes officiating usury law cases. The benefits of this tactic were the monarch’s ability to confiscate property and issue fines to proven usurers which added much needed revenue to the treasury. For foreigners, and that included Jews, conviction of usury might also mean expulsion as well as the appropriation of property. In general, monarchs followed canon law, depending on their relationship with the pope. But in comparison to the benefits of loans, there is no evidence that kings made a substantial enough profit when they banned usury. In late twelfth-century England, the property and debt contracts of a dead ←18 | 19→usurer came within the jurisdiction of the king, but there is no indication that kings actively appropriated the land of the deceased moneylender. The impetus to disrupt and prohibit usury generally came not from the kings but from sectors of society that were adversely affected by moneylending—those in debt they could not repay their loans, other moneylenders eager to gain a monopoly and push out competition, and those in the Church who objected to what they claimed were its harmful moral, social, and economic effects.³⁵

If their need for funds was not met, monarchs tended to turn a blind eye to usury laws and customs, as did nobles, clergymen, and the peasantry. When protests over more tax demands grew dangerous, the monarchs turned instead to the moneylender to borrow the capital necessary to fund their battles, lavish banquets, briberies, and gifts. While they paid lip service to the papacy’s anti-usury regulations and even their own anti-usury laws, monarchs throughout Europe were holding out their hand for an interest-bearing loan. That is, until the moneylender was more trouble than they were worth.

Notes

1.Britnell, The Commercialisation of English Society, 72; Michel Mollat and Philippe Wolff, The Popular Revolutions of the Late Middle Ages (London: Allen & Unwin, 1973), 34; Georges Duby, The Early Growth of the European Economy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1974), 235.

2.Britnell, The Commercialisation of English Society, 7, 128.

3.Francois Louis Ganshot and Adriaan Verhulst, “France, The Low Countries, and Western Germany” in Cambridge Economic History of Europe, I: The Agrarian Life of the Middle Ages (Cambridge: CUP, 1966), ed. M.M. Postan, 332–33; Adriaan Verhulst, The Carolingian Economy (Cambridge: CUP, 2002), 128; Duby, The Early Growth of the European Economy, 157–59, 161, 165–67, 169, 229; Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks, Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: CUP, 2006), Kindle ed., chap.1.

4.James Davis, “The Ethics of Arbitrage and Forestalling Across the Late Medieval World,” in Simon and James E. Shaw, eds., Market Ethics and Practices, c. 1300–1850 (Abingdon UK & New York: Routledge 2018), Kindle ed., chap. 1

5.Charlemagne’s empire Middleton had used silver coins but with a silver shortage there was less demand for coins in Western Europe than in more developed regions. Ferguson, The Ascent of Money, chapter 1; Raymond de Roover, “The Concept of the Just Price: Theory and Economic Policy,” The Journal of Economic History 18.4 (1958): 428; Roy C. Cave and Herbert H. Coulson, A Source Book for Medieval Economic History (New York: Biblo and Tannen, 1965), 70, 148; David Herlihy, “The Economy of Traditional Europe,” The Journal of Economic History 31.1 (1971): 155, ←19 | 20→162; Martyn Whittock, A Brief History of Life in the Middle Ages (London: Robinson Publishing, 2009), 186; Andrew Cowell, At Play in the Tavern: Signs, Coins, and Bodies in the Middle Ages (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), 60

6.Duby, The Early Growth of the European Economy, 170, 180–81, 194–96, 205, 217, 255–257; M. M. Postan, “England,” in Cambridge Economic History of Europe, ed. Poston, 576, 581.

7.Fernand Braudel, The Wheels of Commerce: Civilization and Capitalism 15th–18th Century, vol. 2, quoted in Shael Herman, Medieval Usury and the Commercialization of Feudal Bonds (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1993), 77; Goetzmann, Money Changes Everything, chap.11.

8.The Chronicles of Melrose, “A.D. 1066,” Ebook, https://archive.org/stream/thechurchhistor104fiskuoft/thechurchhistor104fiskuoft_djvu.txt

9.Morris, A Great and Terrible King, chapters 1 and 6; William Fitzstephen’s description in Dan Jones, The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England (London: Harper Press, 2012), Kindle ed., “Births and Rebirths.”; William of Malmesbury and the Chronicle of Richard of Devizes (late twelfth century), in Borer, The City of London, 76, 89; L. Blanchard, Documents Inédits sur le Commerce de Marseille au Moyen Age, vol. I (Marseille, 1884), 361, in Cave and Coulson, Sourcebook for Medieval Economic History, 99, 112, 144; Postan, Cambridge Economic History of Europe, 553; Britnell, The Commercialisation of English Society, 8.

10.Postan, Cambridge Economic History of Europe, 556, 561, 564; Ivan G. Marcus, “Jews and Christians Imagining the Other in Medieval Europe,” Prooftexts 15.3: 209.

11.Robert C. Stacey, “Jewish Lending and the Medieval English Economy,” in Commercialising Economy: England 1086 to c.1300, ed., R. H. Britnell (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), 78–79.

12.Davis, “The Ethics of Arbitrage”; Miri Rubin, Charity and Community in Medieval Cambridge (Cambridge: CUP, 1987), 1, 58–59, 63, 289.

13.Lester K. Little, Religious Poverty and the Profit Economy in Medieval Europe (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978), 34–35, 53; David Hawkes, The Culture of Usury in Renaissance England (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 17; Cave and Coulson, A Source Book for Medieval Economic History, 169.

14.Goetzmann, Money Changes Everything, chap. 4; Odd Langholm, The Aristotelian Analysis of Usury (Bergen: Universitetsforlaget, 1984).

15.Anthony of Padua, “A Sermon for a Bishop” (Palm Sunday Sermons); “Fourth Sunday after Pentecost Sermon,” www.franciscan-sfo.org/…/St.%20Anthony%20of%20Padua-.

16.Hawkes, The Culture of Usury, 65; Charles R. Geisst, Beggar Thy Neighbor (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), chap. 2; Norman Golb, The Jews in Medieval Normandy: A Social and Intellectual History (Cambridge: CUP, 2012), 201; John W. Baldwin, Masters, Princes, and Merchants: The Social Views of Peter the Chanter and His Circle (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970); Mary ←20 | 21→E. O’Carroll, A Thirteenth-Century Preacher’s Handbook (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1997), 5; Peter Abelard, Letter 130, LPV, I, 32730; The Letters of Peter the Venerable, ed. G. Constable, 2 vols., Harvard Historical Studies, LXXVIII (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967); Little, Religious Poverty, 39.

17.Mirin, Charity and Community, 66.

18.Third Lateran Council, 1179, Papal Encyclicals Online, https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/ecum11.htm

19.Innocent III, On Usury: Letter to the French Bishops (1198), Medieval Sourcebook: Innocent III (r.1198–1216): Letters on Papal Policy, http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/innIII-policies.asp and Innocent III to the bishop of Arras, quoted in Mark Koyama, “Evading the ‘Taint of Usury’: The Usury Prohibition as a Barrier to Entry,” Explorations in Economic History 47.4 (2010): 14.

20.Britnell, The Commercialisation of English Society, 91; Joseph Shatzmiller, Cultural Exchange: Jews, Christians, and Art in the Medieval Market Place (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013), 80–81, 91; Jean Dunbabin, Charles of Anjou: Power, Kingship, and State (London and New York: Longman, 2014), Kindle ed., chap. 3; Raymond de Roover, Money, Banking, and Credit in Mediaeval Bruges—Italian Merchant Bankers, Lombards and Money Changers—A Study in the Origins of Banking (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1948), 63; John H. Munro, “The Medieval Origins of the ‘Financial Revolution’: Usury, Rentes, and Negotiability,” The International History Review 3.25 (2003): 507, 518, 521; Matthew Paris, English History from the Year 1235 to 1273, trans. J. A. Giles (London: H.G. Bohn, 1852), http://legacy.fordham.edu/halsall/source/1235cahorsins.asp and also, p. 100, http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.32106006150517;seq=108;view=1up;num=100; Fourth Lateran Council (1215), Canon 67, http://history.hanover.edu/courses/excerpts/344latj.html; Edwin S. Hunt and James M. Murray, A History of Business in Medieval Europe 1200–1550 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 72; Hawkes, The Culture of Usury, 65.

21.Anthony of Padua, “A Sermon for a Bishop” (Palm Sunday Sermons); “Fourth Sunday after Pentecost Sermon,” www.franciscan-sfo.org/…/St.%20Anthony%20of%20Padua-.

22.Britnell, The Commercialisation of English Society, 11, 15, 19; Hunt and Murray, A History of Business in Medieval Europe, 24, 26; Cave and Coulson, A Source Book for Medieval Economic History, 76, 112–13,119, 125, 151.

23.Juliette Sibon, “Peut-on croire en la parole du juif?” in Croire ou ne pas croire, eds., Monique Cottret and Caroline Galland (Paris: Éditions Kimé, 2013), 242.

24.Johannes Fried, The Middle Ages, trans. Peter Lewis (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2015), Kindle ed., chapters 1 and 2; Geisst, Beggar Thy Neighbor, intro. and chap. 1; Michael Prestwich, Edward I: War, Politics, and Finance (Endeavour Media 2018), Kindle ed., chap.9.

25.Mell, The Myth of the Medieval Jewish Moneylender.

26.June 1273, Calendar of the Close Rolls: Edward I A.D. 1272–1279, Public Records Office (London, 1900), 50, https://play.google.com/books/reader?printsec=frontcover&output=reader&id=snQnAQAAMAAJ&pg=GBS.PP1; Mary Cathcart Borer, The City of London (New York: McKay, 1978), 54, 55; George G. Perry, The Life and Times of Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln (London: Forgotten Books, 2012), 10; R. B. Dobson, The Jewish Communities of Medieval England: The Collected Essays of R. B. Dobson, ed. Helen Birkett (York: The Borthwick Institute, 2010), 2, 5; Christopher Dyer, Making a Living in the Middle Ages: The People of Britain 850–1520 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 101.

27.Koyama, “Evading,” 4, 17; Gwen Seabourne, Royal Regulation of Loans and Sales (Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK: Boydell Press, 2003), 35; Humbert de Romans, In Merchatis (London 1926), 562, quoted in Cave and Coulson, Sourcebook for Medieval Economic History, 113.

28.Ferguson, Ascent of Money, Introduction; Roger of Wendover’s Flowers of History, trans. J. A. Giles, vol. II (London, 1849), 169 quoted in Cave and Coulson, A Sourcebook for Medieval Economic History, 89; Koyama, “Evading,” 2; Shatzmiller, Cultural Exchange, 8, 9; Sophus Reinert and Robert Fredona, “Merchants and the Origins of Capitalism,” Working Paper, Harvard Business School, https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/18-021_b3b67ba8-2fc9-4a9b-8955-670d5f491939.pdf; Davis, “The Ethics of Arbitrage.”

29.Marc Morris, A Great and Terrible King: Edward I and the. Forging of Britain (New York and London: Pegasus Books, nd), Kindle ed., chapters 1 and 3; Davis, “The Ethics of Arbitrage.”; Baldwin, Masters, Princes, and Merchants; O’Carroll, A Thirteenth-Century Preacher’s Handbook, 5; Little, Religious Poverty, 69; Hunt and Murray, The History of Business in Medieval Europe, 72; Eugene III, Quantum praedecessores, Dec. 1. 1145 reprinted in Jonathan Phillips, The Second Crusade: Extending the Frontiers of Christendom (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), Appendix I; Introduction to Peter the Venerable, Against the Inveterate Obduracy of the Jews in The Fathers of the Church: Medieval Continuation, trans. Irven M. Resnick (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2013), https://books.google.com/books?id=-TmKvbusGjkC&pg=PA23&lpg=PA23&dq=peter+the+venerable+to+king+louis&source=bl&ots=zsr32tmJQ7&sig=9U2bkLKzoDP7DDrrj9ls40DAUbk&hl=en&sa=X&ei=eO3oVIS6M4qUNrLDg_AE&ved=0CCEQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=peter%20the%20venerable%20to%20king%20louis&f=false; Duby, The Early Expansion of the European Economy, 231.

30.Priscilla Heath Barnum, Dives and Pauper, vol. II (Oxford: OUP, 2004), 262; Cowell, At Play in the Tavern, 60; Golb, The Jews of Medieval Normandy, 201; Introduction to Peter the Venerable, Against the Inveterate Obduracy of the Jews; Little, Religious Poverty, 69.

31.Koyama, “Evading,” 2; Shatzmiller, Cultural Exchange, 8, 9; Chronica Jocelini de Brakelonda, ed. J. G. Rokewode (London 1840), 2, in Cave and Coulson, Sourcebook ←21 | 22→←22 | 23→←23 | 24→for Medieval Economic History, 175–76; Duby, The Early Growth of the European Economy, 218.

32.Shatzmiller, Cultural Exchange, 27, 28, 31, 33–36, 71; Gavin I. Langmuir, Towards a Definition of Antisemitism (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996), 200–201; Fried, The Middle Ages, Chap. 1; Jürgen Kocka, Capitalism: A Short History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016); Robin R. Mundill, “Christian and Jewish Lending Patterns and Financial Dealings During the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries,” in Credit and Debit in Medieval England c. 1180-c. 1350, eds., P. R. Schofield and N. J. Mayhew (Oxford: Oxbow, 2002), 45, 211; Koyama, “Evading,” 2; Borer, The City of London, 54, 93; Paul Rapin de Thoyras, An Abridgement of the History of England (London: John and Paul Knapton, 1747), 217; William Stubbs, Select Charters of English Constitutional History, ed. H. W. C. Davis (Oxford, 1923), 256 in Cave and Coulson, Sourcebook for Medieval Economic History, 176-77; Hans F. Sennholz, Age of Inflation (Belmont, MA: Western Islands, 1979), 21.

33.The quote in the original reads:…Povertá, alto sapere,/a nulla cosa soiacere,/en desprezo possedere/tutte le cose create./…Chi desia è posseduto,/a quel ch’ama s’è venduto;/s’egli pensa que n’ha ‘vuto,/’han avute rei derrate./….La richeza el tempo tolle,/la scienzia en vento estolle,/la fama alberga ed acolle/l’ipocresia d’onne contrate./Jacopone da Todi, “De la Santa Povertá e Suo Triplice Cielo” (On Holy Poverty and Her Threefold Heaven) Laude 60, reprinted in Evelyn Underhill, Jacopone da Todi: Poet and Mystic 1228–1306, A Spiritual Biography (London, Toronto: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1919), 421–27; Fried, The Middle Ages, chap. 9.

34.Mollat and Wolff, The Popular Revolutions of the Late Middle Ages, 25; Seabourne, Royal Regulation of Loans and Sales, 40, 44, 62, 68.

35.William Chester Jordan, The Great Famine: Northern Europe in the Early Fourteenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 44–45, 62; Whittock, Brief History, 141; Seabourne, Royal Regulation of Loans and Sales, 45, 51.