Religion and the rise of capitalism

by R. H. Tawney

It was enforced partly by secular authorities, partly, in so far as the rivalry of secular authorities would permit it, by the machinery of ecclesiastical discipline. The ecclesiastical legislation on the subject of usury has been so often analyzed that it is needless to do more than allude to it. Early Councils had forbidden usury to be taken by the clergy.[[64]] The Councils of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries forbid it to be taken by clergy or laity, and lay down rules for dealing with offenders. Clergy who lend money to persons in need, take their possessions in pawn, and receive profits beyond the capital sum lent, are to be deprived of their office.[[65]] Manifest usurers are not to be admitted to communion or Christian burial; their offerings are not to be accepted; and ecclesiastics who fail to punish them are to be suspended until they make satisfaction to their bishop.[[66]] The high-water mark of the ecclesiastical attack on usury was probably reached in the legislation of the Councils of Lyons (1274) and of Vienne (1312). The former re-enacted the measures laid down by the third Lateran Council (1175), and supplemented them by rules which virtually made the money-lender an outlaw. No individual or society, under pain of excommunication or interdict, was to let houses to usurers, but was to expel them (had they been admitted) within three months. They were to be refused confession, absolution and Christian burial until they had made restitution, and their wills were to be invalid.[[67]] The legislation of the Council of Vienne was even more sweeping. Declaring that it has learned with dismay that there are communities which, contrary to human and divine law, sanction usury and compel debtors to observe usurious contracts, it declares that all rulers and magistrates knowingly maintaining such laws are to incur excommunication, and requires the legislation in question to be revoked within three months. Since the true nature of usurious transactions is often concealed beneath various specious devices, money-lenders are to be compelled by the ecclesiastical authorities to submit their accounts to examination. Any person obstinately declaring that usury is not a sin is to be punished as a heretic, and inquisitors are to proceed against him tanquam contra diffamatos vel suspectos de hæresi.[[68]]

It would not be easy to find a more drastic example, either of ecclesiastical sovereignty, or of the attempt to assert the superiority of the moral law to economic expediency, than the requirement, under threat of excommunication, that all secular legislation sanctioning usury shall be repealed. But, for an understanding of the way in which the system was intended to work, the enactments of Councils are perhaps less illuminating than the correspondence between the papal Curia and subordinate ecclesiastical authorities on specific cases and questions of interpretation. Are the heirs of those who have made money by usury bound to make restitution? Yes, the same penalties are to be applied to them as to the original offenders. The pious object of ransoming prisoners is not to justify the asking of a price for a loan. A man is to be accounted a usurer, not only if he charges interest, but if he allows for the element of time in a bargain, by asking a higher price when he sells on credit. Even when debtors have sworn not to proceed against usurers, the ecclesiastical authorities are to compel the latter to restore their gains, and, if witnesses are terrorized by the protection given to usurers by the powerful, punishment can be imposed without their evidence, provided that the offence is a matter of common notoriety. An archbishop of Canterbury is reminded that usury is perilous, not only for the clergy, but for all men whatever, and is warned to use ecclesiastical censures to secure the restoration, without the deduction of interest, of property which has been pawned. Usurers, says a papal letter to the archbishop of Salerno, object to restoring gains, or say that they have not the means; he is to compel all who can to make restitution, either to those from whom interest was taken, or to their heirs; when neither course is possible, they are to give it to the poor; for, as Augustine says, non remittitur peccatum, nisi restituitur ablatum. At Genoa, the Pope is informed, a practice obtains of undertaking to pay, at the end of a given term, a higher price for wares than they were worth at the moment when the sale took place. It is not clear that such contracts are necessarily usurious; nevertheless, the sellers run into sin, unless there is a probability that the wares will have changed in value by the time that payment is made; “and therefore your fellow-citizens would show a wise regard for their salvation if they ceased making contracts of the kind, since the thoughts of men cannot be concealed from Almighty God.”[[69]]

It is evident from the number of doubtful cases referred to Rome for decision that the law with regard to usury was not easily administered. It is evident, also, that efforts were made to offer guidance in dealing with difficult and technical problems. In the book of common forms, drawn up in the thirteenth century for the guidance of the papal penitentiary in dealing with hard cases, precedents were inserted to show how usurers should be handled.[[70]] About the same time appeared St. Raymond’s guide to the duties of an archdeacon, which contains a long list of inquiries to be made on visitation, covering every conceivable kind of extortion, and designed to expose the various illusory contracts—fictitious partnerships, loans under the guise of sales, excessive deposits against advances—by which the offence was concealed.[[71]] Instructions to confessors define in equal detail the procedure to be followed. The confessor, states a series of synodal statutes, is to “make inquiry concerning merchandising, and other things pertaining to avarice and covetousness.” Barons and knights are to be requested to state whether they have made ordinances contrary to the liberty of the Church, or refused justice to any man seeking it, or oppressed their subjects with undue tallages, tolls or services. “Concerning burgesses, merchants and officers (ministrales) the priest is to make inquiry as to rapine, usury, pledges made by deceit of usury, barratry, false and lying sales, unjust weights and measures, lying, perjury and craft. Concerning cultivators (agricolas) he is to inquire as to theft and detention of the property of others, especially with regard to tithes ... also as to the removing of landmarks and the occupation of other men’s land.... Concerning avarice it is to be asked in this wise: hast thou been guilty of simony ... an unjust judge ... a thief, a robber, a perjurer, a sacrilegious man, a gambler, a remover of landmarks in fields ... a false merchant, an oppressor of any man and above all of widows, wards and others in misery, for the sake of unjust and greedy gain?” Those guilty of avarice are to do penance by giving large alms, on the principle that “contraries are to be cured with contraries.” But there are certain sins for which no true penitence is possible until restitution has been made. Of these usury is one; and usury, it is to be noted, includes, not only what would now be called interest, but the sin of those who, on account of lapse of time, sell dearer and buy cheaper. If for practical reasons restitution is impossible, the offender is to be instructed to require that it shall be made by his heirs, and, when the injured party cannot be found, the money is to be spent, with the advice of the bishop if the sum is large and of the priest if it is small, “on pious works and especially on the poor.”[[72]]

The more popular teaching on the subject is illustrated by the manuals for use in the confessional and by books for the guidance of the devout. The space given in them to the ethics of business was considerable. In the fifteenth century, Bishop Pecock could meet the Lollards’ complaint that the Scriptures were buried beneath a mass of interpretation, by taking as his illustration the books which had been written on the text, “Lend, hoping for nothing again,” and arguing that all this teaching upon usury was little enough “to answer ... all the hard, scrupulous doubts and questions which all day have need to be assoiled in men’s bargains and chafferings together.”[[73]] A century later there were regions in which such doctrine was still being rehearsed with all the old rigor. In 1552 the Parliament which made the Scottish Reformation was only eight years off. But the catechism of the archbishop of St. Andrews, which was drawn up in that year, shows no disposition to compromise with the economic frailties of his fellow-countrymen. It denounces usurers, masters who withhold wages, covetous merchants who sell fraudulent wares, covetous landlords who grind their tenants, and in general—a comprehensive and embarrassing indictment—“all wretches that will be grown rich incontinent,” and all “who may keep their neighbor from poverty and mischance and do it not.”[[74]]

On the crucial question, how the ecclesiastical courts dealt in practice with these matters, we have very little light. They are still almost an unworked field. On the Continent we catch glimpses of occasional raids. Bishops declare war on notorious usurers, only to evoke reprisals from the secular authorities, to whom the money-lender is too convenient to be victimized by any one but themselves.[[75]] At the end of the thirteenth century an archbishop of Bourges makes some thirty-five usurers disgorge at a sitting,[[76]] and seventy years later an inquisitor at Florence collects 7,000 florins in two years from usurers and blasphemers.[[77]] In England commercial morality was a debatable land, in which ecclesiastical and secular authorities contended from time to time for jurisdiction. The ecclesiastical courts claimed to deal with cases of breach of contract in general, on the ground that they involved læsio fidei, and with usury in particular, as an offence against morality specifically forbidden by the canon law. Both claims were contested by the Crown and by municipal bodies. The former, by the Constitutions of Clarendon,[[78]] had expressly reserved proceedings as to debts for the royal courts, and the same rule was laid down more than once in the course of the next century. The latter again and again forbade burgesses to take proceedings in the courts christian, and fined those who disregarded the prohibition.[[79]] Both, in spite of repeated protests from the clergy,[[80]] made good their pretension to handle usurious contracts in secular courts; but neither succeeded in ousting the jurisdiction of the Church. The question at issue was not whether the usurer should be punished—a point as to which there was only one opinion—but who should have the lucrative business of punishing him, and in practice he ran the gauntlet of all and of each. Local authorities, from the City of London to the humblest manorial court, make by-laws against “unlawful chevisance” and present offenders against them.[[81]] The Commons pray that Lombard brokers may be banished, and that the ordinances of London concerning them may be made of general application.[[82]] The justices in eyre hear indictments of usurers,[[83]] and the Court of Chancery handles petitions from victims who can get no redress at common law.[[84]] And Holy Church, though there seems to be only one example of legislation on the subject by an English Church Council,[[85]] continues to deal with the usurer after her own manner.

For, in spite of the conflict of jurisdictions, the rising resentment against the ways of ecclesiastical lawyers, and the expanding capitalism of the later Middle Ages, it is evident that commercial cases continued, on occasion at least, to come before the courts christian. Nor, after the middle of the fourteenth century, was their right to try cases of usury contested by the secular authorities. A statute of 1341 enacted that (as laid down long before) the King should have cognizance of usurers dead, and the Church of usurers living. The same reservation of ecclesiastical rights was repeated when the question was taken up a century later under Henry VII, and survived, an antiquated piece of common form, even into the age of lusty capitalism under Elizabeth and James I.[[86]]

That ecclesiastical authorities had much opportunity of enforcing the canon law in connection with money-lending is improbable. It was naturally in the commercial towns that cases of the kind most frequently arose, and the towns did not look with favor on the interference of churchmen in matters of business. In London, collisions between the courts of the Official, the Mayor and the King were frequent in the early thirteenth century. Men took proceedings before the first, it seems, when a speedy decision was desired, or when their case was of a kind which secular courts were not likely to regard with favor. Thus craftsmen, to give one curious example out of many, were evidently using the courts christian as a means of giving effect to trade union regulations, which were more likely to be punished than enforced by the mayor and aldermen, by the simple device of imposing an oath and proceeding against those who broke it for breach of faith. The smiths, for instance, made a “confederacy,” supported by an oath, with the object, as they declared, of putting down night-work, but, as was alleged in court, of preventing any but members of their organization from working at the trade, and summoned blacklegs before the ecclesiastical courts. The spurriers forbade any one to work between sunset and sunrise, and haled an offending journeyman before the archdeacon, with the result that “the said Richard, after being three times warned by the Official, had been expelled from the Church and excommunicated, until he would swear to keep the ordinance.”[[87]]

Even at a later period the glimpses which we catch of the activities of the ecclesiastical jurisdiction are enough to show that it was not wholly a dead letter. Priests accused of usury undergo correction at the hands of their bishops.[[88]] Petitioners appeal for redress to the Court of Chancery on the ground that they have failed to secure justice in the courts of bishops or archdeacons, where actions on cases of debts or usury have been begun before “spiritual men.”[[89]] The records of ecclesiastical courts show that, though sometimes commercial questions were dismissed as belonging to the secular courts, cases of breach of contract and usury continued, nevertheless, to be settled by them.[[90]] The disreputable family of Marcroft—William the father was a common usurer, Alice his daughter baked bread at Pentecost, and Edward his son made a shirt on All Saints’ Day—is punished by the ecclesiastical court of Whalley as it deserves.[[91]] At Ripon a usurer and his victim are induced to settle the case out of court.[[92]] The Commissary of London cites Thomas Hall super crimine usurariæ pravitatis, on the ground that, having advanced four shillings on the security of Thomas Foster’s belt, he had demanded twelve pence over and above the principal, and suspends him when he does not appear in court.[[93]] Nor did business of this kind cease with the Reformation. Cases of usury were being heard by ecclesiastical courts under Elizabeth, and even in a great commercial center like the City of London it was still possible in the reign of James I for the Bishop’s Commissary to be trying tradesmen for “lending upon pawnes for an excessive gain.”[[94]]

It was not only by legal penalties, however, that an attempt was made to raise a defensive barrier against the exactions of the money-lender. From a very early date there was a school of opinion which held that, in view of the various stratagems by which usurious contracts could be “colored,” direct prohibition was almost necessarily impotent, and which favored the policy of providing facilities for borrowing on more reasonable terms than could be obtained from the money-lender. Ecclesiastics try, in fact, to turn the flank of the usurer by establishing institutions where the poor can raise capital cheaply. Parishes, religious fraternities, gilds, hospitals and perhaps monasteries lend corn, cattle and money.[[95]] In England, bishops are organizing such loans with papal approval in the middle of the thirteenth century,[[96]] and two centuries later, about 1462, the Franciscans lead the movement for the creation of Monts de Piété, which, starting in Italy, spread by the first half of the sixteenth century to France, Germany, and the Low Countries, and, though never taken up in England—for the Reformation intervened—supplied a topic of frequent comment and eulogy to English writers on economic ethics.[[97]] The canon law on the subject of money-lending underwent a steady development, caused by the necessity of adapting it to the increasing complexity of business organization, down at least to the Lateran Council of 1515. The ingenuity with which professional opinion elaborated the code was itself a proof that considerable business—and fees—were the result of it, for lawyers do not serve God for naught. The canonists, who had a bad reputation with the laity, were not, to put it mildly, more innocent than other lawyers in the gentle art of making business. The Italians, in particular, as was natural in the financial capital of Europe, made the pace, and Italian canonists performed prodigies of legal ingenuity. In England, on the other hand, either because Englishmen were unusually virtuous, or, as a foreigner unkindly said, because “they do not fear to make contracts on usury,”[[98]] or, most probably, because English business was a conservative and slow-going affair, the English canonist Lyndwood is content to quote a sentence from an English archbishop of the thirteenth century and to leave it at that.[[99]]

But, however lawyers might distinguish and refine, the essential facts were simple. The Church sees buying and selling, lending and borrowing, as a simple case of neighborly or unneighborly conduct. Though a rationalist like Bishop Pecock may insist that the rich, as such, are not hateful to God,[[100]] it has a traditional prejudice against the arts by which men—or at least laymen—acquire riches, and is apt to lump them together under the ugly name of avarice. Merchants who organize a ring, or money-lenders who grind the poor, it regards, not as business strategists, but as nefandæ belluæ—monsters of iniquity. As for grocers and victualers “who conspire wickedly together that none shall sell better cheap than another,” and speculators “who buy up corn, meat and wine ... to amass money at the cost of others,” they are “according to the laws of the Church no better than common criminals.”[[101]] So, when the price of bread rises, or when the London fruiterers, persuaded by one bold spirit that they are “all poor and caitiffs on account of their own simplicity, and if they would act on his advice they would be rich and powerful,”[[102]] form a combine, to the great loss and hardship of the people, burgesses and peasants do not console themselves with the larger hope that the laws of supply and demand may bring prices down again. Strong in the approval of all good Christians, they stand the miller in the pillory, and reason with the fruiterers in the court of the mayor. And the parish priest delivers a sermon on the sixth commandment, choosing as his text the words of the Book of Proverbs, “Give me neither riches nor poverty, but enough for my sustenance.”