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<blockquote style="position: relative; padding-left: 55px;"><section><a href="https://djsumdog.com/objects/8230e5b1-7e43-4425-a3ee-9ec7bb76ce5c">djsumdog (djsumdog@djsumdog.com)'s status on Tuesday, 10-Jun-2025 02:45:28 JST</a><a href="https://djsumdog.com/users/djsumdog" title="djsumdog@djsumdog.com"><img src="https://gnusocial.jp/avatar/2108-48-20220727014656.webp" width="48" height="48" alt="djsumdog" style="position: absolute; left: 0; top: 0;">djsumdog</a></section><article>Debt: The First 5,000 Years (page 206)</article><footer><a rel="bookmark" href="https://gnusocial.jp/conversation/5174127#notice-10149645">In conversation</a><time datetime="2025-06-10T02:45:28+09:00" title="Tuesday, 10-Jun-2025 02:45:28 JST">about 12 days ago</time> <span>from <span><a href="https://djsumdog.com/objects/8230e5b1-7e43-4425-a3ee-9ec7bb76ce5c" rel="external" title="Sent from djsumdog.com via ActivityPub">djsumdog.com</a></span></span><a href="https://djsumdog.com/objects/8230e5b1-7e43-4425-a3ee-9ec7bb76ce5c">permalink</a><h4>Attachments</h4><ol><li><label><a rel="external" href="https://gnusocial.jp/attachment/4754953">The rise of rural usury was itself a sign of a growing free peasantry (there had been no point in making loans to serfs, since they had nothing to repossess). It accompanied the rise of commercial farming, urban craft guilds, and the “commercial revolution” of the High Middle Ages, all of which finally brought Western Europe to a level of economic activity comparable to that long since considered normal in other parts of the world. The Church quickly came under considerable popular pressure to do something about the problem, and at first, it did try to tighten the clamps. Existing loopholes in the usury laws were systematically closed, particularly the use of mortgages. These latter began as an expedient: as in medieval Islam, those determined to dodge the law could simply present the money, claim to be buying the debtor’s house or field, and then “rent” the same house or field back to the debtor until the principal was repaid. In the case of a mortgage, the house was in theory not even purchased but pledged as security, but any income from it accrued to the lender. In the eleventh century, this became a favorite trick of monasteries. In 1148, it was made illegal: henceforth, all income was to be subtracted from the principal. Similarly, in 1187, merchants were forbidden to charge higher prices when selling on credit—the Church thereby going much further than any school of Islamic law ever had. In 1179, usury was made a mortal sin, and usurers were excommunicated and denied Christian burial.122 Before long, new orders of itinerant friars like the Franciscans and Dominicans organized preaching campaigns, traveling town to town, village to village, threatening moneylenders with the loss of their eternal souls if they did not make restitution to their victims.
All this was echoed by a heady intellectual debate in the newly founded universities, not so much as to whether usury was sinful and illegal, but precisely why. Some argued that it was theft of another’s material possessions; others that it constituted a theft of time, charging others for something that belonged only to God. Some held that it embodied the sin of Sloth, since like the Confucians, Catholic thinkers usually held that a merchant’s profit could only be justified as payment for his labor (i.e., in transporting goods to wherever they were needed), whereas interest accrued even if the lender did nothing at all. Soon the rediscovery of Aristotle, who returned in Arabic translation, and the influence of Muslim sources like Ghazali and Ibn Sina, added new arguments: that treating money as an end in itself defied its true purpose, that charging interest was unnatural, in that it treated mere metal as if it were a living thing that could breed or bear fruit.123
But as the Church authorities soon discovered, when one opens up such debates, it’s very hard to keep a lid on them. Soon, new popular religious movements were appearing everywhere, and many took up the same direction so many had in late Antiquity, not only challenging commerce but questioning the very legitimacy of private property. Most of these movements were labeled heresies and violently suppressed, but some of their arguments were taken up by members of the mendicant orders themselves. By the thirteenth century, the great intellectual debate was between the Franciscans and the Dominicans over “apostolic poverty”—basically, over whether Christianity could be reconciled with property of any sort.</a></label><br><a href="https://djsumdog.com/media/fe/0f/19/fe0f19eaa15c85f7326595b824287aca6de80f7fbbb8fc01d82dec951de59a7a.png" rel="external">https://djsumdog.com/media/fe/0f/19/fe0f19eaa15c85f7326595b824287aca6de80f7fbbb8fc01d82dec951de59a7a.png</a></li></ol></footer></blockquote>

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djsumdog (djsumdog@djsumdog.com)'s status on Tuesday, 10-Jun-2025 02:45:28 JST djsumdog
Debt: The First 5,000 Years (page 206)
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1. The rise of rural usury was itself a sign of a growing free peasantry (there had been no point in making loans to serfs, since they had nothing to repossess). It accompanied the rise of commercial farming, urban craft guilds, and the “commercial revolution” of the High Middle Ages, all of which finally brought Western Europe to a level of economic activity comparable to that long since considered normal in other parts of the world. The Church quickly came under considerable popular pressure to do something about the problem, and at first, it did try to tighten the clamps. Existing loopholes in the usury laws were systematically closed, particularly the use of mortgages. These latter began as an expedient: as in medieval Islam, those determined to dodge the law could simply present the money, claim to be buying the debtor’s house or field, and then “rent” the same house or field back to the debtor until the principal was repaid. In the case of a mortgage, the house was in theory not even purchased but pledged as security, but any income from it accrued to the lender. In the eleventh century, this became a favorite trick of monasteries. In 1148, it was made illegal: henceforth, all income was to be subtracted from the principal. Similarly, in 1187, merchants were forbidden to charge higher prices when selling on credit—the Church thereby going much further than any school of Islamic law ever had. In 1179, usury was made a mortal sin, and usurers were excommunicated and denied Christian burial.122 Before long, new orders of itinerant friars like the Franciscans and Dominicans organized preaching campaigns, traveling town to town, village to village, threatening moneylenders with the loss of their eternal souls if they did not make restitution to their victims. All this was echoed by a heady intellectual debate in the newly founded universities, not so much as to whether usury was sinful and illegal, but precisely why. Some argued that it was theft of another’s material possessions; others that it constituted a theft of time, charging others for something that belonged only to God. Some held that it embodied the sin of Sloth, since like the Confucians, Catholic thinkers usually held that a merchant’s profit could only be justified as payment for his labor (i.e., in transporting goods to wherever they were needed), whereas interest accrued even if the lender did nothing at all. Soon the rediscovery of Aristotle, who returned in Arabic translation, and the influence of Muslim sources like Ghazali and Ibn Sina, added new arguments: that treating money as an end in itself defied its true purpose, that charging interest was unnatural, in that it treated mere metal as if it were a living thing that could breed or bear fruit.123 But as the Church authorities soon discovered, when one opens up such debates, it’s very hard to keep a lid on them. Soon, new popular religious movements were appearing everywhere, and many took up the same direction so many had in late Antiquity, not only challenging commerce but questioning the very legitimacy of private property. Most of these movements were labeled heresies and violently suppressed, but some of their arguments were taken up by members of the mendicant orders themselves. By the thirteenth century, the great intellectual debate was between the Franciscans and the Dominicans over “apostolic poverty”—basically, over whether Christianity could be reconciled with property of any sort.
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