Usury Theory To Explore The Medieval Church (12 To 15 Century)

In the medieval West it was not considered as a matter of course to take interest from a loan. Interest-taking is, as the Church defines it, usury ("usura") and, as the Church condemns it, a crime and a sin. Beginning with the Old Testament and New Testament laws against usury, taking an early step with the Fathers’related teaching, and in the following periods having achieved a great promotion with the birth of a wide range of decrees by popes, councils, individual compilers and collectors, and so on, the Church’s prohibition on usury had finally taken shape. It should be firmly kept in mind that the Church’s attitude toward usury (including its prohibition) throughout the Middle Ages was never rigid and static; in effect, it was unceasingly changing. A most remarkable example of this is the change of the way in which the Church treats usury from a nearly absolute judgment to a rational explanation and analysis from about the12th century onward. In such a course of change, the scholastics who are mainly scholastic canonists and scholastic theologians played a dominant role. It is with their rational analysis of usury and interpretation of the established Church laws against usury that a logical, systematic discussion of usury, i.e. a theory of usury, had gradually been completed. In order to make clear how such a theory had had its final shape, what it really is, and what kind of influences it had exerted upon the contemporary western European society on the one hand and what sort of favorable conditions as well as challenges the economic and social reality brought to it on the other, the thesis makes an attempt as follows:Chapter one gives a historical investigation of the concept of "usury"(usura), telling that as the Church defines it usury is just "taking interest from a loan" or "getting whatever is added to the principal amount of a loan", which is quite different from what people today perceive it,"lending at excessive interest", tries to make a portrait of the general development of the usury prohibition from the biblical laws against usury to the early Fathers’ teaching and to the subsequent legislations concerning the problem, and then demonstrates how the theory of usury, guided by the prohibition, against the background of the revival of western European commerce and the discovery and use of the ancient intellectual resources like Aristotle’s works as well as the Roman law, had been built by the scholastics from the early ones to their outstanding representative and the key figure, St. Thomas Aquinas, and to those in the later times. It is argued in this part that the theory consists of two main parts: one is a theological treatment of usury; and the other a treatment mainly from the perspective of natural law or natural reason, which has a close relationship with St. Thomas Aquinas’ theory of four laws.Chapter two aims to reveal the first part or the first dimension of the theory, including:to show that the will or intention of taking profit from a loan can solely constitute a crime or a sin; that taking interest also conflicts with the Christian virtue charity; and that when the usurers had got their profits they had stolen the time that belongs only to God.Chapter three is intended to make explicit how the scholastics undertake their analysis of usury from the point of view of natural law or natural reason. This is the second part of the theory. And in this part four points will be endeavored to illuminate: the conflict of usury with the nature and purpose of money; the conflict of usury with the principle of the just price and the distinction between usury and some other economic activities which are defended under the title of "just price" but really have the essence of usury; the distinction between usury and some other economic activities defended under the title of "compensation for loss"(both for the principal and for profit) which are also equivalent to usury in reality; and the similar situation in the legalization of the title of "reward for labor".Chapter four provides a social examination of the theory, including:to illustrate to what extent the theory was practical, or what favorable conditions it had kept in the new period, i.e. the period since the12th century when commerce and credit had obtained an unprecedented growth; to display to what degree it at the same time had been faced with the challenges from the economic and social reality; and under such a tension what effects it had had upon the behaviors of the contemporary people and what influences it had exercised or has been exercising over the behaviors of the people in the later times even today.