Luke forbade the taking of any interest
whatever. Pope Alexander III declared that the prohibition in this
matter could never be suspended by dispensation.
In the thirteenth century Pope Gregory IX dealt an especially
severe blow at commerce by his declaration that even to advance on
interest the money necessary in maritime trade was damnable usury;
and this was fitly followed by Gregory X, who forbade Christian
burial to those guilty of this practice; the Council of Lyons meted
out the same penalty. This idea was still more firmly fastened upon
the world by the two greatest thinkers of the time: first, by St.
Thomas Aquinas, who knit it into the mind of the Church by the use
of the Scriptures and of Aristotle; and next by Dante, who pictured
money-lenders in one of the worst regions of hell.
About the beginning of the fourteenth century the "Subtile Doctor"
of the Middle Ages, Duns Scotus, gave to the world an exquisite
piece of reasoning in evasion of the accepted doctrine; but all to
no purpose: the Council of Vienne, presided over by Pope Clement V,
declared that if any one "shall pertinaciously presume to affirm
that the taking of interest for money is not a sin, we decree him
to be a heretic, fit for punishment.
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