The result was a law which imposed on lenders at
interest a fine of a hundred pounds besides the annulment of the
loan; and, to show that there was an offence against religion
involved, there was added a clause "reserving to the Church,
notwithstanding this punishment, the correction of their souls
according to the laws of the same."
Similar enactments were made by civil authority in various parts of
Europe; and just when the trade, commerce, and manufactures of the
modern epoch had received an immense impulse from the great series
of voyages of discovery by such men as Columbus, Vasco da Gama,
Magellan, and the Cabots, this barrier against enterprise was
strengthened by a decree from no less enlightened a pontiff than Leo X.
The popular feeling warranted such decrees. As late as the end of
the Middle Ages we find the people of Piacenza dragging the body of
a money-lender out of his grave in consecrated ground and throwing
it into the river Po, in order to stop a prolonged rainstorm; and
outbreaks of the same spirit were frequent in other countries.
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