Simon was put to confusion and his book condemned.
There was but too much reason for Bossuet's interpretation. There
stood the fact that the prohibition of one of the most simple and
beneficial principles in political and economical science was
affirmed, not only by the fathers, but by twenty-eight councils of
the Church, six of them general councils, and by seventeen popes,
to say nothing of innumerable doctors in theology and canon law.
And these prohibitions by the Church had been accepted as of divine
origin by all obedient sons of the Church in the government of
France. Such rulers as Charles the Bald in the ninth century, and
St. Louis in the thirteenth, had riveted this idea into the civil
law so firmly that it seemed impossible ever to detach it.[[279]]
As might well be expected, Italy was one of the countries in which
the theological theory regarding usury--lending at interest--was
most generally asserted and assented to. Among the great number of
Italian canonists who supported the theory, two deserve especial
mention, as affording a contrast to the practical manner in which
the commercial Italians met the question.
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