Works (CSEL) 13

When the prophetic book which is entitled Tobit has been read, although Scripture has fully made known to us the virtues of the holy prophet, nevertheless I think I ought to use a brief discourse before you in recounting his merits and works, so that what Scripture has set forth at greater length in historical fashion, we may comprehend more concisely, gathering as it were into a kind of summary the kinds of his virtues. He was a man just, merciful, hospitable; and, endowed with this chorus of virtues, he underwent the hardship of captivity, which he bore humbly and patiently, grieving over the common injury more than his private one, nor lamenting that the supports of his virtues had profited him nothing, but rather judging that contumely to have been inflicted upon him at a price less than that of his own sins.

He earned an edict that none of the sons of the captivity should give a dead man to burial; but he was not so much called back by the prohibition as roused by it, lest he should seem to abandon the duty of piety through fear of death; for the price of his mercy was the penalty of death. Caught as one guilty of such a crime, scarcely at length through a friend, with his patrimony plundered, was he, a needy exile, restored to his own. Again he was engaged in these duties: if there was any food, seeking a stranger with whom he might take his meal. And so, when weary he had returned from the office of burial, the means of eating being set before him, he sent his son to seek a companion for the feast.

While the guest is being summoned, the remains of an unburied body being announced, he abandoned the feast, nor did he think it pious that he himself should take food while a lifeless body lay in public. This was his daily work, and a great one indeed; for if the law commands us to clothe the living naked, how much more ought we to cover the dead! If we are wont to escort travelers to more distant places, how much more those who have set out for that eternal home, whence they return no more? 'I,' says Job, 'wept over every weak one.' Who is weaker than the dead, of whom Scripture says elsewhere: 'Weep over the dead'? And Ecclesiastes says: 'The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of feasting.'

Nothing is more excellent than this office—to bestow upon him who can no longer repay you, to rescue from the birds, to rescue from the beasts a partner of our nature. Wild beasts are reported to have shown this humanity to dead bodies: will men deny it? Wearied with so holy an office, while the prophet rests in his chamber, a whiteness falling from a sparrows' nest brought blindness upon him. Nor did he complain or groan, nor say: 'Is this the reward of my labors?' He grieved rather to be cheated of the gift of his services than of his eyes, and thought his blindness not a punishment but an impediment. And when he relieved his sustenance by his wife's wages, he took care lest anything stolen should enter his house. His wife had received a kid as wages;

but he, consulting honesty more than piety toward her to whom he owed his sustenance, did not withhold his trust. He had entrusted money to his neighbor, which in such great need he did not demand throughout the whole span of his life. Scarcely, when he saw himself worn out and laid low by old age, did he disclose it to his son, not so much desiring to demand back the deposit as anxious lest he defraud his heir. In that he entrusted the money and did not lend it at interest, he kept the duty of a just man; for usury is evil, by which interest is sought. But that lending is not evil of which it is written: 'Lend to thy neighbor in the time of his need.' For David also says: 'The just man has mercy and lends.' That other lending is by right execrable—to give money at interest, which the law forbids.

But Tobit fled from this, who admonished his son that he should not transgress the Lord's commandment, that he should give alms out of his substance, should not lend money at interest, should not turn his face away from any poor man. He who admonishes these things condemns the interest of usury, from which many have made gain, and to lend money to many has been a trade. And indeed the saints forbade it. The graver an evil usury is, the more praiseworthy is he who flees from it. Give money, if you have it: let what is idle to you profit another. Give as though not about to receive it back, so that it may pass from your gain if it be repaid. He who does not repay the money repays gratitude. If you are cheated of money, you gain righteousness; for he is just who has mercy and lends. If money is lost, mercy is purchased;

for it is written: 'He who shows mercy lends to his neighbor.' Many, for fear of loss, do not lend, since they dread fraud, and this is what they are wont to answer those who ask. To each one of these it is said: 'Lose money for the sake of a brother and a friend, and do not hide it under a stone unto destruction. Place thy treasure in the precepts of the Most High, and it shall profit thee more than gold.' But the ears of men have grown deaf to such salutary precepts, and especially the rich keep their ears closed with that copper of their money. While they count their money, they do not hear the responses.

As soon as anyone, constrained by necessity or anxious for the redemption of his own—whom a barbarian sells as captives—has begun to ask, at once the rich man turns away his face, does not acknowledge nature, does not pity the lowliness of the suppliant, does not relieve his necessity, does not consider their common frailty; he stands inflexible, leaning back, is not bent by prayers, is not moved by tears, is not broken by wailings, swearing that he has nothing—nay, that he himself even seeks a moneylender to relieve his own needs. Why do you add the oath of a sacrament to your hardness and greed? You are not absolved by perjury, but rather bound.

But when mention has been made of interest or of a pledge, then, with brow lowered, the moneylender smiled, and the very man whom before he denied knowing, he now welcomes with a kiss, as though recalling a fatherly friendship. He calls him the pledge of a hereditary affection, forbids the heir. 'We will look at home,' he says, 'whether we have any money; I will break for your sake my father's silver, which is finely wrought. There will be very much loss. What interest will compensate for the value of the inlaid work? But for a friend's sake I will not dread the loss. When you have repaid, I will remake it.' And so, before he gives, he hastens to receive, and he who says he is helping in the main demands interest. 'On the calends,' he says, 'you shall give the interest; the principal meanwhile, if you have not the means to repay it, I do not require.'

Thus, when he gives once, he frequently harasses, and ever contrives that there be a debt to him. By this art he handles the man. And so he first binds him with bonds and fetters him with the knots of his own voice. The money is counted out, freedom is forfeited; the wretched man is absolved of a lesser debt, bound by a greater. Such are your benefactions, you rich men: you give less and exact more. Such is your humanity, that you despoil even while you help. The poor man too is fruitful to you for gain. The needy man is a source of interest: at your compelling, he has what he may repay, he has not what he may spend. Truly merciful men, you bind to yourselves the one whom others absolve! He pays interest who lacks food. Is anything graver? He seeks a medicine, you offer poison:

he implores bread, you hold out a sword; he begs for liberty, you impose servitude; he prays for release, you tighten the knot of a hideous noose. This injustice especially holy David deplores, saying: 'I saw iniquity and contradiction in the city.' 'And usury and deceit,' he says, 'have not departed from its streets.' And so, when he had subjoined the betrayal of Judas, he set this before it—either because, beyond the odium of sacrilege, the crime of usury was added to those who conspired in the Lord's death, or because such great sacrilege was avenged amply and abundantly enough by the usury of lending. Evil moneylenders are they who gave money to kill the author of salvation; evil too are these who give in order to kill an innocent man.

And he too, who received the money as the betrayer Judas, hanged himself also with a noose. Even Judas himself men thought ought to be condemned with this curse, that his moneylender should scrutinize his substance. For what the proscription of tyrants or the hand of robbers is wont to work, this the wickedness of the moneylender alone is wont to bring about. But the more learned think the devil himself is compared to the moneylender, who overturns the goods of the soul and the patrimony of the precious mind by a certain usury of usurious iniquity. Thus he takes by expense, thus he allures by gold, thus he enmeshes by guilt, thus he demands back the head in place of the treasure. What is more iniquitous than you, who are not even thus content with the redemption of the head? What is more iniquitous than you, who give money and bind both life and patrimony?

You take gold and silver as a pledge, and still call him a debtor who has trusted you with more than he received from you? You assert yourselves to be creditors, you who owe more; you, I say, call yourselves creditors, you who have trusted not the man but the pledge. Well is that called a 'loan' (faenus) which you give: so cheap and worthless (faeneum) it is. You call 'the lot' (sors) what is owed. For indeed, like a deadly urn, the wretched lot (sors) of the doomed debtor is rolled about, to be paid off by his punishment. The accused stand pale at the outcome of the lot. They do not so tremble whose condemnation is drawn by lot; they are not so cast down and anxious whose captivity is awaited by the outcome of the lot. For there the captivity of one man is forfeited, here that of very many.

And perhaps for this reason it is called 'the lot' (sors), because in the outcome lie the patrimonies that are rolled about under this lot. A great and memorable benefit of God. This is specially proclaimed by the prophetic mouth, that he conferred it upon the fathers, that he freed them from usuries and iniquities. And properly he says: 'He freed them from usuries,' because usuries bring in servitude, as if he said: 'Rescued from the bond of servitude, he restored them to liberty.' A heavy word is 'debtors.' Sins are called debts; criminals too are called debtors; for these too, like those, are sentenced upon their head. Yet faults have a diversity of their names as of their deeds; debts, though of diverse amounts, have one name, one burden, one peril.

The unhappy man, therefore, who seeks borrowed money does not know what he asks; he is ignorant of what he receives. The moneylender's money knows not how to stand longer in one place, being wont to pass through very many. It knows not how to be held in one purse; it longs to be turned over and counted; it seeks use, that it may acquire usury. It is a wave of the sea, not a fruit. Money never rests. It slips away as if dashed against a rock: thus it strikes the lap of the debtor and at once glides back to where it came from. It comes with a murmur, it returns with a groan. Yet often the sea stands calm to the winds; ever is the wave of usury tossed. It drowns the shipwrecked, it spews out the naked, it strips the clothed, it leaves them unburied. You ask, then, for a coin, and take up a shipwreck.

On this side Charybdis roars around, on that side the Sirens, who, by the appearance of pleasure and the sweetness of melodious charm, used—as the fables tell—to cheat of the hope and desire of returning home those whom they had led into hidden shoals. At once vendors of unguent and of various wares rush in, like certain dogs caught by the keen scent of wandering prey: hunters, fishermen, fowlers, innkeepers too who mix water with the wine, who din around the nobility of his ancient lineage and of his fatherland and the birthday of the wine. Parasites suddenly standing about salute him whom before they were wont to scorn, escort him, provoke him to mirth, incite him to expense, saying: 'Come, and let us enjoy the good things that are, and let us use the creation as in youth, quickly.

Let us fill ourselves with precious wine and unguents, and let not the flower of the season pass us by. Let us crown ourselves with roses before they wither. Let there be no meadow that our luxury does not pass through; everywhere let us leave the signs of our mirth, for this is our portion and this is our lot.' And truly the lot of all these became theirs, but you remain without a share in good things. Scripture has shown you no such lot; among such lots holy David does not mention any sleeping, saying: 'If you sleep among the midst of the lots.'

For if you had slept in the midst of those lots, that is, of the Old and New Testaments, the desire of money would not have plunged you into the whirlpool of the basest usury, but the grace of spiritual faith would have given you silver and would have formed it into the likeness of gold by the instruction of divine wisdom. For indeed, if we have set forth one testimony of divine Scripture and have turned away from that luxurious feast, surely that man too could have been saved, had he clung to the heavenly oracles. Let us, however, return to the feast, not that we may taste its banquets, but that we may show them to others as things to be avoided.

The table is loaded with foreign and choice foods; gleaming servants are brought in, bought at great price, to be fed at greater expense; drinking goes on into the night, the day is closed with feasting, and gives way to drunkenness. That man rises full of wine, empty of wealth, sleeps into the daylight, and waking thinks it a dream. For indeed, just as in sleep one suddenly seems to himself rich from poor, so also needy from rich. Meanwhile, while the money flows away, the interest overflows. Time is diminished, the loan is increased; the treasure is emptied out, the principal is heaped up. Little by little the guests withdraw themselves, the sureties gather; in the morning the moneylender knocks at the doors, complains that the prescribed days of payment have passed, assails the waking man with injuries, rouses the sleeper from his slumber.

Nights are not quiet, the day is not sweet, the sun is not pleasant. Little by little the gilded and silken garments are taken away and sold for half their worth. With tears the wife lays down her ornaments, now sadder, bought at a dearer price, to be sold at a cheaper. At auction the boys, the servants of the table, are set up, and, ill-accustomed, they turn away the buyer. Money is offered to the creditor: 'Scarcely,' he says, 'does this pay the interest; you owe the principal.' With his patrimony exhausted, he returns liable for his very head, and with the loan diminished, he receives a respite sadder than those of war, as though about to do battle after two days. For in war victory is uncertain, here want is certain: there he covers himself with a shield, here he runs naked to meet it; there the breastplate encloses the chest, here he is wholly enclosed in prison;

there he loads his hands with darts, arms himself with arrows; here he offers his hands, empty of money, to be bound with fetters. Most often each is led away captive: that one has something to accuse for the adverse outcome of war, this one has none but himself to accuse. Nothing is more intolerable than that misery which cannot be excused. Conscience embitters the weight of the injury. Then he reckons with himself, then he recalls the Scriptures, then he says: 'Was it not written for me: Drink water from thy own vessels and from the springs of thy own wells? What have I to do with the moneylender's well, where even the water is shut up? Sweeter were the herbs with security than the banquet obtained from another's goods with anxiety. I ought not to have sought what was another's. Then, when I had fallen into debt, I ought to have sought a remedy from my own springs.'

There were at home smaller vessels. It were better to lack table-service than food, better to put up clothing for sale than to forfeit liberty. What did it profit me that I was ashamed to make public my poverty? Behold, another has made it public. I was unwilling to sell my nurses; behold, another adjudges them away. This consideration is too late. Then was it fitting to fear for your own, when you took what was another's; then was it fitting to come to your own aid, when the first wounds were creeping forth. It had been better at the beginning to lessen expense and to relieve the necessity of debt by the straits of the family estate, than that, enriched for an hour by another's goods, you should afterward be stripped even of your own. We accuse the debtor,

for having conducted himself too imprudently; yet nothing is more worthless than the moneylenders, who reckon their gains from others' losses and count as their own loss whatever is possessed by others. They lie in wait for new heirs, they spy out wealthy youths through their agents, they attach themselves feigning a paternal and ancestral friendship, they wish to learn the household needs of these. If they find any pretext, they accuse his modesty, they blame his shame, that he had not before hoped for and presumed upon their help; but if they have met with no snares of any necessity, they weave tales, they say a noble estate is for sale, a spacious house; they pile up the yields of the fruits, they exaggerate the annual returns, they urge him to buy it up.

Likewise they do, praising precious garments and noble jewels. To him who denies that he has money, they press their own upon him, saying: 'Use it as your own; out of the fruits of the purchased possession you will multiply the price and repay the debt.' They hold out another's estates before the youth, that they may despoil him of his own; they spread their nets, and as soon as he has entered the spaces enclosed by the snare, they drive him into the nets of bonds, the toils of usuries; they seek to have his ancestral hall, his father's tomb, made over to them as security. A day is set for payment, the agreement is dissembled, so long as payment can be delayed. When they have made him secure enough, they suddenly fall upon him and press the more vehemently, bear down on him as he pleads his case, saying: 'You possess your estates, we do not have our money:

we gave gold, we hold timber; for you the proceeds of the fruits come forth, to us not a bit of money accrues. The plea is idle: at least let the bond be renewed.' And so, while at first the youth thinks that nothing of his garments or even of his possessions ought to be sold, or asks delay for doing these things, the interest is applied to the principal, the one-percent monthly charge is heaped up. Now he begins to sigh, now to recognize his evil. Day and night he thinks of the interest; whatever comes to meet him, he thinks it the moneylender; whatever creaks, he seems to himself to hear the moneylender's voice. If you have it, why do you not pay? If you have it not, why do you join evil to evil, and from a wound seek a remedy? Why do you daily endure the moneylender's siege, and dread his assault?

There is an old saying: 'The Lord makes a watch over both the moneylender and the debtor when they meet one another.' The one, like a dog, seeks his prey; the other, like an exposed prey, turns aside. The one, like a lion, seeks whom he may devour; the other, like a young ox, dreads the onset of the plunderer. The one, like a hawk, seeks to assail the swan with his talons; the other, like a goose or a coot, would rather hurl himself onto sheer crags or plunge into the depths than endure that hawk of a human body. Why do you daily flee? Even if the moneylender does not meet you, want meets you like a good runner. Therefore the Lord sees them both, the moneylender and the debtor, as they meet; he watches them both, a witness of the iniquity of the one, the injury of the other:

He condemns the greed of the one, the folly of the other. The one counts the debtor's every step, lies in wait for his turnings aside; the other forthwith hides his head behind the columns; for the debtor has no standing. By both, the reckoning of the interest is recomputed again and again upon the fingers. Equal is their care, but unequal their feeling: the one rejoices at the increase of the loan, the other is afflicted by the heap of his debt; the one counts his gains, the other his hardships. Why do you flee a man whom you could even refrain from fearing? Why do you flee, or how long will you flee? If anyone knocks at night, you think it the moneylender: at once under the bed. If you perceive anyone suddenly entering, you leap out of doors.

The dog barks, and your heart throbs, sweat pours forth, panting shakes you; you cast about for some lie by which to put off the moneylender, and when you have wrung a postponement from him, you rejoice. The moneylender pretends to be burdened by your ruin, yet he grants it gladly: like a hunter who has surrounded the wild beast, he is secure of his prey. You kiss his head, you embrace his knees, and like a stag struck by the poison of an arrow, you advance a little way, then at last, overcome by the venom, you sink down; or like a fish that has been pierced by the trident, wherever it flees it carries the wound with it. And truly that fish devours death in the bait; it gulps down the hook while it seeks food, yet it does not see the hook which the bait conceals: but you see the hook and gulp it down.

Your hook is the debtor's interest owed to the creditor; you swallow the hook, and the worm gnaws at you forever. This very thing is the bait that deceives. And so for you the food of usury is of no use, while the hook is for your wounding. Or do you not know that a creature once ensnared binds itself the tighter by the knot if it tries to flee, and that, caught within the nets, the more it flees the more it casts the nets down upon itself? You flee through the open streets, when you cannot be safe within your own walls. The moneylender finds you whenever he wishes. And so, when you have fulfilled the term, he rushes in like a wolf by night, allows you no sleep, and when day is awaited drags you to the public square, or compels you to subscribe to deeds of sale. So that you may steal away to the loss of your honor, you sign on the spot, about to sell your ancestral tomb, that at least some pretext of decency from your father may be put forward.

What is barren is bought up for a song; he boasts that he has sold an unproductive thing, that he has burdened the seller with losses, and the damages of the present time are charged against the losses of an earlier time. Soon even the prized possessions are sold, and now no longer instruments but fetters are brought in. Yet to one still seeking sureties a reprieve is granted, not that he may find any spoil of liberty, but that he may add a sharer of his servitude, one who would join himself to the wretched man. But what help can the addition of another's calamity afford? Now even his friends flee, his table-companions no longer recognize him: he himself too shuns the sight of all, and as a boxer dodges the varied blows of his opponents, so this man avoids meeting honorable people, and anxious, wherever he stumbles upon someone, he slips away with watchful eye.

He returns ready for his chains, he returns longing for death, reckoning that, were he to die, death would bring him a respite. He returns wretchedly condemning himself, because he did not shun another's money and bound himself with the moneylender's coin. O how many wretches have other men's goods made! 'What does it profit you,' says the prophet, 'to drink the water of the Gihon?' What, I say, does it profit you to drink the moneylender's cup? 'Many,' he says, 'have borrowed for a time and provided for their needs and repaid the money.' And how many have strangled themselves on account of usury? You regard the former, you do not count the latter. You remember that some escaped, you do not remember that some perished.

You reckon up the coins repaid, you do not count the nooses sought, which very many—the more modest driven to outrage, the more frail to self-injury—have preferred, by seeking out destruction, to the disgrace of so shameful a bargain, dreading the reproach of life more than the punishment of death. I myself have seen a pitiable spectacle: children led off to the auction-block for their father's debt, and held as heirs of calamity who were not partakers of the inheritance—and the creditor not blushing at so monstrous a crime. He presses, he urges, he hands them over for sale. 'Let them,' he says, 'who were nourished by my money acknowledge servitude in return for their feeding, and undergo the auction in return for their keep. Let the spear be brandished over the prices of each.' Not undeservedly is the spear brandished, where the head itself is the prize.

Not undeservedly does it come to the auction, where the principal itself is demanded. This is the moneylender's inhumanity, this the debtor's folly: that from his sons, to whom he leaves no money, he takes away their liberty; that in place of a testament he bequeaths a bond, in place of the profit of an inheritance the written bond of obligation. What does a father's writing of a curse upon his children mean, where there is no offense of impious sin? Or can there be any harsher curse or heavier servitude? And often after death the deceased has these advantages, that he does not behold the miseries of his sons. Frequently a father too sells his children by the authority of begetting them, but not with the voice of fatherly love, and with shamefaced countenance drags the wretched ones to the auction, saying:

'Pay, my children, the cost of my gluttony, pay the price of my father's table; vomit up what you did not devour, give back what you did not receive; you are the better for this, that with your own price you redeem your father, with your servitude you purchase your father's liberty.' Suppose someone come forward who is able to help. Who could fill so great a Charybdis, who could acknowledge the moneylender's accounts, who could satisfy his greed? What prices will this man not pile up, when he has seen a redeemer? For he feeds not so much on his own gain as on another's loss. True indeed, true is the saying, divine as it is from God. He, when he was angry on account of the impiety of the people of the Jews, because they went after foreign gods, says: 'To what moneylender have I sold you?'

For he who has been bound to the moneylender is sold, and sold not at one price but at a daily one; sold not with a fixed limit, but with a continual accretion. There is a new auction of interest every single month, a new sale under daily bidding. Whoever offers more always drags him off; the man is put up for sale, yet is never reckoned as though sold. Great therefore is the force of the heavenly sentence. The Lord did not think it enough to say, 'To whom have I sold you?' He added, 'to a moneylender.' Offended, he could find nothing heavier by which to take vengeance on the faithless. Forsaken, he demands a reckoning, why they so fled from the Author of salvation, as though the Lord had sold them to some moneylender—a fitting punishment for one who forsakes his Lord.

Slaves have something they dread more than the punishments and chains of prison; the free have something to fear because of their neglect of liberty. Mark this too, that usury is judged to be the occasion of transgression, since he easily departs from his Lord who could bind himself to a moneylender; for interest is the root of falsehood, the cause of faithlessness. 'I,' he says, 'did not sell you, but you were sold by your sins; by your sins you have been sold.' Therefore he who binds himself to a moneylender sells his own self, and, what is worse, sells himself not for money but by his own guilt. Who is this moneylender of sin but the devil, from whom Eve, having borrowed sin, lent out the whole human race at the interest of a guilt-laden succession?

In short, like a wicked moneylender he held the bond, which afterward the Lord blotted out with his own blood. For what was written in the characters of death had to be dissolved by death. The devil, then, is a moneylender. Indeed he displayed his riches to the Savior, saying: 'All these will I give you, if you will fall down and worship me.' But the Lord, the payer of another's debt, owed him nothing, he who could say: 'Behold, the prince of this world comes, and finds nothing of his own in me.' He owed nothing, yet he paid on behalf of all, as he himself testifies, saying: 'What I did not seize, then I was paying back.' How does this differ from the malice of the prince of this world? The moneylender of money binds the head, holds the hand, draws out the principal, exacts the hundredth part. O name made bitter out of sweet!

The Lord set free the hundredth sheep—that hundredth is of salvation, this hundredth is of death—and the good earth yields a hundredfold fruit. Woe to those who call what is bitter sweet, and what is sweet bitter! What is more bitter than usury, what sweeter than grace? Should they not, by this very word by which they name the hundredth, be reminded of the Redeemer, who came to save the hundredth sheep, not to destroy it? Who is a heavier exactor? And this too is a sorrowful name. For the Lord says: 'My people, your exactors strip you bare'; and in the Gospel you have: 'While you are going with your adversary to the magistrate, make an effort to be freed from him, lest perhaps he drag you to the judge, and the judge hand you over to the exactor, and the exactor cast you into prison.'

Recognize who this exactor is, who exacts even the last farthing, and yet calls himself a creditor, and even in this name commits fraud—like one who smears the cup of poison with honey, so that under a pleasant scent death may lie hidden, and the smeared rims of the cup may conceal the violence of the deceit. He is cloaked as a creditor, as though trustworthy, and as though distrustful, to whom the trustworthy man pledges a pawn. How often have I seen the dead held as a pledge by moneylenders, and burial refused while the interest is demanded? To these I readily yielded, that they might bind their debtor, so that, with him being chosen, the surety might go free; for these are the laws of interest. And so I said:

'Hold your defendant, and, lest he be able to slip away from you, take him home, shut him up in your bedchamber, you who are harder than executioners, since the prison does not receive him whom you hold, and the exactor releases him. The prison sends forth the guilty for their sins after death; you shut them up. By the severity of the laws the dead man is acquitted, by you he is held; surely he is now said to have already discharged his principal. Yet I do not begrudge you to keep your pledge. There is no difference between a funeral and interest, no difference between death and the principal: usury at interest resounds, resounds with a funereal wail. Now indeed the man whom you arraign has been deprived of his rights; yet bind him with more violent bonds, lest he fail to feel your fetters. The debtor is hard and stubborn, and one who has now lost the capacity to blush.

There is one thing, to be sure, that you need not fear, that he does not know how to demand food.' I gave orders, therefore, that the body be lifted up and the funeral procession be led to the moneylender's house; but even from there, with the bellowing of those shut up within, such cries resounded. There too you would believe there was a funeral, there you would think the dead were being mourned; nor did the impression deceive, except that it was certain more were destined to die there. Overcome by the custom of religion—for elsewhere even such pledges are said to be accepted—the moneylender begs that the remains be carried to the place of the tomb. Then only did I see moneylenders made human, and burdened by my action:

Nevertheless I remembered to look to their humanity, lest afterward they should complain of having been defrauded, until, having put their own necks beneath the bier, they themselves led the deceased to the tomb, bewailing with heavier grief the funeral of their own money. Hear another thing of no less bitterness. These men watch the gatherings of dice-players and judge the misfortune of the loser to be their own advantage. They stand surety for each man: at first chance plays out varied outcomes, victory is often transferred to different players, and his winnings and misfortune are by turns interchanged. All are conquered and conquer; the moneylender alone gains: with the others is the empty name of having won, with the moneylender alone is the profit—not yearly, but momentary.

They alone make profit to the detriment of all, theirs alone is the usury of victory. You may see the rest suddenly poor, suddenly rich, then stripped bare, changing their estate with every throw. For their life is tossed about like a die, their fortune is rolled upon the gaming-board; the game is made out of peril and peril out of the game; as many stakes, so many proscriptions. There is the clamor of those who applaud, the weeping of the despoiled, the groaning of those who lament. Among these sits the creditor like a tyrant, condemning each man with a capital sentence, brandishing spears, instituting a deadly auction over the spoils of each. Some he hands over to proscription, others to slavery: not so many were slain under tyrants. This dice-game, therefore, I would more rightly call the gambling of life than of money;

in a moment is staked what would suffice for all eternity. Drunkenness gives the verdict, and no one appeals. Dicing too has its own laws, which the rights of the court do not annul. If it can be believed, a man is branded with infamy who has thought he ought to resist, and the sentence of the infamous brands disgrace more heavily than judicial censure, since those who are condemned before the judge are glorious among them, and those who are condemned among them are also criminals before the judge. Moses established a noble tribunal of elders: these, however, judged the lighter matters—a weighty word—that is, they were accustomed to reserve the more important affairs for Moses's judgment. Here it is said: 'The council of dicers has judged,' and their power is feared more than that of lions.

Among these wild beasts you live, O moneylender, and move about; from these beasts you snatch their food, than these you are reckoned more foul, than these more cruel, more to be feared.

It is reported that the peoples of the Huns make war upon all nations, yet are subject to moneylenders; and that though they live without laws, they obey the laws of dicing alone; that they play even on the eve of battle, carrying dice and arms together, and perish more by their own throws than by hostile ones; that in their own victory they are made captives and endure the spoiling of their own people, which they would not suffer at the hands of an enemy; that for this reason they never lay aside their zeal for war, because the man conquered at the dice-game, when he has lost the whole booty's prize, seeks the means of further play through the peril of battle; and frequently they are carried away with such ardor that, when a man has handed over those arms which alone he prizes greatly, being beaten, he consigns his very life upon a single throw of the dice to the power either of the victor or of the moneylender.

In short, it is established that a certain one of them, known even to the Roman emperor, paid out, in good faith, the price of the servitude which he had brought upon himself by being thus overcome at the lot, by submitting to the torments of a death he was commanded to undergo. The moneylender, therefore, presses even upon the necks of the Huns and drives them onto the sword; he presses the barbarians by the terror of his own savagery. For what is more foul than he who lends today and demands payment tomorrow? 'And odious,' it says, 'is a man of this kind.' The offer indeed is enticing, but the exaction is monstrous. Yet the very humaneness of the offer makes the savagery of the exaction. He brought out money, he exacts mortgages and stores them away in his strongrooms. One sum of money is given by moneylenders, and how many things are exacted from debtors! What names they have made up for themselves! A coin is given, it is called interest:

it is called the principal, it is named the head: it is written down as another man's money; this monstrous portent of many heads produces a manifold exaction: he calls it a bond, he names it a written note, he demands mortgages; he usurps the pawn, he calls it security; he asserts the obligation, he proclaims the interest, he praises the hundredth part. The moneylender's money is a kind of viper, which brings forth such great evils. Yet the viper, fertile in punishments, drawing along her own entrails, is burst by her own offspring, and by her maternal death teaches that her brood does not degenerate from their mother. For as soon as they begin to be serpents, they tear her with their bites. There, where the venom is born, it is first proved. But the moneylender's money conceives all its evils:

it brings forth, it nourishes, and it itself grows the more in its own offspring, becoming more numerous with a sorrowful brood, no less sinuous than a serpent, and gathering its whole self into a coil, that it may guard its head; with the rest of its body it lashes, and that head alone it thrusts forward to inflict wounds: with its huge coils it binds whatever it has seized, and with the head alone it kills: with the head safe, even if the rest of it has been crushed, it revives. Serpents too have different times for mating and for bringing forth; but money lent at interest creeps with growing usury from the very day the bargain is struck, money that does not know how to bring forth, because it pours its pains rather into others. There 'the pains are as of a woman in travail.' Whence also the Greeks called interest 'tokos,'

because they seem to stir up the pains of childbirth in the soul of the debtor. The Kalends come. The principal brings forth its hundredth part: the single months come, the interest is generated, the evil offspring of evil parents. This is the generation of vipers. The hundredth has grown: it is demanded, it is not paid: it is added to the principal. The prophetic curse is fulfilled, 'guile upon guile,' interest the worse breed of a wicked seed. And so it now begins to be not the hundredth, but the total—that is, not the hundredth of the loan, but the loan of the hundredth. Usury too I judge to be named from 'use' (usus), because, as garments are worn out by use, so patrimonies are worn away by usuries. The first letter of the word sounds mournful. 'It brings forth'—it is the voice of pain. What good can there be in that which begins from pain and from obligation?

Hares, they say, breed and rear at the same time and bring forth continually: for these moneylenders too, those carvers-out of usuries, interest is begotten and over-begotten upon interest. It is nourished and born, and once born already gives birth. The roots of trees too are first planted, that they may take hold; when they have taken hold, then they begin to grow green, afterward to sprout: but money lent at interest, scarcely planted, already sprouts. Seeds break forth in their season, animals bring forth in their season; for there is 'a time for bringing forth and a time for dying, a time for planting and a time for plucking up what is planted, a time for killing and a time for healing,' and below: 'a time for acquiring and a time for giving back, a time for keeping and a time for casting away,' as Ecclesiastes says: but money lent at interest is sown today and bears fruit tomorrow:

it always brings forth and never perishes: it is always planted, scarcely plucked up. The moneylender always wishes to acquire, never to lose, never to keep his money, always to cast it out, never to heal, always to kill. And since Ecclesiastes, the book of Solomon, is a good teacher in all things, let us cleave to it a little while. 'The eye,' he says, 'will not be satisfied with seeing, and the ear will not be satisfied with hearing.' Nor is the moneylender filled by receiving, nor is his desire satisfied by the daily hearing of money being counted. And again: 'Everything that has been is the same as what shall be.' Money always grows, greed knows no leisure, usury no holidays. 'All the torrents,' he says, 'go into the sea, and the sea is not filled.' That sea is the moneylender;

he swallows up the patrimonies of all like waves, and yet he himself does not know how to be filled. Yet many use the sea for gain; no one uses the moneylender except to his own loss: there is the advantage of many, here the shipwreck of all. There are many living creatures that quickly begin to breed, but also quickly cease to breed: the principal quickly breeds and never ceases—nay, when it has received the beginning of growing, it extends its increase to infinity. Everything, moreover, that grows, when it has reached the form and measure and magnitude of its own nature, is at leisure from increase; but the money of moneylenders is always augmented by time, and, going beyond the form of its maternal principal, keeps no measure.

Most living creatures too, when they have begun to beget those that are born of them, lose the use of generation as though with exhausted strength: but the principal of a loan, when it has been brought level with the growing hundredths, both renews its own old age and multiplies its accustomed offspring by addition. This is no new nor trifling evil, which is forbidden by the prescript of the ancient and divine law. The people who had despoiled Egypt, who had passed over the sea on foot, is warned to beware of the shipwrecks of money lent at interest. And whereas concerning other sins it gave its precept once or with much-repeated admonition, concerning interest it made its declaration more often. You have it in Exodus:

'If you lend money to the ward, to the orphan, to the poor man who is with you, you shall not press him hard, you shall not impose usury upon him.' It shows what it is to press hard, that is, to impose usury; for the creditor's noose strangles, and what is worse, strangles the soul. By this word it has expressed both the violence of the robber and the knot of a hideous death: 'And if you take as a pledge your neighbor's garment, before the going down of the sun you shall restore it to him; for this is his only covering, this is the garment of his nakedness. In what shall he sleep? If therefore he cries out to me, I will hear him.' You have heard, O moneylenders, what the law says, of which the Lord said: 'I came not to destroy the law, but to fulfill it.' What the Lord did not annul, do you annul? 'To demand usury,' he says, 'is to strangle.'

This too was said long ago, abroad, by certain of their own wise men: 'What is it to lend at interest?' 'To kill a man,' he said. But Cato was certainly not earlier than Moses, who received the law; he was much later. 'If you take as a pledge your neighbor's garment, before the going down of the sun you shall restore it to him,' lest the nakedness of the stripped one appear: but you strip and lay bare and do not give back. See that the sun does not go down upon your greed, lest the sun of justice set upon you, because you do not hold to justice, or lest the sun of iniquity be buried over your outrages. The day too perishes for the unwilling, the night rushes in as upon Judas, who, when the devil had cast himself into his heart, rose up to the betrayal, and it became night;

for the sun of justice had set upon him and lay down over him who entered into his heart. He made darkness for him, so that he might not see the Author of light. There the wretch perished at that banquet at which others are saved. Restore therefore the garment to the debtor, in which he may sleep and be at rest. If you will not restore it, 'I will hear him,' he says, 'for I am merciful.' If you do not hear, I will hear; I will have mercy; I will not despise the prayer of the needy. In Deuteronomy too it is written: 'You shall not exact from your brother usury of money, or usury of foods, or usury of any things whatsoever you lend to your brother. If you lend to a foreigner, you shall exact usury from him, but from your brother you shall not exact it.' You see how much weight there is in the words.

'Do not exact,' he says, 'usury from your brother'—that is, from him with whom you ought to have all things in common. From him do you exact usury? Your brother is a sharer of nature and a co-heir of grace: do not exact more from him from whom it is hard to ask back even what you have given, except when he has the means to repay. And because very many, fleeing the precepts of the law, when they have given money to traders, exact usuries not in money but receive, as it were, the profits of usuries out of their merchandise, let them therefore hear what the law says. 'You shall accept neither usury of foods,' it says, 'nor of any things whatsoever you lend to your brother.' For that is a fraud and an evasion of the law, not an observance of it. And do you think you act piously, because you receive from a trader as though a loan?

From that source he commits fraud in the price of the merchandise, out of which he pays you usury. You are the instigator of that fraud, you are a partaker; whatever he has defrauded profits you. And food is usury, and clothing is usury, and whatever accrues to the principal is usury. Whatever name you may impose upon it, it is usury. If it is lawful, why do you flee the word, why do you weave a veil over it? If it is unlawful, why do you seek the increase? What is worse, this vice belongs to very many, and especially to the rich, whose storerooms are furnished under this name. If anyone thinks a banquet must be made ready, he sends to a trader to have a cask of absinth-wine delivered to him free of charge; he directs him to a tavern-keeper to seek out Picene wine or Tyriac; to a butcher to procure a sow's womb for him; to another to dress out fruits.

And so they judge to be humanity the things that are bought with another's peril. You drink, and another melts away in tears; you feast, and you strangle others with your own food; you delight in music, and another laments with a pitiable wail; you taste fruits, and another devours a thorn. Do they gather grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles? The thorn is usury, the thorn is the hundredth part, the thistle is interest, it burns cruelly. How then can you have fruit from thorns? If that fruit is not born of thorns, shall that eternal fruit be born? You are enriched out of others' miseries, you seek gain out of tears, you feed upon another's hunger, out of the spoils of despoiled men you mint silver, and you judge yourself rich, you who beg an alms from the poor man? But hear what the Savior says:

'Woe to you who are rich, who have your consolation!' But perhaps you may say that it is written, 'You shall lend at interest to a foreigner,' and you do not consider what the Gospel says, which is fuller. But let us set this aside for the moment: consider the words of the law itself. 'You shall not lend at usury to your brother,' it says; 'you shall exact it of a foreigner.' Who then was a foreigner but the Amalekite, but the Amorite, but the enemy? 'There,' he says, 'exact usury.' Him whom you rightly desire to harm, against whom arms are lawfully brought, against this man usury is lawfully proclaimed. Him whom you cannot easily conquer in war, of him you can quickly avenge yourself by the hundredth part. Exact usury from him whom it is no crime to kill.

He fights without iron who demands usury; he avenges himself upon his enemy without a sword who is the exactor of usury from a foe. Therefore where the right of war is, there too is the right of usury. But your brother is everyone—first of the faith, then of Roman law, is the people: 'I will declare your name to my brethren, in the midst of the church I will praise you.' Finally, in Leviticus too the law prescribes that usury is not to be demanded of a brother. For thus you have it: 'And your brother shall live with you. You shall not give him your money at usury, and you shall not give him your foods for the sake of receiving more.' This sentence of God has generally excluded all increase of the principal. Whence David too judged him blessed and worthy of a heavenly habitation who did not give his money at usury.

If therefore he who did not give it is blessed, then without doubt cursed is he who gave at usury. Why then do you choose a curse rather than a blessing? You can be blessed, if you will; you can be just. For a just man, according to Ezekiel, is he who will restore the pledge to the debtor and will not give his money at usury and will not receive an overplus and will turn his hand away from injustice. This man is just; 'with life,' he says, 'he shall live, says the Lord.' But he who did not restore the pledge and set his eyes upon idols has wrought iniquity. When he has given at usury and received an overplus, this man shall not live with life. He has done all these iniquities, he shall die the death, his blood shall be upon himself.

See how he has coupled the moneylender with the idolater, as though making the crime equal. Choose therefore what is sweet. Why are you always sorrowful, why always most bitter, why always anxious? Let mercy at length proceed from you, let truth proceed; let falsehood be banished, let fraud be hateful. You have taught perjury. It is called the moneylender's oath, where perjury is prepared. You often forswear yourselves when the money has been repaid, that no written bond may appear; you forswear yourselves afterward, that you did not receive the money. Do not therefore be always wretched, always greedy, always mournful. Lions too change their ferocity. 'Out of the eater,' he says, 'came forth food, and out of the strong and bitter came forth sweetness.' The Greek has 'and bitter'; thus we have found it.

Yet by 'the strong' this is understood, that the lion is strong in ferocity, and what is fierce is bitter. And from you, who devour money and greed, let mercy come forth—for this is the food of the needy—and out of the bitter let sweetness come forth, that you may release him who has not the means to repay. Why do you drag along your sins as with a long rope, and as with the steady thong of a heifer? Which surely happens when you prolong the interest. You hold the poor debtor: let there be at least some grace there, where there is no hope of profit. And this I say in accordance with your greed. But for the rest, the Lord in the Gospel thinks that men ought rather to lend to such as those from whom no repayment is hoped for. For thus he says: 'If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what grace is there to you?'

'For sinners lend to sinners, that they may receive back. But you, love your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing in return, and your reward shall be great in heaven, and you shall be sons of the Most High, for he is kind toward the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, as your Father also is merciful.' You notice that the merciful man has received from the Lord the name of 'lender,' which name even he who has been bound to your interest shall bear. 'Sinners,' he says, 'lend to sinners, that they may receive back.' Both are sinners, both the moneylender and the debtor. 'But you,' he says, 'love your enemies.' Do not discuss what your enemies deserve, but what you ought to do.

Lend to those from whom you do not hope to receive back what has been given. Here there is no loss, but gain. You give very little, you shall receive much. You give on earth, and it shall be repaid to you in heaven: you lose the interest, you shall have a great reward: you cease to be moneylenders, you shall be sons of the Most High: you shall be merciful, you who prove yourselves heirs of the eternal Father. But the very word of moneylenders and of usuries delights you. This too I do not begrudge. I will teach you how you may be good moneylenders, how you may seek good usuries. Solomon says: 'He lends to the Lord who has mercy on the poor, and according to his gift he will repay him.' Behold, a good loan has been made out of a bad one; behold, an irreproachable moneylender; behold, a praiseworthy usury.

Do not, then, suppose that I begrudge you your advantages. Do you think that I am taking away from you a man who is your debtor? I provide God for you, I substitute Christ, I point out to you One who cannot defraud you. Lend your money, therefore, to the Lord into the hand of the poor man. He binds Himself and is held bound; He writes down whatever the needy man has received — His Gospel is the bond —; He makes promise on behalf of all the destitute; He pledges His faith. Why do you hesitate to give? If some rich man of this world is offered to you, who promises by his own good faith on behalf of any debtor, you at once count out the money. The Lord of heaven and the Founder of this world is a poor man for our sake, and still you deliberate: what richer surety are you seeking?

But you allege that He became poor, though He was rich. You have seen, then, that His good faith is rich, that His good faith is sufficient. He became poor when He paid on our behalf, and yet that very poverty does not deceive; for He made us rich, whom you supposed to be poor. For the Apostle says: He became poor, though He was rich, that by His poverty you might be made rich. Good is that poverty which bestows riches. Do not, therefore, fear poverty, so that you may be rich. Give your idle money and you will receive fruitful grace; you will relieve the needs of the poor, and the anxiety of guarding your wealth will be lessened for you. What the poor man has received will not perish, and what you have given to the needy will be kept for you without a guard. But if you seek the increase of interest —

in the Law there is blessing, in the Gospel there is a heavenly reward. What is sweeter than a blessing, what is greater than heaven? If interest in the form of food is desired, that too is at hand, as we read; for he who has mercy on the poor is himself fed. Restore, therefore, the pledges which you are holding, since you have found a sufficient surety. But still they murmur, saying that it is lawful to hold pledges, and they defend themselves by the Law. For they say: It is written in Deuteronomy: If your neighbour owes you any debt whatsoever, you shall not go into his house to take the pledge as security, but you shall stand outside, and the man with whom your debt lies shall bring out the pledge to you outside.

But if that man is poor, you shall not sleep upon his pledge, but you shall surely restore to him his pledge at sunset, and he shall sleep in his own garment and shall bless you, and it shall be reckoned to you as mercy before the Lord your God. And elsewhere, they say, it is written: You shall not take in pledge a mill or the upper millstone, for this man takes a soul in pledge. And elsewhere: You shall not accept the garment of a widow as a pledge. From this they argue that only particular pledges are forbidden — not all — that is, those of the poor man and of the widow, and likewise that the mill and the upper millstone are forbidden to be taken in pledge.

But since through the prophet Ezekiel the Lord Himself declares that the man is just who has returned the pledge, and unjust who has kept it, He surely counsels that not some particular pledge, but every pledge in general, ought to be returned. Since Job says: A bond which I held against anyone, drawn up under oath, I read it placing a crown upon it, and if I did not tear it up I returned it, taking nothing from the debtor. Since the Lord commands that nothing is to be hoped for from those to whom we have given a loan, that we should expect to recover it, how do they suppose that a pledge ought to be retained according to the Law? And lest they break out again in like manner and say that they are also incited to lend at interest by the oracle of the Law, because it is written:

You shall lend to many nations, but you yourself shall not borrow — it is time to dispute more fully and explicitly, and to teach what is to be lent and to whom the ordinances of the Law prescribe; for the matter of the loan precedes the matter of the pledge. The sinner, it says, shall borrow and shall not repay, but the just man has mercy and gives. You hear, O debtor, what you ought to avoid; you hear, O creditor, what you ought to imitate. And below: I was young and have grown old, and I have not seen the just man forsaken, nor his seed seeking bread. All the day long he has mercy and lends. Whence does this just man have wherewith to lend all the day long? Then the rich man is just, and the richer each is, the more just? He who has the more to lend, will he be the more just? But it is hard for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven.

What, then, does he lend? Tell me, holy David! I have brought forth a testimony against myself, unless you come to my aid. Peter said: Silver and gold I have not. Was he then not just? Explain to me, therefore, what he lends. For you said: Blessed is the man who has mercy and lends; he shall order his words in judgement. I have found what the just man lends. Let Peter also teach me, and let him too tell what he lends, who said to the needy man who fixed his attention on him and on John: Silver and gold I have not. Will you then give nothing to the poor man, O Apostle?

Yet you do give, and you give more than others; you give to the needy man what others cannot bestow; you give to the needy man that, after which he can no longer be in want; you give to the needy man what even the rich long to receive; you give to the needy man what those who possess this silver and gold know not how to confer, because avarice hinders them; you give to the needy man whereby you make him richer than the rich. You have stirred up my soul, I long for this gift of yours. Speak, I pray, what you give. Do not keep me long in suspense; I desire to ask, if you will quickly pay. But you have paid quickly: you did not put off the needy, you did not despise the prayer of the poor man, you did not make him despair any longer, you did not go up to the temple empty-handed, saying: Silver and gold I have not. Those alone do not go up with full hands who possess gold and silver:

the poor man also went up, not empty-handed; he also went up not empty-handed, because he had no gold and silver. Let us hear what this poor man gives. But what I have, he says, that I give you. In the name of Jesus of Nazareth, rise up and walk. O poverty to be desired, O destitution that is richer! He was lame to whom the rich gave; one poor man gave, and at once he who was lame was made whole. The just man therefore has what he may lend, he has also silver that he may lend: he lends his words. This is the just man's silver; for the words of the Lord are chaste words, silver tried in the fire, proved of the earth, refined sevenfold. This he lends who receives the Law, who meditates on the Law, who practises the Law: this Peter lent, this Paul lent.

To whom it is said that they should go to the men of the nations: to Peter, to Cornelius the centurion, to whom it is said: Rise and go, doubting nothing, for I have sent them. And he rose and went. And below he said: Can we forbid water, that these should not be baptized who have received the Holy Spirit? And he ordered them to be baptized — that is, You shall lend to the nations, that you may forgive sins, take away debts; but you yourself shall not borrow; for the sinner borrows and does not repay his sins, because he is a sinner. To Paul it is said: You shall lend to the nations — he who was sent to the nations; to John it is said: You shall lend to the nations; to James it is said... — to whom it was said: Go, baptize the nations. To the people of the fathers it is said:

If you keep the commandments, you shall be blessed and shall lend the word to the nations. Finally, that this is not said of money the following words signify: You shall be ruler over many nations, but over you no one shall rule. The Lord your God shall set you as the head and not as the tail, and you shall then be above and not beneath, if you hearken to the voice of the Lord your God. And it follows: But if you will not hear, cursed shall you be in the city and cursed shall you be in the field. And below: Cursed the offspring of your womb. It is not money assuredly that makes one blessed, but the knowledge of God, the preaching of the word, if we lend out the grace of the Lord, if we confer the oracles of the Lord upon the needy, if we observe the heavenly commandments. And conversely it does not bring a curse if there is no money to lend out;

but if zeal is wanting, if the observance of the heavenly statutes is wanting, you shall be cursed. Finally, the mystery of the Church is plainly expressed. For first He said to the disciple of the Law: If you hear the Law and keep it, you shall lend to the nations. And this was done by our fathers. Moses lent to the nations, who won over proselytes; Joshua lent; Gideon lent; Samuel, David, Solomon, Elijah, Elisha lent, and if anyone wished to know the word, he went to them: the queen of the south came to hear the wisdom of Solomon. When the people of the Jews began not to keep the Law, the strangers began — that is, those born of the people — the loan.

Those who believed in the Lord, who is our food, lent the interpretation of the Scriptures to that ancient people. Timothy, sprung from a Greek father, lent the word to the Jews when he had received the priesthood; and to this day we priests in the Church lend the word to the Jews who have passed over from the synagogue to the Church; we lend both the new and the old money. For what they once had they have no longer; they have eyes and see not, they have ears and hear not, they have money and have it not, because they know not its use, they know not its value, they have not recognized its image and its form. For if they had recognized it, they would never have denied the Author of that money, saying: We will not have this man to reign over us.

And he indeed, having received the kingdom, returning, ordered his servants to be called, to whom he had given the money, and he commended those who had lent the money; but to him who had kept the money idle, his lord answered: You knew that I am a harsh man; I take up what I did not lay down and reap what I did not sow. And why did you not put my money at the bank? And I, coming, would surely have demanded it with interest.

You have heard what is the money of the good lender, what money acquires good interest, what money does not bring infamy upon the lender, does not oppress the debtor, what money rust cannot cover over nor the moth penetrate, what money is not from an earthly treasure but from an eternal one, what money makes the receiver rich and yet diminishes nothing for the lender. This money bears interest, so that it yields not a hundredth part of what you have given, but a hundredfold fruit. Open wide, therefore, the bosom of your mind, that you may take in the amount of this money counted out to you; bend the gaze of your heart, that you may recognize the image and inscription of this money.

Shake out this money assuredly, the tablet upon the table of your soul, which should be stable in virtues; set it foursquare, store it in the treasure-house of your breast, from which the learned scribe brings forth things new and old. You see what sort of money this is, how it joins in itself names hateful to one another — creditor and debtor. I who was inveighing against lenders now call the debtor forth. I desire that you be lenders of this money, that those who would take a loan may of their own accord hasten to you, through which you may acquire not a coin but a kingdom, through which you may seek not curses but the grace of blessing. This money the people of the nations lends, who knew how to receive what was lent, who knew how to discern, who knew how to shake it out.

You refused, in need of the spiritual loan: you began to be in want. Of you therefore it was said by the Son of God: The sinner shall borrow and shall not repay. To you it is said: The stranger who is in you shall ascend above you, but you shall descend to the lowest. For he knows not the height who is ignorant of Christ; he is ever in hell who does not ascend to Christ; but on the height is the people that receives the word. This people has the whole patrimony of faith; concerning it the Law says: This man shall lend to you, but you shall not lend to him; this man shall be your head, but you shall be the tail — that is, he shall be first, you the last and the outcast. I will take away from Judea head and tail, beginning and end: the beginning is Christ, who, when asked who He was, answered: The Beginning, that which I also speak to you.