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?