41845358-Antisemitism

HOMO JUDAICUS ECONOMICUS
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case. In the Torah, the main texts are Exodus 22:25: “If you advance money to
any poor man amongst my people, you shall not act like a money-lender: you
must not exact interest in advance from him”; Leviticus 25:35–37: “When
your brother-Israelite is reduced to poverty and cannot support himself in the
community, you shall assist him. ... You shall not deduct interest when advancing
him money nor add interest to the payment due for food supplied on
credit”; Deuteronomy 23:l9–20: “You shall not charge interest on anything
you lend to a fellow-countryman, money or food or anything else on which
interest can be charged. You may charge interest on a loan to a foreigner but
not on a loan to a fellow-countryman.” In Proverbs 28:8, we learn that “He
who grows rich by lending at discount or interest is saving for another who
will be generous to the poor,” a verse invoked by medieval Christian antiusury
warriors in compelling moneylenders to make restitution to the “victims,”
their descendants, or “the poor.” Psalm 15:5 defines one of the
characteristics of the righteous man as he “who does not put his money out to
usury.” There is ample warrant for the condemnation by the Council of
Poitiers, l280, of that “usury which both Testaments detest,” 12 and one can
readily see that the religious prohibition on usury-interest constituted a grave
problem, a brake on economic activities for both Christians and Jews in what
remained essentially an agrarian society.
The church declared war on usury as of the mid-twelfth century, especially
under the goad of Pope Alexander III (1159–1181). The church prosecuted
usury rigorously until the mid-fourteenth century and was still at it in
the sixteenth, in the heyday of Renaissance capitalism, compelling “manifest,
public, notorious usurers” to make restitution. 13 Every kind of usurer—clerical,
lay, noble, Jewish, foreign—was condemned by the church. In the numerous
synods and councils that took up the subject (beginning with the Second
Lateran Council of 1139), the war went on. Usurers were equated with arsonists,
adulterers, witches, highwaymen, and, finally, at the Council of Vienne
(l311–1312), heretics, thus placing them within the jurisdiction of the Inquisition.
As a sin usury was put in the same category as homicide, parricide, sacrilege,
and incest. Churchmen had their hands full, however, in prosecuting
clerical violators, who were, especially the monasteries, among the chief suppliers
of credit as late as the twelfth century. By the early fourteenth century,
clerical usury was virtually eradicated. Churchmen were less effective against
nonclerical offenders, owing partly to the intervention of kings and lay authorities
and partly to the sheer need for capital. In the mid-thirteenth century
King St. Louis IX of France, who was more papalist than the popes in stamping
out usury, was quite exceptional. His campaign to liquidate Jewish usury