328 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



These evils seemed so manifest, when trade began to revive 

 throughout Europe in the fifteenth century, that most earnest 

 exertions were put forth to induce the Church to change its 

 position. 



The first important effort of this kind was made by John Ger- 

 son. His general learning made him Chancellor of the Univer- 

 sity of Paris ; his sacred learning made him the leading orator at 

 the Council of Constance ; his piety led men to attribute to him 

 The Imitation of Christ. Shaking off theological shackles, he 

 declared : " Better is it to lend money at reasonable interest, and 

 thus to give aid to the poor, than to see them reduced by poverty 

 to steal, waste their goods, and sell at a low price their personal 

 and real property." 



But this idea was at once buried beneath citations from the 

 Scriptures, from the fathers, councils, popes, and the canon law. 

 Even in the most active countries there seemed to be no hope. In 

 England, under Henry VII, Cardinal Morton, the lord chan- 

 cellor, addressed Parliament, asking it to take into consideration 

 loans of money at interest. The result was a law which imposed 

 on lenders at interest a fine of a hundred pounds besides the 

 annulment of the loan; and, to show that there was an offense 

 against religion involved, there was added a clause " reserving to 

 the Church, notwithstanding this punishment, the correction of 

 their souls according to the laws of the same." 



Similar enactments were made by civil authority in various 

 parts of Europe ; and just when the trade, commerce, and manu- 

 factures of the modern epoch had received an immense impulse 

 from the great series of voyages of discovery by such men as 

 Columbus, Vasco da Gama, Magellan, and the Cabots, this bar- 

 rier against enterprise was strengthened by a decree from no less 

 enlightened a pontiff than Leo X. 



The popular feeling warranted such decrees. As late as the 

 end of the middle ages, we find the people of Piacenza dragging 

 the body of a money-lender out of his grave in consecrated 

 ground and throwing it into the Po, in order to stop a prolonged 

 rain-storm ; and outbreaks of the same spirit are frequent in other 

 countries.* 



see Bedarride, Les Juifs en France, en Italia et en Espagne, p. 220. See also Hallam's 

 Middle Ages, London, 1853, pp. 401, 402. For the evil moral effects of the Church doc- 

 trine against taking interest, see Montesquieu, Esprit des Lois, lib. xxi, chap. xx. See 

 also Sismondi, cited in Lecky. For the trifling with conscience, distinction between "con- 

 sumptibles " and " fungibles," " possessio " and " dominium," etc., see Ashley, English 

 Economic History, New York, 1888, pp. 152, 163. For effects of these doctrines on the 

 Jews, see Milman, History of the Jews, vol. iii, p. 179 ; also Wcllbausen, History of Israel, 

 London, 1885, p. 546; also Beugnot, Les Juifs d'Occident, Paris, 1824, B, p. 114 (on 

 driving Jews out of other industries than money-lending). 



* For Gerson's argument favoring a reasonable rate of interest, see Coquelin and Guil- 



