364 ARIADNE FLORENTINA. 



profession, so styled, of usurers, or to the Jews. The mer- 

 chants of Augsburg introduced it as a convenient and pleasant 

 practice among Christians also ; and insisted that it was de- 

 corous and proper even among respectable merchants. In the 

 view of the Christian Church of their day, they might more 

 reasonably have set themselves to defend adultery.* How- 

 ever, they appointed Dr. John Eck, of Ingoldstadt, to hold 

 debates in all possible universities, at their expense, on the 

 allowing of interest ; and as these Augsburgers had in Venice 

 their special mart, Fondaco, called of the Germans, their new 

 notions came into direct collision with old Venetian ones, and 

 were much hindered by them, and all the more, because, in 

 opposition to Dr. John Eck, there was preaching on the other 

 side of the Alps. The Franciscans, poor themselves, preached 

 mercy to the poor : one of them, Brother Marco of San Gallo, 

 planned the ' Mount of Pity,' for their defence, and the mer- 

 chants of Venice set up the first in the world, against the 

 German Fondaco. The dispute burned far on towards our 

 own times. You perhaps have heard before of one Antonio, 

 a merchant of Venice, who persistently retained the then ob- 

 solete practice of lending money gratis, and of the peril it 

 brought him into with the usurers. But you perhaps did not 

 before know why it was the flesh, or heart of flesh, in him, 

 that they so hated. 



24. Against this newly risen demon of authorized usury, 

 Holbein and Botticelli went out to war together. Holbein, 

 as we have partly seen in his designs for the Dance of Death, 

 struck with all his soldier's strength, f Botticelli uses neither- 

 satire nor reproach. He turns altogether away from the crim- 

 inals ; appeals only to heaven for defence against them. He 

 engraves the design which, of all his work, must have cost him 

 hardest toil in its execution, the Virgin praying to her Son 

 in heaven for pity upon the poor : " For these are also my 

 children." J Underneath, are the seven works of Mercy ; and 



* Read Ezekiel xviii. 



f See also the account by Dr. Woltmann of the picture of the Triumph 

 of Riches. ' Holbein and his Time,' p. 352. 



\ These words are engraved in the plate, as spoken by the Virgin. 



