Similarly, the Church, following Roman law, allowed a penalty imposed for late payment, poena detentori. It was then a simple matter to lend with a fixed date for repayment and an implicit agreement that the borrower would not repay by that day. When he paid a few days later, a penalty was tacked on, which surprisingly approximated the market interest that ordinarily would have been charged by less conscientious lenders! When there is a will, the market finds a way around impediments; financial innovation helped finesse the Scriptures, much as it helps aggressive financiers avoid regulations today.
The State Moves Against the Church
Not only was the Catholic Church inclined to turn a blind eye to some types of lending, it was becoming weaker politically once again. Its pronouncements, including on usury, began to carry less weight. The Church’s wealth made it an attractive target for monarchs. They preferred their subjects’ wealth to stay within their control rather than be transferred into the hands of a distant, and possibly antagonistic, Rome.33
Much as social media today has allowed politicians to reach people directly, bypassing the filters of the mainstream press, Gutenberg’s movable-type printing press allowed critics of the Church, abetted by the local prince, to gain direct access to the masses. The reduced cost of printing pamphlets, as well as the spread of literacy, especially among the growing business community, ensured that the Church could be challenged and the arguments would reach many more people than in the past. Indeed, conservatives at that time warned that “printed books and broadsheets would undermine religious authority, demean the work of scholars and scribes, and spread sedition and debauchery.”34 They were right! For instance, over three hundred thousand copies of Martin Luther’s theses against the Catholic Church were circulated between 1517 and 1520, something that would not have been possible without the press.35
Additional pressure for reform came from secular law and secular courts that increasingly competed with the Church to try usury cases. Over time, as commercial and state activity necessitated the charging of interest, secular courts became willing to enforce loan contracts, especially when interest rates were moderate. French and English monarchs adopted the legal fiction that their moneylenders were to be considered Jews for legal purposes, and came under secular law courts.36 Judges, however, needed more than workarounds. Scholarly arguments were made to support the practical judgments of secular courts. As monarchs grew more powerful and independent of the Church, this meant more protection to usury.
As selective violations of usury prohibitions, such as royal or commercial borrowing as well as Church lending, increased, usury prohibitions became ever more difficult to justify as a purely religious matter. As the historian Richard Tawney has argued, the religious arguments for the prohibition on usury, by their very nature as moral arguments, had to apply universally, even though they were meant primarily for consumption loans to the poor. With the emerging range of new, seemingly defensible, reasons for lending at interest, the Church faced questions about how general the religious arguments really were.37
THE CHURCH CHANGES ITS VIEW
As the Reformation swept across Europe, scholars proposed new doctrines to rationalize the expanding markets and growing prosperity, as well as the needs of the emerging powerful monarchs. Perhaps the most important of these from a commercial perspective was the sixteenth-century French theologian and pastor John Calvin, who fled Catholic France for the Swiss city of Geneva, where he became extremely influential. Indeed, in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, the German social historian Max Weber attributed the rise of the archetypal capitalist to the teachings of John Calvin.
In Weber’s view, the true capitalist is not the flamboyant gambler who risks all or the unscrupulous speculator who wheedles his way to riches, but the temperate, reliable, hardworking businessman, “with strictly bourgeois opinions and principles.”38 The essence of modern capitalism is the steady accumulation of wealth, not because of the pleasures it can buy or the material needs it can satisfy, but for its own sake. Indeed, far from unbridled greed and debauchery, rational capitalism combines a single-minded focus on accumulation with a frugal lifestyle. What Calvin did for capitalism, according to Weber, was to provide it a moral legitimacy in a world where avarice was a sin.
Calvin emphasized the notion of calling, or predestination—that God has chosen some to be saved from damnation, and that their moral obligation is to do their duty in the world. Rather than abandoning the world, as was the Catholic monastic ideal, one had to embrace it. The practicing Calvinist had to have faith that he was one of the chosen, and had to demonstrate this faith through worldly activity. Business success was a sign of being one of the elect. Therefore, the accumulation of wealth was no longer to be condemned as avarice, but instead celebrated. Indeed, it was condemned only if wealth was spent on luxuries and high living—not only did conspicuous consumption reduce the savings necessary for investment, but it was also a waste of time, detracting from man’s true calling. The Calvinist vision of capitalist society was austere—and Geneva under the Calvinists was a harsh dull place—but it gave the single-minded entrepreneur a moral compass and justification that he did not have before. Various Protestant sects influenced by Calvinism then spread to Scotland, the Netherlands, and England, and thence to New England in the United States.
Calvin’s views on usury were consistent with his arguments about business. He maintained that the arguments against usury in the Old Testament were so that “mutual and brotherly affection should prevail among the Israelites,” so that they could trade conveniently among one another without conflict.39 It was an argument for a different age and different community circumstances, and could not be deemed universal—even in the Old Testament, usury had been permitted to strangers. Therefore, usury was permissible “if it is not injurious to one’s brother.”
Taking on Aristotle, Calvin asserted that money was barren only if unused. If used productively—invested in land or trade—the borrower is not defrauded when he pays a portion of his profits for the use of money. Thus all interest need not be condemned for otherwise “we would impose tighter fetters on the conscience than God himself.”40 Nor, Calvin argued, do the Scriptures prohibit a reasonable charge for money. Observing that the Hebrew word for interest, neshek, meant “to bite,” Calvin argued that the Bible prohibits only “biting” interest, which oppresses the poor.41
So while Calvin’s theology sanctified the pursuit of wealth and removed the associated taint of avarice, it also created a space for saving and lending at moderate interest rates. Such a positive interest rate was necessary to give the accumulative capitalist the incentive to be ascetic in his spending and save. It was also a pragmatic recognition that the needs of capitalistic business differed from those of the penurious household. While urging continued protections for the poor, Calvin opened the way for ordinary business lending.
Weber argues that Calvin also paved the way for the rise of capitalism. Of course, Calvinism may simply have been a rationalization and legitimization of emerging business practices rather than the wellspring for capitalism. Nevertheless, by transforming business from a furtive activity done in dark corners hidden from religious authorities to one that was publicly praiseworthy and indeed a route to salvation, Calvinism did much to encourage the further growth of business. Calvin may have imbued the bourgeoisie of Western Europe in the sixteenth century with a sense of being chosen and predestined, much as Marx anointed the proletariat of the nineteenth century.42
In sum, from about the middle of the fourteenth century, the Church’s attitude toward usury softened, probably as much by necessity as by conviction.43 Usurers were allowed to be buried once again in church graveyards, and various kinds of contracts involving interest were declared non-usurious, with only excessive interest being