We Have Got to Talk About Usury (Part VIII): Medieval Theologians
St. Thomas Aquinas, from Bernardo Daddi’s (Italian, active c. 1312–1348) The Virgin Mary with Saints Thomas Aquinas and Paul, c. 1335, tempera and gold leaf on panel. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, 93.PB.16
The following post is the eighth in a series on usury by the Rev. Vincent Shemwell. Rev. Shemwell serves as pastor of Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Johnson City, Tennessee. He graduated from Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne with the M.Div. in 2022, and received his STM from CTSFW in 2024, writing his thesis on Johann Georg Hamann. The previous installments can be found below:
Part I: Introduction
Part II: The Old Testament
Part III: The New Testament
Part IV: The Church Fathers—Clement of Alexandria through Hilary of Poitiers
Part V: The Church Fathers — The Cappadocians
Part VI: The Church Fathers — Church Councils and Ambrose
Part VII: The Church Fathers—Chrysostom through Leo the Great
As I mentioned in the previous part of this series, Pope Leo the Great’s epistle Nec hoc quoque (c. 443) was the first prohibition of all lending at interest for both clergy and laity issued with supreme ecclesiastical authority. Several centuries later, around 774, this text was incorporated into the Hadriana, the official collection of canon law presented by Pope Adrian I to Charlemagne. From that point onward, there emerged an ever-greater consensus among both church and state in Christian lands that all lending at interest is inherently sinful and thus forbidden. (Note: the capitularies of Charlemagne cited Nicaea in addition to Leo’s epistle.) And significantly, in Nec hoc quoque, Psalm 15 is cited as definitive proof of the universal moral prohibition against charging interest. It seems that for many in the first millennium of the church’s history, this psalm served as the most glaring evidence that the Old Testament prohibition was not just civil law, but moral, and is therefore still binding on the Christian.
Roughly seventy-five years later, at the Synod of Pavia, a further step was taken: for the second time in church history, the first being at the provincial Synod of Elvira (c. 305), a decree was issued that all unrepentant usurers, clergy and lay, were to be excommunicated. This, of course, did not actually eradicate the practice of usury, even among Christians. And so, just like in the earliest centuries of the church, from Pavia forward, the prohibition had to be repeatedly reiterated over the years by various councils and popes, along with the threat of excommunication for transgressors.
In the next part of our series, I will address some of those councils and papal decrees, as well as other relevant aspects of medieval canon law. For this present part, however, I would just like to quote a few well-known theologians on usury, spanning the eleventh through the thirteenth centuries.
What is noteworthy about medieval Christian thought on this issue is that usury was often viewed as a violation of both the first and the seventh commandments, a conviction already incipient in the patristic witness. That lending at interest potentially constitutes a sin against the seventh commandment should be readily apparent; yet the fact that it violates the first commandment is perhaps of greater importance; and this is a fact that Luther and Walther, in particular, later stressed.
Centuries earlier, Chrysostom, in his Homilies on 1 Thessalonians, had already grouped usurers together with robbers (see Homily X). Yet the earliest eminent medieval theologian to explicitly identify usury with theft was Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109). In his Homiliae et exhortationes (Homily XII), while commenting on the Parable of the Unjust Steward, he states matter-of-factly that usury, theft, and fraud are of one kind, each representing an equal violation of the seventh commandment. Gregory of Nyssa had long before asked (Homilies on Ecclesiastes, Homily IV): “What, after all, distinguishes the act of acquiring another’s property through covert theft or a murder-robbery on the roadside from seizing what is not one’s own by the charging of interest?” For Anselm, there was no real difference, at least not with respect to one’s standing before God.
In the following century, Hugh of St. Victor (c. 1096–1141) expressed the point with striking clarity. In his Summa Sententiarum, he writes (Tract IV, ch. 4): “Usury is included under the heading of robbery. Jerome says: ‘To seek usury, or to defraud, or to rob—it makes no difference. Provide for your brother’s benefit and receive back what you gave, and seek nothing whatsoever in excess.’” (Note: some scholars now question whether Hugh was actually the author of this entire work.)
Bernard of Clairvaux also equates usury with theft in his Sermons on the Song of Songs. While noting how these sins, if left unrepented, equally separate one from Christ, he writes (Sermon LXXI): “Whether from the hand of a robber or from that of a usurer, Christ accepts no alms.”
Contemporaneous with Hugh of St. Victor, Peter Lombard (c. 1096–1160) carried forward the tradition of classifying usury as a sin against the seventh commandment, and in the explanation of this commandment in his seminal Sententiae, he goes out of his way to list usury within its scope (III, d. 37, ch. 3): “The fourth commandment [of the second table of the law] is: ‘You shall not steal,’ where every act of sacrilege and robbery is prohibited. ‘For He Who forbade theft,’ says Augustine, ‘did not permit any robbery whatsoever, but wished it to be rightly understood under the name of theft that every unlawful usurpation of another’s property is included.’ … Here also usury is prohibited, which is included under robbery. Hence Jerome says: ‘To seek usury, or to defraud, or to rob—it makes no difference. Provide for your brother’s benefit and receive back what you gave, and seek nothing whatsoever in excess; for excess is reckoned as usury.’ ‘And usury,’ according to Augustine, ‘is when someone demands more—in money or in anything else—than he has given.’ Likewise, Jerome states: ‘Some think that usury exists only in money; but let them understand that usury is called excess, namely, whatever is more than what one has given, as if in winter we give ten measures [of grain], and at harvest we receive fifteen.’”
The student of medieval discussions on usury will quickly observe that most theologians invoke Ambrose, Jerome, or Augustine, while nearly all ground the universal prohibition of lending at interest in Psalm 15, Ezekiel 18, or both.
Born around the year of Lombard’s death, Thomas Chobham (c. 1160–1235), in his famous work on penance, Summa Confessorum, speaks to the severity of usury and the necessity of restoring any ill-gotten gains for reconciliation (VII, d. 6, q. XIa, De usura): “It is clear that a usurer can never truly repent unless he restores all that he has extorted through usury.” He then goes on to suggest that the church can offer no other advice to the unrepentant usurer. Either he gives back what he has stolen (seventh commandment) or his repentance is proven insincere.
Interestingly, in this same section of the text, Thomas Chobham quotes Genesis 3:19 as evidence against usury, since, he argues, the usurer is no true laborer: “The money-lender wishes to obtain profit without any labor, even while sleeping, which is against the command of the Lord, Who says: ‘In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread.’”
A contemporary of Thomas Chobham, Alexander of Hales (c. 1185–1245)—dubbed the “Irrefutable Doctor” by Pope Alexander IV and an instrumental figure in establishing Lombard’s Sententiae as the principal theological textbook of the Middle Ages—introduced what eventually became the prevailing medieval interpretation of the allowance of usury in the case of the foreigner. In contrast to Ambrose, Alexander did not consider usury as a weapon of war. Rather, he writes: “It was never actually lawful for the Jews to practice usury upon the foreigner, but it was permitted to them, as it was to give a bill of divorce, on account of the hardness of their hearts. Nevertheless, they committed a mortal sin if they practiced usury upon the foreigner; but it was permitted to them for a twofold reason: namely, that they might not do even worse and practice usury upon their own brothers, and because they were hard-hearted and had to be gradually led to perfection.” (As quoted in Die Wucherfrage: Protokoll der Verhandlungen der deutschen ev. luth. Gemeinde U.A.C. zu St. Louis, Mo., über diese Frage (1869), 92.) Most subsequent medieval theologians adopted Alexander’s interpretation of this allowance, an exegetical tradition that Luther himself later inherited.
Lastly, I would be remiss not to cite the most renowned and beloved theologian of this period, Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274). Aquinas devoted considerable attention to the subject of usury; yet, given the constraints of space, I will restrict myself here to those passages most relevant to the ongoing conversation about usury that extended from his own time into the sixteenth century.
In his Summa Theologiae, Aquinas, unsurprisingly, assumes the Aristotelian understanding of money’s sterility. He argues (II–II, q. 78, a. 1, co.): “To take usury for money lent is unjust in itself, because this is to sell what does not exist, and this inevitably leads to inequality, which is contrary to justice…. Now money, according to The Philosopher, was invented chiefly for the purpose of exchange; and consequently, the proper and principal use of money is its consumption or alienation whereby it is sunk in exchange. Hence it is by its very nature unlawful to take payment for the use of money lent, which payment is known as usury: and just as a man is bound to restore other ill-gotten goods, so is he bound to restore the money which he has taken through usury.”
For Aristotle and Aquinas, money exists solely for exchange, whereby it is consumed in use, and thus to treat it as a means of securing profit is to act against its telos, which is obviously unnatural. Money is not like other durable goods, such as land or a home, which can rightly be rented for their use without being consumed, since money’s telos is precisely exchange and consumption in use. Instead, money is more like consumable goods, such as wine or wheat, which, once purchased, are likewise consumed in their use. Because money’s telos is bound up with its use in exchange, ownership and use cannot be separated (whereas this is possible with durable goods). Accordingly, the lending of money must be understood in terms of the selling of consumable goods, in which case, because of its consumption in use, ownership necessarily changes hands. And if this is indeed the case with money lent, the lender no longer retains the right to charge for its use. To do so, Aquinas argues, amounts to “selling what does not exist.” Furthermore, Aquinas here reinforces Thomas Chobham’s view that restoration of ill-gotten goods is necessary for true repentance and reconciliation.
Aquinas then goes on to reiterate the abovementioned position of Alexander of Hales (II–II, q. 78, a. 1, ad. 2): “The Jews were forbidden to take usury from their brethren, i.e. from other Jews. By this we are given to understand that to take usury from any man is simply evil, because we ought to treat every man as our neighbor and brother, especially in the state of the Gospel, whereto all are called. Hence it is said without any distinction in Psalm 15:5: ‘He who does not put out his money at usury,’ and (Ezekiel 18:8): ‘If he has not exacted usury.’ They were permitted, however, to take usury from foreigners, not as though it were lawful, but in order to avoid a greater evil, lest, to wit, through avarice, to which they were prone according to Isaiah 56:11 (‘Yes, they are greedy dogs which never have enough…. They all look to their own way, every one for his own gain’), they should take usury from the Jews who were worshippers of God.”
In his next article, Aquinas also restates the biblical and patristic view that not just money but any good whatsoever can be charged usuriously (Summa Theologiae II–II, q. 78, a. 2, co.): “Just as it is a sin against justice to take money, by tacit or express agreement, in return for lending money or anything else that is consumed by being used, so also is it a like sin, by tacit or express agreement, to receive anything whose price can be measured by money.” Aquinas then notes that it is lawful, however, to expect compensation for a loan in the form of benevolence and love, just not in material things. And while money or other material things cannot be expected upfront, Aquinas does allow for gratuity on the back end of a loan, if the borrower is in a position to compensate and wishes to do so voluntarily. This was a commonly held position in the Middle Ages, which followed ancient Roman law. The borrower could respond to the charity of a loan with the charity of a gift, but this could never be binding and could never be expected from the beginning of a loan, since this would be a violation of Jesus’s command in Luke 6.
A few articles later, Aquinas takes up a very important question: is it lawful for a borrower to take out a loan at interest? Admittedly, some of the church fathers spoke of both the lender and borrower in a usurious loan committing sin. However, by the Middle Ages, this was no longer a popular opinion. Aquinas writes (II–II, q. 78, a. 4, co.): “It is by no means lawful to induce a man to sin, yet it is lawful to make use of another’s sin for a good end, since even God uses all sin for some good, since He draws some good from every evil…. Accordingly, we must also answer … that it is by no means lawful to induce a man to lend under a condition of usury: yet it is lawful to borrow for usury from a man who is ready to do so and is a usurer by profession; provided the borrower have a good end in view, such as the relief of his own or another’s need. Thus, too, it is lawful for a man who has fallen among thieves to point out his property to them (which they sin in taking) in order to save his life, after the example of the ten men who said to Ishmael (Jeremiah 41:8): ‘Do not kill us, for we have treasures of wheat, barley, oil, and honey in the field.’”
For Aquinas, if a lender is ready and willing to lend, and does so professionally, and if a borrower has a genuine need, then they would not be sinning in taking out a loan at interest. As a matter of survival, they would not be inducing the usurer to sin, but would be placing themselves in a position to be sinned against as a matter of necessity. (Of course, “need” is broad and vague enough for this to be abused.) Several centuries later, Luther more or less made the same argument.
Like the patristics, Aquinas did not solely point to the Old Testament as proof of the sinfulness of lending at interest. In his classic Catena Aurea, commenting on Matthew 5:42 (“Give to him who asks you, and from him who wants to borrow from you do not turn away.”), he cites Pseudo-Chrysostom against usury: “Christ commands us to lend, but not to lend on usury; for he who gives on such terms does not truly bestow his own, but seizes what belongs to another. He releases one from a single chain only to bind him with many, giving not for the sake of God’s righteousness, but for his own profit. For money taken on usury is like the bite of an asp: as the asp’s venom secretly consumes the limbs, so usury insidiously transforms all our possessions into debt.” For Aquinas, lending at interest is not really lending at all, but stealing.
Finally, in his famous text on the nature of evil, De Malo, Aquinas writes (XIII.4.7): “The one who pays interest on a loan suffers injustice not from himself, but from the usurer, who, although he does not compel the borrower with absolute force, nonetheless exerts upon him a certain mixed force, namely, by imposing a burdensome condition upon one in need of a loan, that he must repay more than was lent. This is akin to one who, encountering a person in dire necessity, sells him some item for far more than its actual worth; for such a sale would be unjust, just as the usurer’s loan is unjust.” Aquinas reaffirms that a borrower does not necessarily commit injustice, provided he is compelled by genuine need and does not entice a lender into usury. At the same time, he underscores that usury, in its essence, constitutes a sin against justice itself. Many medieval theologians likewise regarded usury not merely as a matter of turpe lucrum—“shameful gain” or “filthy lucre”—but as a direct transgression against justice. Hence, they insisted with great fervor that restitution is required, even under threat of excommunication. In their view, usury is not simply a matter of a deficiency in charity but it is a very real violation of justice, a manifest breach of the seventh commandment.
God willing, in the next part of our series we will pick up with several significant medieval councils and papal decrees—some of which reflect the positions of the theologians cited here—together with the unfortunate concrete realities of lending in the Middle Ages and Dante’s searing critique of usurers.
Stay tuned.