From Dr. Thurow:
Dante places Usurers deep in hell, sitting on burning sand, under a rain of fire, staring at nothing but the bags of money hung about their necks. In the seventh circle, among those who engaged in malicious violence toward God, they sit below the lustful, slothful, and gluttonous, below heretics, misers, and mass murderers. And by Dante’s definition we are all usurers.
The Church has shifted its definition more than a little over the years, but in the Middle Ages, usury was any making of money off of money: profit without labor, the sweat of Adam’s brow. All taking and giving of interest was considered a sin. Such practices are now the very foundation of our modern economy!
Shakespeare, also, muses on this a little in The Merchant of Venice. Even amidst a Renaissance society in England where this medieval notion of usury was being abandoned for a more business-friendly approach, he harkened back to the medieval, as he surprisingly often does. If we are commanded to love our neighbors and we would never seek to profit off of the need of our loved-ones, how can it ever be licit to make a profit off of money we did not need at the time (or we wouldn’t have been able to loan it) but someone else did (or they wouldn’t have borrowed it)? Do my possible future needs always trump my loved-one’s current needs? Besides, as Dante emphasizes, everything we have really belongs to God and is loaned by Him to us without charge (given by Lady Fortune who constantly turns her wheel). What right have we to charge others for the use of what we were given for free? Even if my wealth seems to be the product of my keen mind or strong arm, who gave me those? Might God have given us what we have precisely so that we could provide it to our neighbor in their need?
But our economy depends upon the taking of interest. Menger, one of the founders of the school of Austrian economics, would point out that the capitalist provides a useful service to society by determining, for free, where the resources of society can be most efficiently used. He also profits both himself and those to whom he loans his money: wealth begets wealth and everyone wins, or they wouldn’t agree to the exchange. Our great efficiency of production and abundance of product are the result of this system whereby the needed wealth finds its way to the most needed (and thus the most profitable) industries without even the need to hire an army of experts at public expense to manage our economy! Indeed, the stock market does a better job of predicting the future than most economists!
Most such justifications for the changes in our understanding of usury focus upon the great increase of wealth produced by capitalism. But it is what Dante points out in connection with his observations concerning usury that always gives me pause. He encounters just before the usurers, as protagonist of his own poem, three great Florentine leaders who inquire as to the current state of his beloved home city. Dante answers with great passion: “their sudden wash of wealth / beget in you such arrogance and excess, / Florence, you feel already your ill health.” (16.73-5). Wealth may not be the cure for our society’s ills; it might be the disease, itself. The early Christians went to sleep in exile amidst the filth of the catacombs and awakened in heaven, we sleep in our comfortable beds in our comfortable homes and wonder why we are never really content. Perhaps the old understanding of usury made the Medievals poor. Perhaps it also helped to make them pious.
September 5, 2025