-yielded fully to this dogma. In the ninth century
Alfred went so far as to confiscate the estates of money-lenders,
denying them burial in Consecrated ground; and similar decrees were made
in other parts of Europe. In the twelfth century the Greek Church seems
to have relaxed its strictness somewhat, but the Roman Church grew
more severe. St. Anselm proved from the Scriptures that the taking of
interest is a breach of the Ten Commandments. Peter Lombard, in his
Sentences, made the taking of interest purely and simply theft. St.
Bernard, reviving religious earnestness in the Church, took the same
view. In 1179 the Third Council of the Lateran decreed that impenitent
money-lenders should be excluded from the altar, from absolution in the
hour of death, and from Christian burial. Pope Urban III reiterated
the declaration that the passage in St. Luke forbade the taking of any
interest whatever. Pope Alexander III declared that the prohibition in
this matter could never be suspended by dispensation.

In the thirteenth century Pope Gregory IX dealt an especially severe
blow at commerce by his declaration that even to advance on interest the
money necessary in maritime trade was damnable usury; and this was fitly
followed by Gregory X, who forbade Christian burial to those guilty of
this practice; the Council of Lyons meted out the same penalty. This
idea was still more firmly fastened upon the world by the two greatest
thinkers of the time: first, by St. Thomas Aquinas, who knit it into the
mind of the Church by the use of the Scriptures and of Aristotle; and
next by Dante, who pictured money-lenders in one of the worst regions of
hell.

About the beginning of the fourteenth century the "Subtile Doctor" of
the Middle Ages, Duns Scotus, gave to the world an exquisite piece of
reasoning in evasion of the accepted doctrine; but all to no purpose:
the Council of Vienne, presided over by Pope Clement V, declared that
if any one "shall pertinaciously presume to affirm that the taking of
interest for money is not a sin, we decree him to be a heretic, fit for
punishment." This infallible utterance bound the dogma with additional
force on the conscience of the universal Church.

Nor was this a doctrine enforced by rulers only; the people were no less
strenuous. In 1390 the city authorities of London enacted that, "if any
person shall lend or put into the hands of any person gold or silver
to receive gain thereby, such person shall