have the punishment for
usurers." And in the same year the Commons prayed the king that the laws
of London against usury might have the force of statutes throughout the
realm.

In the fifteenth century the Council of the Church at Salzburg excluded
from communion and burial any who took interest for money, and this was
a very general rule throughout Germany.

An exception was, indeed, sometimes made: some canonists held that Jews
might be allowed to take interest, since they were to be damned in any
case, and their monopoly of money-lending might prevent Christians from
losing their souls by going into the business. Yet even the Jews were
from time to time punished for the crime of usury; and, as regards
Christians, punishment was bestowed on the dead as well as the
living--the bodies of dead money-lenders being here and there dug up and
cast out of consecrated ground.

The popular preachers constantly declaimed against all who took
interest. The medieval anecdote books for pulpit use are especially full
on this point. Jacques de Vitry tells us that demons on one occasion
filled a dead money-lender's mouth with red-hot coins; Cesarius of
Heisterbach declared that a toad was found thrusting a piece of money
into a dead usurer's heart; in another case, a devil was seen pouring
molten gold down a dead money-lender's throat.(450)

(450) For an enumeration of councils condemning the taking of interest
for money, see Liegeois, Essai sur l'Histoire et la Legislation de
l'Usure, Paris, 1865, p. 78; also the Catholic Dictionary as above. For
curious additional details and sources regarding mediaeval horror of
usurers, see Ducange, Glossarium, etc., article Caorcini. T he date 306,
for the Council of Elvira is that assigned by Hefele. For the decree
of Alexander III, see citation from the Latin text in Lecky. For a
long catalogue of ecclesiastical and civil decrees against taking of
interest, see Petit, Traite de l'Usure, Paris, 1840. For the reasoning
at the bottom of this, see Cunningham, Christian Opinion on Usury,
London, 1884. For the Salzburg decrees, see Zillner, Salzburgusche
Culturgeschichte, p. 232; and for Germany generally, see Neumann,
Geschichte des Wuchers in Deutschland, Halle, 1865, especially pp. 22 et
seq; also Roscher, National-Oeconomis. For effect of mistranslation
of the passage of Luke in the Vulgate, see Dollinger, p. 170, and
especially pp. 224, 225 For the capitularies of Charlemagne against