ffort of this kind was made by John Gerson. His
general learning made him Chancellor of the University of Paris; his
sacred learning made him the leading orator at the Council of Constance;
his piety led men to attribute to him The Imitation of Christ. Shaking
off theological shackles, he declared, "Better is it to lend money at
reasonable interest, and thus to give aid to the poor, than to see them
reduced by poverty to steal, waste their goods, and sell at a low price
their personal and real property."

But this idea was at once buried beneath citations from the Scriptures,
the fathers, councils, popes, and the canon law. Even in the most active
countries there seemed to be no hope. In England, under Henry VII,
Cardinal Morton, the lord chancellor, addressed Parliament, asking it to
take into consideration loans of money at interest. The result was a law
which imposed on lenders at interest a fine of a hundred pounds besides
the annulment of the loan; and, to show that there was an offence
against religion involved, there was added a clause "reserving to the
Church, notwithstanding this punishment, the correction of their souls
according to the laws of the same."

Similar enactments were made by civil authority in various parts of
Europe; and just when the trade, commerce, and manufactures of the
modern epoch had received an immense impulse from the great series of
voyages of discovery by such men as Columbus, Vasco da Gama, Magellan,
and the Cabots, this barrier against enterprise was strengthened by a
decree from no less enlightened a pontiff than Leo X.

The popular feeling warranted such decrees. As late as the end of
the Middle Ages we find the people of Piacenza dragging the body of a
money-lender out of his grave in consecrated ground and throwing it into
the river Po, in order to stop a prolonged rainstorm; and outbreaks of
the same spirit were frequent in other countries. (452)

(452) For Gerson's argument favouring a reasonable rate of interest, see
Coquelin and Guillaumin, Dictionnaire, article Interet. For the renewed
opposition to the taking of interest in England, see Craik, History of
British Commerce, chap. vi. The statute cited is 3 Henry VII, chap. vi;
it is found in Gibson's Corpus Juris Eccles. Anglic., p. 1071. For
the adverse decree of Leo X, see Liegeois, p. 76. See also Lecky,
Rationalism, vol. ii. For the dragging out of the usurer's body at
Piacenza, see Burckhardt, The Renaissance