in Italy, London, 1878, vol.
ii, p. 339. For public opinion of similar strength on this subject in
England, see Cunningham, p. 239; also Pike, History of Crime in England,
vol. i, pp. 127, 193. For good general observations on the same, see
Stephen, History of Criminal Law in England, London, 1883, vol. iii, pp.
195-197. For usury laws in Castile and Aragon, see Bedarride, pp.
191, 192. For exceedingly valuable details as to the attitude of the
mediaeval Church, see Leopold Delisle, Etudes sur la Classe Agricole en
Normandie au Moyen Age, Evreux, 1851, pp. 200 et seq., also p. 468. For
penalties in France, see Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, in the Rolls
Series, especially vol. iii, pp. 191, 192. For a curious evasion,
sanctioned by Popes Martin V and Calixtus III when Church corporations
became money-lenders, see H. C. Lea on The Ecclesiastical Treatment of
Usury, in the Yale Review for February, 1894. For a detailed development
of interesting subordinate points, see Ashley, Introduction to English
Economic History and Theory, vol. ii, ch, vi.

Another mode of obtaining relief was tried. Subtle theologians devised
evasions of various sorts. Two among these inventions of the schoolmen
obtained much notoriety.

The first was the doctrine of "damnum emergens": if a lender suffered
loss by the failure of the borrower to return a loan at a date named,
compensation might be made. Thus it was that, if the nominal date of
payment was made to follow quickly after the real date of the loan,
the compensation for the anticipated delay in payment had a very strong
resemblance to interest. Equally cogent was the doctrine of "lucrum
cessans": if a man, in order to lend money, was obliged to diminish his
income from productive enterprises, it was claimed that he might receive
in return, in addition to his money, an amount exactly equal to this
diminution in his income.

But such evasions were looked upon with little favour by the great body
of theologians, and the name of St. Thomas Aquinas was triumphantly
cited against them.

Opposition on scriptural grounds to the taking of interest was not
confined to the older Church. Protestantism was led by Luther and
several of his associates into the same line of thought and practice.
Said Luther. "To exchange anything with any one and gain by the exchange
is not to do a charity; but to steal. Every usurer is a thief worthy
of the gibbet. I call those usurers who lend money at five or s