on the question of how usury was regarded by the early Church. St.
Hilary[1] and Jerome[2] still base their objection on the ground of
its being an offence against charity; and St. Augustine, though he
would like to make restitution of usury a duty, treats the matter from
the same point of view.[3] On the other hand, there are to be found
patristic utterances in favour of the legality of usury, and episcopal
approbations of civil codes which permitted it.[4] The civil law
did not attempt to suppress usury, but simply to keep it within due
bounds.[5] The result of the patristic teaching therefore was on the
whole unsatisfactory and inconclusive. 'Whilst patristic opinion,'
says Dr. Cleary, 'is very pronounced in condemning usury, the
condemnation is launched against it more because of its oppressiveness
than for its intrinsic injustice. As Dr. Funk has pointed out, one can
scarcely cite a single patristic opinion which can be said clearly to
hold that usury is against justice, whilst there are, on the contrary,
certain undercurrents of thought in many writers, and certain explicit
statements in others, which tend to show that the Fathers would not
have been prepared to deal so harshly with usurers, did usurers not
treat their debtors so cruelly.... Of keen philosophical analysis
there is none.... On the whole, we find the teachings of the Fathers
crude and undeveloped.'[6]

[Footnote 1: In Ps. xiv.]

[Footnote 2: _Ad Ezech._]

[Footnote 3: Cleary, _op. cit._, p. 56.]

[Footnote 4: _Ibid._ pp. 56-7.]

[Footnote 5: _Justinian Code_, iv. 32.]

[Footnote 6: _Op. cit._, pp. 57-9. On the patristic teaching on usury,
see Espinas, _Op. cit._, pp. 82-4; Roscher, _Political Economy_, s.
90; Antoine, _Cours d'Economie sociale_, pp. 588 _et seq_.]

The practical teaching with regard to the taking of usury made an
important advance in the eighth and ninth centuries, although the
philosophical analysis of the subject did not develop any more
fully. A capitulary canon made in 789 decreed 'that each and all are
forbidden to give anything on usury'; and a capitulary of 813 states
that 'not only should the Christian clergy not demand usury, laymen
should not.' In 825 it was decreed that the counts were to assist the
bishops in their suppression of usury; and in 850 the Synod of Ticinum
bound usurers to restitution.[1] The underlying principles of these
enactments is as obscure as their meaning is plain and definite. There
is not