The Little Red Blog

The Great Refusal: Usury, Purgatory, and the Rise of Mammon

{Returning to our theme of the Great Refusal, we consider how Christianity’s original refusal to embrace Mammon gave way, after a thousand years or so, to a reluctant acceptance of Mammon’s role in this worldly vale. From there, it was but a short step to full-on worship of the god; it is no trivial thing that U.S. currency now bears the motto, ‘In God We Trust’.}

“Christianity had traditionally placed God in opposition to money.” (Jacques Le Goff)

According to historian Jacques Le Goff, “Usury was one of the major issues of the thirteenth century. The sudden eruption and spread of the monetary economy threatened old Christian values. The great controversy surrounding usury constitutes what might be called ‘the labor pains of capitalism’.”

The Church’s strictures against money and profit, however inconsistently followed and however fitfully enforced, endured for over a millennium. As Jesus had made clear to his followers, the possession of money might make one’s mortal life more comfortable, but the pursuit of it, and the burden of it, endangered one’s immortal soul.  

Salvation of the soul, of course, was the entire purpose of life, according to Christianity; everything else was secondary at best and sinful at worst. Jacques Le Goff cites Karl Polanyi, “The facts of the [medieval] economy were originally embedded in situations that were not in themselves of an economic nature, neither the ends nor the means being primarily material.”

Le Goff and Polanyi agree that the medieval economy (12^th and 13^th centuries) was embedded in a culture for which economic gain was not primary. Modern culture, on the other hand, is embedded in the economy, the growth of which has become our primary pursuit. And whereas “Medieval Christians formed a fraternity in which the poor, above all, had special rights,” anyone suggesting this today (“the preferential option for the poor”) is immediately castigated as a Marxist.

The rehabilitation of Mammon depended first on getting rid of restrictions on usury—that is, lending money at interest or charging interest to those buying on credit. Jesus had not expressed much concern for profitable lending: “If you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what merit is there in it for you? Even sinners lend to sinners, expecting to be repaid in full. Love your enemy and do good; lend, without expecting to be repaid in full.” That cavalier attitude was fortified in the early Middle Ages by “the Church’s fear that society would be disrupted by the proliferation of usurious practices.” That fear would prove to be prophetic.

For centuries, then, usury was condemned as a form of sloth, one of the seven deadly sins. Man was supposed to live by the sweat of his brow, not by the magical properties of moneylending. Le Goff offers numerous quotations from medieval Christian authorities about the evils of usury. Thomas Aquinas wrote, “Money was invented chiefly for exchanges to be made, so the prime and proper use of money is its use and disbursement in the way of ordinary transactions.” St. Bonaventure declared, “Money is intrinsically unproductive.”  Money is infertile; it cannot reproduce itself nor bear fruit. Pope Leo said bluntly that “Usurious profit from money is the death of the soul.” ¹

Usury was also condemned as the sin of “cupidity” (greed) and as a crime against justice, as Le Goff explains: “A preoccupation with justice became a dominant idea in the economic domain, which was steeped in religious ideology and ethics. The ‘just price’ and the ‘just wage’ were the fundamental themes for economic activity and for the marketplace then beginning to take shape. Even though the ‘just price’ was, to be accurate, merely the market price, demand for justice was present. Usury was seen as a sin against the ‘just price,’ a sin against nature.”

Price gouging and windfall profits, even when not expressly prohibited, were subject to social censure and to the loss of civic reputation.

Where there is a will, however, there is a way; and the will to put money to work—that is, to earn interest from it and to employ it as investment capital—became more and more insistent as the medieval economy grew. Since strictures against usury kept Christians out of the moneylending business, Jews were enlisted to provide the necessary financial service; and, as moneylending became associated with Jews, a new anti-Semitic libel (“Shylock”) was added to the ancient blood libel (“Christ-killer”). Jacques Le Goff acknowledges, “The parallel censure of Judaism and usury contributed to fueling nascent anti-Semitism and to blackening further the image of the usurer, who was now seen as more or less indistinguishable from the Jew.”

Medieval Christians believed they were struggling upwards on a ladder towards heaven; bags of money or loads of material possessions were seen as impediments to that advancement. ² We moderns instead ascend a ladder of success that leads to worldly wealth and possibly to worldly acclaim. Our progress is visible, measurable, tangible, and accomplished here on earth; Christians in the Middle Ages could only hope and pray for their spiritual progress, entrusting themselves to the Church and to God’s mercy for eternal salvation in the world to come.

Concluded Le Goff:

The usurer was the precursor of capitalism, an economic system that, despite its injustices and failings, is part of the West’s trajectory of progress. But from traditional points of view, the usurer was a man in disgrace. The early Middle Ages had disapproved or looked down upon many trades and professions, forbidding them first to clerics and then, in many cases, to laymen, or in any case denouncing them as pathways to sin. Appearing most often on this index were innkeepers, butchers, acrobats, actors, magicians, alchemists, physicians, surgeons, soldiers, pimps, prostitutes, notaries, and wholesale merchants; and also fullers, weavers, harness makers, pastry cooks, shoemakers, gardeners, painters, barbers, bailiffs, constables, customs collectors, moneychangers, tailors, perfumers, tripe sellers, millers, and so forth.

Aside from assigning contaminating monetary transactions to perfidious Jews, how did Christians break free of the anti-Mammon trap? According to Jacques Le Goff, it was the invention of Purgatory that set Christians free to engage in usury while retaining hope for Heaven. “Purgatory was just one of the complicitous winks that Christianity sent the usurer’s way during the 13^th century, but it was the only one that gave him assurance of Paradise. Purgatory was hope, the hope (and soon the quasi-certainty) of being saved, of a man’s being able to have both his money, here below, and his life, his eternal life beyond the grave.”

It was not the earthly consequences of the Church’s condemnation of usury that had restrained Christians, on the threshold of capitalism; it was the agonizing fear of Hell. The hope of escaping Hell, thanks to Purgatory, permitted the usurer to propel the economy and society of the thirteenth century toward capitalism. ³

Necessity is widely credited with being the mother of invention; it appears it was also the mother of Purgatory, whose role in setting the stage for Modernity is rarely acknowledged.   

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Jacques Le Goff quotations are from his Your Money or Your Life and his The Birth of Purgatory. For more on his life and work: Jacques Le Goff - Wikipedia

¹ Edward Abbey, on the other hand, claimed that “Sentiment without action is the death of the soul.” I assume that he and Pope Leo I are debating the issue in the afterlife.

² “I don’t know, but I’ve been told / it’s hard to run with a weight of gold.” (The next line of the song is “On the other hand I’ve often heard it said / it’s just as hard with a weight of lead.”)

³ Following the invention of Purgatory, the Church also discovered the utility of “papal indulgences,” that is, reduction of purgatorial sentences in exchange for (what else?) money. In fairness, indulgences could be earned by other means as well, such as going on pilgrimages or participating in crusades against infidels; in the long run, however, it was easier and more common just to buy them. In the even longer run, of course, papal indulgences helped to shatter Catholic Christendom and to bring Europe’s medieval era to a close.

The Great Refusal: "Acres of Diamonds"

{The Good News of the Christian gospel got even better in late 19th- and early 20^th-century America, when Russell Conwell, a Baptist minister who founded Temple University, put the Lord’s stamp of approval on the getting and spending of money. Pastor Conwell delivered his “Acres of Diamonds” lecture to audiences across the country, setting at ease the consciences of the wealthy and of those with aspirations to wealth; his Christianity could have been labeled “the preferential option for the rich.” Conwell’s lecture qualifies as a “Great Refusal” in that, despite being a minister, Conwell refused to take the Christian gospels seriously.}

(Note: In the following excerpt, I have taken the liberty of appending my own commentaries and scriptural paraphrases.)

Russell Conwell, from “Acres of Diamonds”:

I say that you ought to get rich, and it is your duty to get rich. How many of my pious brethren say to me, ‘“‘Do you, a Christian minister, spend your time going up and down the country advising young people to get rich, to get money?” ‘‘Yes, of course I do.” They say, ‘‘Isn’t that awful! Why don’t you preach the gospel instead of preaching about man’s making money?” ‘‘Because to make money honestly is to preach the gospel.”’ That is the reason. The men who get rich may be the most honest men you find in the community.

The LORD has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives, sight to the blind, and reassurance to those who do His work by piling up treasure on earth.

‘‘Oh,” but says some young man here tonight, “I have been told all my life that if a person has money he is very dishonest and dishonorable and mean and contemptible.” My friend, that is the reason why you have none, because you have that idea of people. The foundation of your faith is altogether false. Let me say here clearly, and say it briefly, though subject to discussion which I have not time for here, ninety-eight out of one hundred of the rich men of America are honest. That is why they are rich. That is why they are trusted with money. That is why they carry on great enterprises and find plenty of people to work with them. It is because they are honest men.

We know they are Christians because ninety-eight percent of them are honest and can be trusted with money.

My friend, you take and drive me out into the suburbs of Philadelphia and introduce me to the people who own their homes around this great city, those beautiful homes with gardens and flowers, those magnificent homes so lovely in their art, and I will introduce you to the very best people in character as well as in enterprise in our city, and you know I will. A man is not really a true man until he owns his own home, and they that own their homes are made more honorable and honest and pure, and true and economical and careful, by owning the home.

Blessed are the homeowners, for they are truly men; and blessed are the magnificent homes, with their gardens and flowers and art, for they are sources of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful.

For a man to have money, even in large sums, is not an inconsistent thing. We preach against covetousness, and you know we do, in the pulpit, and oftentimes preach against it so long and use the terms about ‘‘filthy lucre”’ so extremely that Christians get the idea that when we stand in the pulpit we believe it is wicked for any man to have money—until the collection-basket goes around, and then we almost swear at the people because they don’t give more money. Oh, the inconsistency of such doctrines as that!

Thou hypocrite, denouncing money in one breath yet filling baskets with it the next! You are whitewashed bank vaults, pristine on the outside but filled with Mammon on the inside, not that there is anything wrong with that.

Money is power, and you ought to be reasonably ambitious to have it. You ought because you can do more good with it than you could without it. Money printed your Bible, money builds your churches, money sends your missionaries, and money pays your preachers, and you would not have many of them, either, if you did not pay them.  The man who gets the largest salary can do the most good with the power that is furnished to him, if his spirit be right to use it for what it is given to him.

Man does not live by spirit alone, but by the power of money too. All things are possible for Mammon. Mammon is my shepherd; I shall not want.

You ought to have money, and if you can honestly attain unto riches, it is your Christian and godly duty to do so. It is an awful mistake to think you must be awfully poor in order to be pious. Some men say, “‘Don’t you sympathize with the poor people?’’ Of course I do; I sympathize with the poor, but the number of poor who are to be sympathized with is very small. To sympathize with a man whom God has punished for his sins, to help him when God would still continue a just punishment, is to do wrong, and we do that more than we help those who are deserving. While we should sympathize with God’s poor—that is, those who cannot help themselves— let us remember there is not a poor person in the United States who was not made poor by his own shortcomings, or by the shortcomings of someone else.

Blessed are some of the poor, for they deserve sympathy, but most of them get what they deserve.

A gentleman gets up back there, and says, “Don’t you think there are some things in this world that are better than money?” I do, but I am talking about money now. Of course, there are some things higher than money, some things higher and grander than gold. Love is the grandest thing on God’s earth, but fortunate the lover who has plenty of money. Money is power, money is force, money will do good as well as harm. In the hands of good men and women it could accomplish, and it has accomplished, good. I heard a man get up in a prayer-meeting in our city and thank the Lord he was ‘‘one of God’s poor.” Well, I wonder what his wife thinks about that? She earns all the money that comes into that house, and he smokes a part of that on the veranda. I don’t want to see any more of the Lord’s poor of that kind, and I don’t believe the Lord does.

Thou shalt not smoke on the veranda unless thou hast money to burn.

Thus endeth the sermon.

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Russell Conwell - Wikipedia