Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/594

 5o6 Outlines of European History Payment of interest on money forbidden The Jews as money lenders the price above the just one. These ideas made wholesale trade very difficult. Akin to these prejudices against wholesale business was that against interest. Money was believed to be a dead and sterile thing, and no one had a right to demand any return for lending it. Interest was considered wicked, since it was exacted by those who took advantage of the embarrassments of others. " Usury," as the taking of even the most moderate and reasonable rate of interest was then called, was strenuously forbidden by the laws of the Church. We find church councils ordering that im- penitent usurers should be refused Christian burial and have their wills annulled. So money lending, which is necessary to all great commercial and industrial undertakings, was left to the Jews, from whom Christian conduct was not expected. This ill-starred people played a most important part in the economic development of Europe, but they were terribly mal- treated by the Christians, who held them guilty of the supreme crime of putting Christ to death. The active persecution of the Jews did not, however, become common before the thirteenth century, when they first began to be required to wear a peculiar cap, or badge, which made them easily recognized and exposed them to constant insult. Later they were sometimes shut up in a particular quarter of the city, called the Jewry. As they were excluded from the guilds, they not unnaturally turned to the business of money lending, which no Christian might practice. Undoubtedly this occupation had much to do in causing their unpopularity. The kings permitted them to make loans, often at a most exorbitant rate ; Philip Augustus allowed them to exact forty-six per cent, but reserved the right to extort their gains from them when the royal treasury was empty. In England the usual rate was a penny a pound for each week. In the thirteenth centuiy the Italians — Lombards, as the English called them ^ — began to go into a sort of banking 1 There is a Lombard Street in the center of old London where one still finds banks.