popes followed the teachings of the fathers and forbade it under severe penalties. The priests guilty of this sin were degraded from their orders. The laymen found guilty were excommunicated. Interest paid could be reclaimed, not only from the usurer but from his heirs. A bargain, though confirmed by an oath never to claim back the interest paid, was declared not binding. This action of the popes was confirmed by councils.
Charlemagne, in France, forbid the taking of usury either by priests or laity.
A council at Westminster (1126) approved the degradation of all clergy, who were guilty of this practice.
Archbishop Sands said: "This canker (usury) hath corrupted all England."
A council in Vienna (1311) reaffirmed the denunciations of previous popes and councils, and then adds: "If any shall obstinately persist in the error of presuming to affirm that the taking of usury is not a sin, we decree that he shall be punished as a heretic."
There is no record of the repeal of any of these edicts.
The leaders of the Protestant reformation also denounced usury.
Luther was violent in his opposition, using the strongest language he could command. "Whoever eats up, robs and steals the nourishment of another, commits as great a murder, as he who carves a man or utterly undoes him. Such does a usurer, and he sits the while on his stool, when he ought rather to be hanging from the gallows."
Melancthon, Beza and others are accounted against usury.
The decisions of Ecclesiastical Councils were numerous and emphatic until the seventeenth century. Since that time interest taking has become