The Scholastic Analysis of Usury
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John Noonan's The Scholastic Analysis of Usury (1957) is:
"an admirably complete and fascinating study of one of the thorniest problems that ever set scholastic heads aching. How hard they must have ached is seen from the wide range of Mr. Noonan's material and his careful analysis of each intricate phase of the problem from the Church's seemingly absolute condemnation of ‘profit from a loan’ in the twelfth century down to Pius XII's high praise of the banking system as such in the twentieth. On their arrival the scholastics found usury under the severest strictures of the Church both in the dogmatic and disciplinary fields. They were confronted at the same time with pressures demanding some system of lending for profit as a requisite of growing economic life. There ensued ‘three hundred years of debate’(1150-1450), which the author treats in Part I of his book. During this period the scholastics developed their ‘natural law case against usury’ in support of the Church's dogmatic stand and on the basis of close, careful reasoning. But in deference to human needs involved in trade and commerce they also discerned various cases which, however nearly these might resemble usury itself, actually stood outside the ban.
Part II deals with the general revision of the usury theory and the final triumph of the triple contract in later scholastic thought. Cases exempted by the scholastics from the Church's condemnation are multiplied. Instances of reprobated usury tend to become the exception rather than, as formerly, the rule. In Part III we are shown the usury theory in modern times from three perspectives. The Calvinist ‘countertheory’ has swept away the entire scholastic analysis with all its carefully elucidated principles. Calvin made the individual Christian conscience the sole guide to the morality of profit-making on loans. Sin lies only in excess. The official Catholic teaching, on the other hand, reaffirms the Church's original condemnation, but at the same time recognizes the justice of certain titles to profit other than merely that of lending. In practice the Church allows the taking of interest at reasonable rates fixed by the civil law. The third perspective is an evaluation of the theories of a number of modern Catholic historians. The author interdicts, e.g., Hilaire Belloc's appeal to the scholastics against international banking, and of others against the capitalist system.”—Catholic Historical Review, 1959