“We despise the arts and languages,” he says, “but refuse to do without the foreign wares which are neither necessary nor profitable to us, but [the expenses of] which lay our very bones bare. Do we not thereby show ourselves to be true Germans, i.e. fools and beasts?”[242] God “has given us, like other nations, sufficient wool, hair, flax and everything else necessary for suitable and becoming clothing, but now men squander fortunes on silk, satin, cloth of gold and all sorts of foreign stuffs.… We could also do with less spices.” People might say he was trying to “put down the wholesale trade and commerce. But I do my duty. If things are not improved in the community, at least let whoever can amend.”[243]
“I cannot see that much in the way of good has ever come to a country through commerce.”[244]
He refused to follow the more luxurious mode of living which had become the rule in the towns as a result of trade, but insisted on leading the more simple life to which he had throughout been accustomed. For the good of the people, poverty or simplicity was on the whole more profitable than riches. “People say, and with truth, ‘It takes a strong man to bear prosperity,’ and ‘A man can endure many things but not good fortune.’ … If we have food and clothing let us esteem it enough. For the cities of the plain which God destroyed it would have been better, if, instead of abounding in wealth, everything had been of the dearest, and there had been less superfluity.”[245]—“What worse and more wanton can be conceived of than the mad mob and the yokels when they are gorged with food and have the reins in their hands.”[246]
Hence he took a “tolerable maintenance” as he expresses it, i.e. the mode of living suitable to a man’s state, as the basis of a fair wage. The question of wages must in the last instance, he thinks, depend on the question of maintenance. Luther, like Calvin, did not go any further in this matter. “Their conservative ideas saw in high wages only the demoralisation of the working classes.”[247]
Luther’s remarks on this subject “recall the words of Calvin, viz. that the people must always be kept in poverty in order that they may remain obedient.”[248]
According to his view “the price of goods was synonymous with their barter value expressed in money; money was the fixed, unchangeable standard of things; it never occurred to anyone that an alteration in the value of money might come, a mistake which led to much confusion. Again, the barter value of a commodity was its worth calculated on the cost of the material it contained and of the trouble and labour expended on its manufacture. This calculation excluded the subjective element, just as it ignored competition as a factor in the determining of prices.”[249] Thus, according to Luther, the merchant had merely to calculate “how many days he had spent in fetching and acquiring the goods, and how great had been the work and danger involved, for much labour and time ought to represent a higher and better wage”; he should in this “compare himself to the common day-labourer or working-man, see what he earns in a day, and calculate accordingly.” More than a “tolerable maintenance” was, however, to be avoided in commerce, and likewise all such profit “as might involve loss to another.”[250] It would have pleased him best had the authorities fixed the price of everything, but, owing to their untrustworthiness, this appeared to him scarcely to be hoped for. The principle: “I shall sell my goods as dear as I can,” he opposed with praiseworthy firmness; this was “to open door and window to hell.”[251] He also inveighed rightly and strongly against the artificial creation of scarcity. Here, too, we see that his ideas were simply those in vogue in the ranks from which he came.
“His economic views in many particulars display a retrograde tendency.”[252]—“In the history of economics he cannot be considered as either an original or a systematic thinker. We frequently find him adopting views which were current without seriously testing their truth or their grounds.… His exaggerations and inconsequence must be explained by the fact that he took but little interest in worldly business. His interpretation of things depended on his own point of view rather than on the actual nature of the case.”[253]
The worst of it is that his own “point of view” intruded itself far too often into his criticisms of social conditions.
Excessive regard for the Old-Testament enactments helped Luther to adopt a peculiar outlook on things social and ethical.
He says in praise of the Patriarchs: “They were devout and holy men who ruled well even among the heathen; now there is nothing like it.”[254] He often harks back to the social advantages of certain portions of the Jewish law, and expressly regrets that there were no princes who had the courage to take steps to reintroduce them for the benefit of mankind.
In 1524, under the influence of his Biblical studies, he wrote to Duke Johann Frederick of Saxony, praising the institution of tithes and even of fifths: “It would be a grand thing if, according to ancient usage, a tenth of all property were annually handed over to the authorities; this would be the most Godly interest possible.… Indeed it would be desirable to do away with all other taxes and impose on the people a payment of a fifth or sixth, as Joseph did in Egypt.”[255] At the same time he is quite aware that such wishes are impracticable, seeing that, “not the Mosaic, but the Imperial law is now accepted by the world and in use.”
Partly owing to the impossibility of a return to the Old Covenant, partly out of a spirit of contradiction to the new party, he opposed the fanatics’ demand that the Mosaic law should be introduced as near as possible entire, and the Imperial, Roman law abrogated as heathenish and the Papal, Canon law as anti-Christian. Duke Johann, the Elector’s brother, was soon half won over to these fantastic ideas by the Court preacher, Wolfgang Stein, but Luther and Melanchthon succeeded in making him change his mind.[256] The necessity Luther was under of opposing the Anabaptists here produced its fruits; his struggle with the fanatics preserved him from the consequences of his own personal preference for the social regulations of the Old Covenant.
In what difficulties his Old-Testament ideas on polygamy involved him the history of the bigamy of Philip of Hesse has already shown.[257] Had such ideas concerning marriage been realised in society the revolution in the social order would indeed have been great.
Luther’s esteem for the social laws of the Old Testament finds its best expression in his sermons on Genesis, which first saw the light in 1527.
He says, for instance, of the Jewish law of restitution and general settlement of affairs, in the Jubilee Year: “It is laid down in Moses that no one can sell a field in perpetuity but only until the Jubilee Year, and when this came each one recovered possession of his field or the property he had sold, and thus the lands remained in the family. There are also some other fine laws in the Books of Moses which well might be adopted, made use of and put in force.” He even wishes that the Imperial Government would take the lead in re-enacting them “for as long as is desired, but without compulsion.”[258]
His views on interest and usury were likewise influenced by his one-sided reading of certain Old- and New-Testament statements.
On the question of the lawfulness of charging interest Luther not only laid down no “new principles” which might have been of help for the future, but, on the contrary, he paved the way for serious difficulties. He was not to be moved from the traditional, mediæval standpoint which viewed the charging of any interest whatever on loans as something prohibited. His foe, Johann Eck, on the other hand, in a Disputation at Bologna, had defended the lawfulness of moderate interest.[259]
After having repeatedly attacked by word and pen usury and the charging of any interest[260]—led thereto, as he says, by the grievous abuses in the commercial and financial system, he published in 1539 his “An die Pfarherrn wider den Wucher zu predigen,” whence most of what follows has been taken. As it was written towards the end of his life, we may assume it to represent the result of his experience and the final statement of his convictions.
In this writing, after a sad outburst on the increase of usury in Germany, he begins his “warnings” by urging that “the people should be told firmly and plainly concerning lending and borrowing, and that when money is lent and a charge made or more taken back than was originally made over, this is usury, and as such is condemned by every law. Hence those are usurers who charge 5, or 6, or more on the hundred on the money they lend, and should be called idolatrous ministers of avarice or Mammon, nor can they be saved unless they do penance.… To lend is to give a man my money, property or belongings so that he may use them.… Just as one neighbour lends another a dish, a can, a bed, or clothes, and in the same way money, or money’s worth, in return for which I may not take anything.”[261]
The writer of these words, like so many others who, in his day and later, still adhered to the old canonical standpoint, failed to see, that, as things then were, to lend money was to surrender to the borrower a commodity which was already bringing in some return, and that, in consequence of this, the lender had a right to demand some indemnification. As this had not generally speaking been the case in the Middle Ages, the prohibition of charging interest was then a just one. Nevertheless, within certain limits, it was slowly becoming obsolete and, as the economic situation changed for that of modern times and money became more liquid, the more general did lending at interest become.
Luther was well aware that to lend at interest was already “usual” and even “common in all classes.”[262] It was also, as a Protestant contemporary complained in 1538, twice as prevalent in the Lutheran communities than among the Catholics.[263] Still Luther insists obstinately that, “it was a very idle objection, and one that any village sexton could dispose of when people pleaded the custom of the world contrary to the Word of God, or against what was right.… It is nothing new or strange that the world should be hopeless, accursed, damned; this it had always been and would ever remain. If you obey its behests, you also will go with it into the abyss of hell.”[264]
Though in his instructions to the pastors he condemns indiscriminately, as a “thief, robber and murderer,” everyone who charges interest, still he wants his teaching to be applied above all to the “great ogres in the world, who can never charge enough per cent.” “The sacrament and absolution” were to be denied them, and “when about to die they were to be left like the heathen and not granted Christian burial” unless they had first done penance. To the “small usurer it is true my sentence may sound terrible, I mean to such as take but five or six on the hundred.”[265]
All, however, whether the percentage they charge be small or great, he advises to bring their objections to him, or to some other minister, “or to a good lawyer,”[266] so as to learn the further reasons and particulars concerning the prohibition of receiving interest. Every pastor was to preach strongly and fearlessly on its general unlawfulness in order that he may not “go to the devil” with those of his flock who charge interest.
Not that Luther was very hopeful about the results of such preaching. “The whole world is full of usurers,” he said in 1542 in the Table-Talk, and to a friend who had asked him: “Why do not the princes punish such grievous usury and extortion?” Luther answers: “Surely, the princes and kings have other things to do; they have to feast, drink and hunt, and cannot attend to this.” “Things must soon come to a head and a great and unforeseen change take place! I hope, however, that the Last Day will soon make an end of it all.”[267]
As to his grounds for condemning interest, he declares in the same conversation: “Money is an unfruitful commodity which I cannot sell in such a way as to entitle me to a profit.” He is but re-echoing the axiom “Pecunia est sterilis,” etc., maintained all too long in learned Catholic circles. Hence, as he says in 1540, “Lending neither can nor ought to be a true trade or means of livelihood; nor do I believe the Emperor thinks so either.” Besides, “it is not enough in the sight of heaven to obey the laws of the Emperor.”[268] According to him God had positively forbidden in the Old Testament the charging of any interest, as contrary to the natural law and as oppressive and unlawful usury (Ex. xxii. 25; Lev. xxv. 36; Deut. xxiii. 19, etc.). In the New Testament Christ, so Luther thinks, solemnly confirmed the prohibition when He said in St. Matthew’s gospel: “Give to him that asketh thee and from him that would borrow of thee turn not away” (v. 42), and in St. Luke (vi. 35) still more emphatically: “Lend, hoping for nothing.”[269]
In the Old Law, however, the charging of interest was by no means absolutely forbidden to the Jews (Deut. xxiii. 19 f.), so that it could not be regarded as a thing repugnant to the natural law, though the Mosaic Code interdicted it among the Jews themselves. As for the New-Testament passages Luther had no right to infer any prohibition from them. Our Saviour, after speaking of offering the other cheek to the smiter, of giving also our cloak to him who would take away our coat, and of other instances of the exercise of extraordinary virtue, goes on to advise our lending without hope of return. But many understood this as a counsel, not as a command. Luther indeed says that thereby they were making nought of Christ’s doctrine. He insists that all these counsels were real commands, viz. commands to be ever ready to suffer injustice and to do good; the secular authorities were there to see that human society thereby suffered no harm. The Papists, however, and the scholastics looked upon these things in a different light. “The sophists had no reason for altering our Lord’s commands and for making out that they were ‘consilia’ as they term them.”[270] “They teach that Christ did not enjoin these things on all Christians, but only on the perfect, each one being free to keep them if he desires.” In this way the Papists do away with the doctrine of Christ; they thereby condemn, destroy and get rid of good works, whilst all the time accusing us of forbidding them; “hence it is that the world has got so full of monks, tonsures and Masses.”[271]—Yet, even if we take the words of Christ, as quoted, let us say, by St. Luke, and see in them a positive command, yet they would refer only to the social and economic conditions prevailing among the Jews at the time the words were spoken. According to certain commentators, moreover, the words have no reference to the question of interest, because, so they opine, “it was a question of relinquishing all claim not merely on the interest but on the capital itself.”[272]
The Jesuit theologians of the 16th and 17th centuries as a rule were careful to instance a number of cases in which the canonical prohibition of charging even a moderate rate of interest does not apply. They thus paved the way for the abrogation of the prohibition. Of this we have an instance in Iago Lainez, who in principle was strongly averse to the charging of interest. This theologian, who later became General of the Jesuits, when a preacher at the busy commercial city of Genoa, wrote (1553-1554) an essay on usury embodying the substance of his addresses to the merchants.[273] Lainez there points out that any damage accruing to the lender from the loan, and also the temporary absence of profit on it, constitutes a sufficient ground for demanding a moderate interest.[274] He also strongly insists that the lender, in compensation for his willingness to lend, may accept from the borrower a “voluntary” premium;[275] the lender, moreover, has a perfect right to safeguard himself by stipulating for a fine (pœna conventionalis) from the borrower should repayment be delayed. All this comes under the instances of “apparent usury,” which he enumerates: “Casus qui videntur usurarii et non sunt” (cap. 10).
Luther devotes no such prudent consideration to those exceptional cases. He was more inclined by nature harshly to vindicate the principles he had embraced than to seek how best to limit them in practice. “He did not take into account loans asked for, not from necessity, but for the purpose of making profit on the borrowed money”;[276] yet, after all, this was the very point on which the question turned in the early days of economic development. He discusses the lawfulness of a voluntary premium and comes to the conclusion that it is wrong. He scoffs at the lender, as a mere hypocrite, who argues: “The borrower is very thankful for such a loan and freely and without compulsion offers me 5, 6 or even 10 florins on the hundred.” “But even an adulteress and an adulterer,” says Luther in his usual vein, “are thankful and pleased with each other; a robber, too, does an assassin a great service when he helps him to commit highway robbery.” The borrower does the lender a similar criminal service and spiritual injury, for which no premium can make compensation.[277] As regards the case where the loan is not repaid at the specified time, Luther is, of course, of opinion that any real loss to the owner must be made good by the borrower. But now, he says, “they accept reimbursement for losses which they never suffered at all,” they simply calculate the interest on a loss which they may possibly suffer from not having back the money when the time comes for buying or paying. “In its efforts to make a certainty of what is uncertain, will not usury soon be the ruin of the world!”[278]
In the Table-Talk a friend, in 1542, raised an objection: If a man trades with the money lent him and makes 15 florins yearly, he must surely pay the lender something for this. Of this Luther, however, will not hear. “No, this is merely an accidental profit, and on accidentals no rule can be based.”[279] That the profit was “accidental” was, however, simply his theory.
In spite of all this Luther did make exceptions, though, in view of his rigid theory and reading of the Bible, it is difficult to see how he could justify them.
Thus, he is willing to allow usury in those cases where the charging of interest is “in reality a sort of work of mercy to the needy, who would otherwise have nothing, and where no great injury is done to another.” Thus, when “old people, poor widows or orphans, or other necessitous folk, who have learned no other way of making a living,” were only able to support themselves by lending out their money, in such cases the “lawyers might well seek to mitigate somewhat the severity of the law.” “Should an appeal be made to the ruler,” then the proverb “Necessity knows no law” might be quoted. “It might here serve to call to mind that the Emperor Justinian had permitted such mitigated usury [he had sanctioned the taking of 4, 6 or 8 per cent], and in such a case I am ready to agree and to answer for it before God, particularly in the case of needy persons and where usury is practised out of necessity or from charity. If, however, it was wanton, avaricious, unnecessary usury, merely for the purpose of trade and profit, then I would not agree”; even the Emperor himself could not make this legitimate; for it is not the laws of the Emperor which lead us to heaven, but the observance of the laws of God.[280]
It follows from this that even the so-called “titulus legis” found no favour in his sight in the case of actual money loans, for it is of this, not of “purchasable interest,” that he speaks in the writing to the pastors. A real, honest purchase, so he there says quite truly, is no usury.[281]
A remarkable deflection from his strict principles is to be found not only in the words just quoted but also in his letter to the town council of Erfurt sent in 1525 at the time of the rising in that town and the neighbourhood. The mutineers refused among other things to continue paying interest on the sums borrowed. For this refusal Luther censures them as rebels, and also refuses to hear of their “deducting the interest from the sum total” (i.e. the capital). He here vindicates the lenders as follows: “Did I wish yearly to spend some of the total amount I should naturally keep it by me. Why should I hand it over to another as though I were a child, and allow another to trade with it? Who can dispose of his money even at Erfurt in such a way that it shall be paid out to him yearly and bit by bit? This would really be asking too much.”[282]
Luther also relaxed his principles in favour of candidates for the office of preacher. When, in 1532, the widow of Wolfgang Jörger, an Austrian Governor, offered him 500 florins for stipends for “poor youths prosecuting their studies in Holy Scripture” at Wittenberg, at the same time asking him how to place it, he unhesitatingly replied that it should be lent out at interest; “I, together with Master Philip and other good friends and Masters, have thought this best because it is to be expended on such a good, useful and necessary work.” He suggested that the money “should be handed in at the Rathaus” at Nuremberg to Lazarus Spengler, syndic of that town; if this could not be, then he would have it “invested elsewhere.” Such “good works in Christ” are, he says, unfortunately not common amongst us “but rather the contrary, so that they leave the poor ministers to starve; the nobles as well as the peasants and the burghers are all of them more inclined to plunder than to help.”[283] Thus it was his desire to help the preachers that determined his action here.
A writer, who, as a rule, is disposed to depict Luther’s social ethics in a very favourable light, remarks: “When his attention was riveted on the abuses arising from the lending of money [and the charging of interest] he could see nothing but evil in the whole thing; on the other hand, if some good purpose was to be served by the money, he regarded this as morally quite justifiable.”[284] That Luther “was not always true to his theories,” and that he is far from displaying any “striking originality” in his economic views, cannot, according to this author, be called into question.[285]
A great change took place in Luther’s views concerning the buying of the right to receive a yearly interest, nor was the change an unfortunate one. He was induced to abandon his earlier standpoint that such purchase was wrong and to recognise, that, within certain limits, it could be perfectly lawful.
The nature of this sort of purchase, then very common, he himself explains in his clear and popular style: “If I have a hundred florins with which I might gain five, six or more florins a year by means of my labour, I can give them to another for investment in some fertile land in order that, not I, but he, may do business with them; hence I receive from him the five florins I might have made, and thus he sells me the interest, five florins per hundred, and I am the buyer and he the seller.”[286] It was an essential point in the arrangement that the money should be employed in an undertaking in some way really fruitful or profitable to the receiver of the capital, i.e. in real estate, which he could farm, or in some other industry; the debtor gave up the usufruct to the creditor together with the interest agreed upon, but was able to regain possession of it by repayment of the debt. The creditor, according to the original arrangement, was also to take his share in the fluctuations in profit, and not arbitrarily to demand back his capital.
At first Luther included such transactions among the “fig-leaves” behind which usury was wont to shelter itself; they were merely, so he declared in 1519 in his Larger Sermon on Usury, “a pretty sham and pretence by which a man can oppress others without sin and become rich without labour or trouble.”[287] In the writing “An den Adel” he even exclaimed: “The greatest misfortune of the German nation is undoubtedly the traffic in interest.… The devil invented it and the Pope, by sanctioning it, has wrought havoc throughout the world.”[288] It is quite true that the arrangement, being in no wise unjust, had received the conditional sanction of the Church and was widely prevalent in Christendom. Many abuses and acts of oppression had, indeed, crept into it, particularly with the general spread of the practice of charging interest on money loans, but they were not a necessary result of the transaction. Luther, in those earlier days, demanded that such “transactions should be utterly condemned and prevented for the future, regardless of the opposition of the Pope and all his infamous laws [to the condemnation], and though he might have erected his pious foundations on them.… In truth, the traffic in interest is a sign and a token that the world is sold into the devil’s slavery by grievous sins.”[289] Yet Luther himself allows the practice under certain conditions in the Larger Sermon on Usury published shortly before, from which it is evident that here he is merely voicing his detestation of the abuses, and probably, too, of the “Pope and his infamous laws.”
In fact his first pronouncements against the investing of money are all largely dictated by his hostility to the existing ecclesiastical government; “that churches, monasteries, altars, this and that,” should be founded and kept going by means of interest, is what chiefly arouses his ire. In 1519 he busies himself with the demolition of the objection brought forward by Catholics, who argued: “The churches and the clergy do this and have the right to do it because such money is devoted to the service of God.”
In his Larger Sermon on Usury he gives an instance where he is ready to allow transactions at interest, viz. “where both parties require their money and therefore cannot afford to lend it for nothing but are obliged to help themselves by means of bills of exchange. Provided the ghostly law be not infringed, then a percentage of four, five or six florins may be taken.”[290] Thus he here not only falls back on the “ghostly law,” but also deviates from the line he had formerly laid down. In fact we have throughout to deal more with stormy effusions than with a ripe, systematic discussion of the subject.
Later on, his general condemnations of the buying of interest-rights become less frequent.
He even wrote in 1524 to Duke Johann Frederick of Saxony: Since the Jewish tithes cannot be re-introduced, “it would be well to regulate everywhere the purchase of interest-rights, but to do away with them altogether would not be right since they might be legalised.”[291] As a condition for justifying the transaction he requires above all that no interest should be charged without “a definitely named and stated pledge,” for to charge on a mere money pledge would be usury. “What is sterile cannot pay interest.”[292] Further the right of cancelling the contract was to remain in the hands of the receiver of the capital. The interest once agreed upon was to be paid willingly. He himself relied on the practice and once asked: “If the interest applied to churches and schools were cut off, how would the ministers and schools be maintained?”[293]
With regard to the rate of interest allowable in his opinion, he says in his sermons on Matt. xviii. (about 1537): “We would readily agree to the paying of six or even of seven or eight on the hundred.”[294] As a reason he assigns the fact that “the properties have now risen so greatly in value,” a remark to which he again comes back in 1542 in his Table-Talk in order to justify his not finding even seven per cent excessive.[295] He thus arrives eventually at the conclusion of the canonists who, for certain good and just reasons, allowed a return of from seven to eight per cent.
In his “An die Pfarherrn” he took no account of such purchases but merely declared that he would find some other occasion “of saying something about this kind of usury”; at the same time a “fair, honest purchase is no usury.”[296]
All the more strongly in this writing, the tone of which is only surpassed by the attacks on the usury of the Jews contained in his last polemics, does he storm against the evils of that usury which was stifling Germany. The pastors and preachers were to “stick to the text,” where the Gospel forbids the taking of anything in return for loans.[297] That this will bring him into conflict with the existing custom he takes for granted. In his then mood of pessimistic defiance he was anxious that the preachers should boldly hurl at all the powers that be the words of that Bible which cannot lie: where evil is so rampant “God must intervene and make an end, as He did with Sodom, with the world at the Deluge, with Babylon, with Rome and such like cities, that were utterly destroyed. This is what we Germans are asking for, nor shall we cease to rage until people shall say: Germany was, just as we now say of Rome and of Babylon.”[298]
He nevertheless gives the preachers a valuable hint as to how they were to proceed in order to retain their peace of mind and get over difficulties. Here “it seems to me better … for the sake of your own peace and tranquillity, that you should send them to the lawyers whose duty and office it is to teach and to decide on such wretched, temporal, transitory, worldly matters, particularly when they [your questioners] are disposed to haggle about the Gospel text.”[299] “For this reason, according to our preaching, usury with all its sins should be left to the lawyers, for, unless they whose duty it is to guard the dam help in defending it, the petty obstacles we can set up will not keep back the flood.” But, after all, “the world cannot go on without usury, without avarice, without pride … otherwise the world would cease to be the world nor would the devil be the devil.”[300]
The difficulties which beset Luther’s attitude on the question of interest were in part of his own creation.
“In the question of commerce and the charging of interest,” says Julius Köstlin in his “Theologie Luthers,” “he displays, for all his acumen, an unmistakable lack of insight into the true value for social life of trade—particularly of that trade on a large scale with which we are here specially concerned—in spite of all the sins and vexations which it brings with it, or into the importance of loans at interest—something very different from loans to the poor—for the furthering of work and the development of the land.”[301]
With reference to what Köstlin here says it must, however, be again pointed out that Luther’s lack of insight may be explained to some extent “by the great change which was just then coming over the economic life of Germany.” It must also be added, that, in Luther’s case, the struggle against usury was in itself a courageous and deserving work, and, that, hand in hand with it, went those warm exhortations to charity which he knew so well how to combine with Christ’s Evangelical Counsels.
In his attack on the abuses connected with usury his indignation at the mischief, and his ardent longing to help the oppressed, frequently called forth impressive and heart-stirring words. Though, in what Luther said about usury and on the economic conditions of his day, we meet much that is vague, incorrect and passionate, yet, on the other hand, we also find some excellent hints and suggestions.[302]
It is notorious that the controversy regarding the lawfulness of interest, even of 5 per cent, on money loans, went on for a long time among theologians both Catholic and Protestant. The subject was also keenly debated among the 16th-century Jesuits. No theologian, however, succeeded in proving the sinfulness of the charging of a five per cent interest under the circumstances which then obtained in Germany. Attempts to have this generally prohibited under severe penalties were rejected by eminent Catholic theologians, for instance, in a memorandum of the Law and Divinity Faculties at Ingolstadt, dated August 2, 1580, which bore the signatures of all the professors.[303] On the Protestant side the contest led to disagreeable proceedings at Ratisbon, where, in 1588, five preachers, true to Luther’s injunctions, insisted firmly on the prohibition on theological grounds. They were expelled from the town by the magistrates, though this did not end the controversy.[304]
There was naturally no question at any time of enforcing the severe measures which Luther had advocated against those who charged interest; on the contrary the social disorders of the day promoted not merely the lending at moderate interest, but even actual usury of the worst character. When even Martin Bucer showed himself disposed to admit the lawfulness of taking twelve per cent interest George Lauterbecken, the Mansfeld councillor, wrote of him in his “Regentenbuch”: “What has become of the book Dr. Luther of blessed memory addressed to the ministers on the subject of usury, exhorting them most earnestly,” etc., etc.? Nobody now dreamt, so he complains, of putting in force the penalties decreed by Luther. “Where do we see in any of our countries which claim to be Evangelical anyone refused the Sacrament of the altar or Holy Baptism on account of usury? Where, agreeably to the Canons, are they forbidden to make a will? Where do we see one of them buried on the dungheap?”[305]