Usury in the middle ages

From Walsh, Adrian “The Morality of the Market and the Medieval Schoolmen,” Politics, Philosophy & Economics 2004; 3; 241-259

“Exploring the evils of usury exercised the minds of a great many medieval philosophers, writers and artists. Consider Dante’s Inferno. As Dante descends into the depths of Hell, he discovers usurers (along with sodomites) in the smallest and most terrifying ring (Round 3 of Circle VII) of the Inferno. Dante inquires as to the nature of the sins of the usurers and is told that their sins are classified as a kind of violence towards God because usury was an attack on the natural use for money given by God and it implied contempt for God’s bounty.
Dante’s views are typical of the moral condemnation of his society for those who made a living out of interest. The practice of usury was not only subject to moral disapprobation; theological and legal injunctions against the practice were in force during the period over much of Europe. In 1274 Gregory X, in the Council of Lyons, ordained that no community, corporation or individual should permit foreign usurers to hire houses, but that they should expel them from their territory; and the disobedient, if laymen, were to be castigated with ecclesiastical censures. In 1311 the Council of Vienne declared all secular legislation in favour of usury null and void, and branded as heresy the belief that usury was not sinful. Anti-usury laws, although subsequently subjected to numerous modifications, persisted across Europe for over 500 years until the time of the Napoleonic Code. After the Napoleonic Code had allowed the taking of interest, the Church too decided to abandon the old usury doctrine. It was quietly buried (although not revoked) in 1830, when the Church issued instructions to confessorsnot to disturb penitents who lent money at the legal rate of interest without any title other than the sanction of Civil Law."