okay let's go on to the last part which is the most difficult part of this uh section
talking about money lending money lending and the medieval church is where the shalock of course is
the the image he [ __ ] is the merchant of venice and shakespeare's famous play here
appropriately indicated with a red hat which was the badge that jews were required to wear in
venice at the time of the uh of the setting of this particular play so uh
the idea of money lending is uh heavily discouraged by the church specifically
uh one christian to another and charging interest uh if you look at deuteronomy chapter 23 verses
20 21 it says very clearly you shall not lend on interest to your brother interest of food or
money or anything on which interest can be charged you may charge interest to a foreigner but not to
your brother now there's a lot more to say about this in terms of jewish thought but basically
the way the rabbis understood this for centuries is that fellow jews are brothers and
non-jews are not brothers they are in the category of foreigners again there are some interesting
exceptions where there were some jewish thinkers who argued that the that christians were brothers
as well because they believed in the same god as the jews others disagreed but for the most part
this is the way it was understood that a jew was allowed to charge interest to a non-jew now
given that jews basically lived in a kind of binary society where there was only christians
and jews there are very very few minorities of any other religious denomination so the only people
who would be able to technically lend money on interest to christians if christians aren't doing
to each other is the jews so they had kind of like a monopoly on the entire possibility of of
money lending the the church tried to deal with this in some ways a fourth century thinker ambrose
argued that it's a very beautiful thing for christians to lend money and not charge interest
to each other kind of like a gemach kind of free loan society but it was uh you know hard to
encourage this because after all there's no profit i mean you have to be independently wealthy and
willing to risk your money to lend money without charging interest so it just it was not happening
and so money landing especially as the economy became more and more sophisticated it became
much more necessary to have the institution of credit flowing in society this is especially true
if you have an agricultural society where you have farmers who are cash poor they're not
actually bringing in coin but they've got to buy seed and they have to like wait a long time until
they can harvest so sometimes credit is the only way to bridge that period where they will not have
anything to pay for their goods and services for ultimately however the church decreed in the 12th
century and the so-called de [ __ ] gratiani also known as the law of gratian here's another on the
left by the way you see an illuminated manuscript that illustrates one of the many laws discussed
in the tikkaratan graziani actually has to do with whom may marry whom in terms of blood relations
but the law of gratian said full stop christians you can't charge each other interest
which means effectively jews are the only source of credit in medieval europe and so jews started
engaging in money lending again when we think about all the things we talked about
in the last two segments about the risks of agriculture the risks of commerce money
lending has a lot to speak about it guild membership was a hotly contested element and
frequently when jews would establish themselves in particular municipalities
the they had to negotiate the rights that they would have when they moved there
um and some some cities would simply um negotiate in advance a law did non tolerantes judeas that
jews were not allowed to settle there more likely because nobility tended to have a vested interest
in having jewish people live there they would negotiate that okay fine jews can move here but no
shoemakers okay jews cannot sell shoes or jews can sell shoes but only when they're ready made they
can't actually make them so guilds and uh various type of trade unions primitive trade unions often
uh restricted the tasks that jews can be involved in now we definitely did have christians who were
nevertheless interested in the kind of prophet that jews were involved in so the jews had a
monopoly but it was only de ure meaning according to the law the written law de facto they did have
to compete with christians and ultimately the the church would find a way around it uh specifically
the franciscans and that would be the end of the jewish monopoly although not necessarily the
end of jewish money lending for reasons we'll see in just a few minutes so what's going on
with usury which is kind of like the nasty word for monday lending the benefits are fantastic
it involves a high rate of profit the rate of interest charged was anywhere from 30 percent to
200 percent we're talking about loan shark rates it was very very expensive to borrow money and uh
so that meant that people who could afford to lend the money could make a massive amount of profit
it was an urban profession and jews as we have seen over and over again in the diaspora they
have gravitated to urban settings so this is you know something that that makes a lot of
sense if you're living like it's like you can have bankers hours you can simply say when you're going
to open ten to three and uh then you just let the customers come to you i mean it's it's a fantastic
possibility and uh it is portable it's the kind of thing where if you're dealing in cash you know
especially when you have lots of contacts through commercial ventures you can deposit money for safe
keeping you can exchange letters of credit and so on and it requires fairly minimal effort moreover
the jews were actually quite well uh prepared for this because they were literate they were numerate
um they they had this this great relationship with the king right the the uh cerve camareires where
if they're making money through money lending that means a really great you know flow of currency to
the king directly later on uh you know when we get to 18th century poland uh the king would realize
if it's so easy for the jews to make money then we want a bigger part of it and ultimately they would
take apart the very structure that held it together but that's hundreds of years later in the
period we're talking about now the risks however are also commensurate the biggest risk of course
is resentment because you know we all have credit cards and nobody likes getting a credit card bill
and when you look at the statement and you see okay i bought this i bought this and what
interest charge wow you know you feel really bad about it especially if you can't pay off
the balance down to zero every month you see that interest charge and every month you're saying wow
i'm paying so many dollars for nothing for stuff i bought a long time ago and all already you know
gone so there's a great deal of resentment this can come from the peasants um when you know they
may borrow small sums but they carry a you know an oppressive debt load and when peasants get too
upset then what happens is pogroms you have popular uprisings often against the will of
the king who is happy to see the jews engaged in usury and then bringing more funds back to them
but if it's too much then the king you know he can't control the peasants under these terms
the clergy are often resentful of this because it represents kind of like a a legal fictional
fictional go-around or a loophole to the law of gratian because the gravity clearly allows jews to
charge interest but you know who wants this kind of thing happening in society even though
it is economically necessary and the nobility and even the king however can show resentment because
it was not at all that uncommon for nobles and even kings to end up borrowing large sumps among
money from jewish populations and then when things don't go their way like for example if they're
trying to finance a border war or an expansion of some sort uh then it becomes much more expedient
to simply expel the jews and cancel their debts we see this happening frequently in medieval europe
england for example expelled their jews in 1290 over basically this issue where it was simply
easier to simply say okay do over and as we saw in france as we will see in france the jews will then
be invited back a generation later because when they expel the jews then they have no more source
of credit they need credit to keep their economy growing so then they invite the jews back they
end up borrowing a lot of money becomes too much they expel the jews and they enter into this cycle
once again so this is the kind of danger that is associated with uh money lending in this period so
the the relative wealth and power that are accumulated through money lending it can be quite
ephemeral because of the large-scale resentment that can be built up in the population later
on when we get to eastern europe uh in the next semester of these classes some of the elements of
this become even greater when alcohol is involved because in eastern europe jews frequently had
monopoly on the production of alcohol something called proper nazia and so people could drink on
a tab and then end up having you know a huge bill plus an interest charge on top of that you know
many of the uh the revolts you'll see in the 17th and 18th century in eastern europe have this at
the root the exploitative practices of some of the jewish communities that are are heavily resented
by their customers when they have to actually pay the bill for what they've purchased it's a very
difficult period definitely now how does this all come to end largely the italians wake up and say
they've got to get involved in this so in italy in the middle of the 15th century you have this
institution developed by the franciscan order of monks called the monte de pieta which means
the the mountains of piety and essentially what they do is they create their own loan societies
which have which operate a lot like modern credit unions or banks in fact this is where
credit unions and banks begin to get their ideas and and get started they charge interest
but it's small interest between 4 and 15 which is much more manageable and the purpose of this
interest is largely to cover the overhead of hiring staff to manage the funds and so on and
uh they lend to christians at a very low rate of interest but it is approved by the church uh first
you know temporarily and then towards the end of the 15th century formally approved by the church
because the overhead costs are not uh interest for a profit bearing uh idea they're really there
to just keep the system flowing now the demand for credit far outstrips the supply that the
monte de pieta are able to uh service but it still means that that the um the jewish monopoly has
been pierced that there is no now the church has officially sanctioned this type of banking there
is no reason why one would still have to go to a jew but the fact that the demand is still so
high far more than the amount of cash in the month of bieter are able to maintain it meant
that jewish money lending still continued uh right up until really the modern era but it tended to be
on a much smaller scale um you know like instead of lending to nobles jews were more likely to lend
to local peasants so that they could buy you know spoons and things like that um and uh there were a
few exceptional individuals these so-called court jews would really rise to power shortly after
the 15th century but for the most part jewish funding money landing was a much smaller affair
at this point and much more local if you were a typical christian say in the italian peninsula
chances are you would be more likely to do business with a jew who was much more local and
had much less strenuous demands for collateral but you did have the option especially if you
were borrowing larger sumps that the monte beaute de pieta would make more sense for you
so this is essentially how the monopoly was eliminated by the italian banking houses
still when we kind of reflect on the overall economic picture of the jews
the medieval period we can understand how in particular money lending was highly resented
and would feed a growing anti-semitic surge that is going to be the topic of next week lectures
that anti-semitic surge would ultimately overwhelm much of western europe forcing the jews to move
further to the east and it is to that subject that we will turn next week for now i want to
thank you very much for uh participating and i hope you have an excellent week
you