Many historians believe, as do I, that the happiest period of history in the Christian West was during the High Middle Ages within the towns that had grown up most notably within Germany, Italy, France, and England.
Probably the most accessible chronicle of what life was like then may be found in Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales.”
At the centers of these towns were the Gothic cathedrals which were both spiritual and technological hubs. Characteristic of the economic life of the era was the fact that the Church had outlawed usury. This was the key to personal freedom.
The dividing line between that era and our own came into being around 1500, when the German Fugger family persuaded the Pope to begin to allow usury, a practice which quickly spread.
This practice assured that, gradually, all the wealth of society would inevitably accrue to the bankers, especially when they gained the privilege of creating paper money or book-entry credits “out of thin air” and then lending it at interest.
This was the greatest crime of the ages.
We need to remember that the Christian era began when Jesus made his last visit to Jerusalem by going to the Temple and throwing out the money lenders who had desecrated it.
The Temple symbolizes, of course, all human God-given life.
When usury became widespread after 1500, citizens gradually lost all their rights and their human sanctity when they became debtors to the money lenders and were legally mere chattel whose entire well-being, and even their lives (debtors prisons), were sacrificed to the bankers’ greed.
This was understood at the time. It’s what Shakespeare depicted in the “Merchant of Venice.” It’s what the Faust legends were about, with people now selling their souls to the devil as they ruined their fellow humans.
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