RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Usury | Utenheim
exact usury or accept it should be left free to the creditors’ conscience; only the rate ought not to exceed four or five florins to the hundred; and the interest, again, ought not to be redeemable. Not that the question at large was thus by any means resolved, for many minds were still in doubt and unrest over the admissibility of interest in the shape of rent and income (cf. Instruktion und Befehlch darauff die Visitatores im Kurfiirstenthum Sachsen abgefertigt seyn, 1527; E. Sehling, Die evangelischen Kirchenordnungen, i. 142 sqq., Leipsic, 1902). Melanchthon also was not consistent in the matter of judicially defining the admissibility of taking interest, nor did he always adhere to the view that was first held regarding the absolute reprehensibleness of the said practise. Calvin, however, adopted a different standpoint. He gave utterance to his views on various occasions (as in Sermon no. 134, in CR, xxviii. 121), and also delivered a special reply to a formal inquiry addressed to him, wherein he allowed the taking of interest in seven contingencies (CR, x. 245 sqq.). Calvin’s views have since then been reflected by other Evangelical theologians, regarding the propriety of taking interest; as by Wilhelm Amasius in his work De conscientia et ejus jure vel casibus; by Spener, in his Theologische Bedenken, ii. 227 sqq. (4 vols., Halle, 1700-02); and in modern times by F. V. Reinhard, System der christlichen Moral, iii. 27 sqq. (5 vols., Wittenberg, 1788-1815); C. F. von Ammon, Handbuch der christlichen Sittenlehre, iii. 194 sqq. (8 vols., 2d ed., Erlangen, 1838); R. Rothe, Theologische Ethik, iii. § 1, p. 233 (Wittenberg, 1871). Indeed, even Roman Catholic authors reflect similar views (cf. B. Phillips, Lehrbuch des Kirchenrechts, p. 637, Regensburg, 1862: ‘‘ Forasmuch as the interest prohibitions in the canon law presuppose wholly different social conditions from those of the later age, they have ceased to be valid ”’).
The force of these reasons was the less to be withstood when supported by the rulings of the Roman law, the authority of which gained wider and wider recognition. There thus grew up a custom contra-
dictory to the canon law; transferring
5. Modern the usual 5-per-cent rate of interest Practise. common to rents and incomes to loans, with direct pledge of interest; and
also occasionally raising the rate to 6 per cent. Dating from the latter third of the sixteenth century, this custom was also legalized in the several German sovereignties and also by the terms of the final decree of the imperial diet of 1654. Thenceforward the notion of ‘“‘ usury ”’ in the sense of “ avarice and wickedness ’’ is no longer applied to the drawing of interest in general, but denotes illegal interest, especially that in excess of the legal rate. This alone is viewed as a properly penal transaction; whereas the likewise frequently interdicted practise of drawing interest on interest, or arrears of interest exceeding the principal itself, is accounted, under the civil law, as something merely impracticable. In the broad sense, usury also includes the purely artificial enhancement of the price of commodities in the general market. This practise moved the Reformers to open protest, Luther among them. The contemporary German imperial law has a more
circumscribed conception of usury. The same, or a similar practise, according to the laws of May 24, 1880, and June 19, 1893, occurs only where one takes advantage of the straitened circumstances, thoughtlessness, or inexperience of another, in the case of a loan, or postponement in settling an account due on demand, or some other legal transaction with reciprocal bearings, all tending to the economic ends of borrowing and lending, i.e., where the creditor contrives to extort and secure for himself or some intermediate third party such pecuniary profits as not only transcend the usual interest rate, but also reach glaring disproportion in comparison with the service rendered. Usury of this kind is requited with penal severity, and the transactions involved are null and void by terms of the civil code, § 188, division 2.
The judicial estimation of usury from the standpoints of Church and State has been divergent. And though the Evangelical church has rejected the inflexible attitude of the Church of Rome in this matter, still, the Evangelical church can not assent to the repeal of all usury laws. At all events, it may not desist from counseling the members of its communion respecting the duty laid upon them in the words of the Lord (Luke vi. 34, 35).