A clash between theory and practice?

It would be going much too far even to mention all the real and quasiexceptions to the general usury prohibition which were recognized in the Middle Ages™⁷ and which permitted trade and commerce to flourish.

The disputes and discussions clustering around the principle challenged the ingenuity of merchants and lawyers alike. Besides, the Church tolerated usury by Jews: excluded from agriculture, not allowed to own landed property, unable to join the guilds and thus become artisans or ordinary merchants, they were forced to take up the shadier business of moneylending/pawnbroking.¹⁰* Rejecting Christ as Saviour and doggedly refusing to accept the new law of the Gospel, often charged with wcll-poisonmg and other wicked acts, they were taken to be damned anyway. But special privileges were also granted to ^[892] ^{^[893] the montes,¹⁰⁹ financial institutions designed at first by the Italian city- states to boost their rather run-down public finances by way of forced government loans, yet, in the course of time also engaging in other financial and credit transactions — especially deposit banking.¹¹⁰ In these montes the great public banking corporations originated, of which the Casa di San Giorgio in Genoa eventually became the most important. Since the second half of the 15th century, even the Church started to establish and to run banks, though, of course, these institutions were not called banks but montes pietates (mountains of piety).¹¹¹ In view of all this, one may be inclined to wonder at the hypocrisy of Church and canon lawyers, or at least to deplore the deep ritt that seems to have existed between the ascetic theory behind the usury prohibition and the very mundane commercial activities which the canonists condoned.¹¹² But, in fact, they not only condoned them — by analysing and systematizing the law of usury for the first time, they actually provided a rational foundation for the dramatic growth of commercial and financial life during the Middle Ages;^[894] ^{^[895] and it is very likely that this was fully in accordance with contemporary Christian social theory. For the Western Church in the 12th century was no longer fundamentally otherworldly;}
"ir believed in the possibility of reconciling commercial activity with a Christian life.
-.. The secular activities (if those engaged in commercial enterprise were to be organized in ways that would redeem them from the sin ot avarice. The merchants were to form guilds that would have religious functions and would maintain.standards ot morality in commercial transactions.... Thus the social and economic activity ot merchants was not left outside the reach or moral issues. A social and economic morality was developed which purported to guide the souls ot merchants toward salvation. And that morality was embodied in law. Law was a bridge between mercantile activity and the salvation ot the soul.""^[896] ^{^[897] ^[898] ^[899] ^[900] ^[901] ^[902] This, incidentally, ties in with what C.S. Lewis has called "the undying paradox, the blessedly two-edged character of Christianity".^[903] ^{^[904]} Christianity is world-denying and world-affirming at the same time, and it is the latter by virtue of being the former: "Because we love something else more than this world, we love even this world better than those who know no other."¹'"
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Source: Zimmermann R.. The Law of Obligations. Roman Foundations of the Civilian Tradition. Juta & Co, Ltd,1992. — 1241 p.. 1992

A clash between theory and practice?

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