Usury
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Usury is the practice of making loans that are seen as unfairly enriching the lender. The term may be used in a moral sense—condemning taking advantage of others' misfortunes—or in a legal sense, wher
Of Usury, from Brant's Stultifera Navis (Ship of Fools), 1494; woodcut attributed to Albrecht Dürer
Christ Drives the Usurers Out of the Temple, a woodcut by Lucas Cranach the Elder in Passionary of Christ and Antichrist
St. Bernardino of Siena, treatise on contracts and usury (Tractatus de contractis et usuris), manuscript, 15th century
Magna Carta commands, "If any one has taken anything, whether much or little, by way of loan from Jews, and if he dies before that debt is paid, the debt shall not carry usury so long as the heir is under age, from whomsoever he may hold. And if that debt falls into our hands, we will take only the principal contained in the note."
The first-recorded Jews in England arrived after the Norman Conquest of the country by William the Conqueror in 1066, and the first written record of Jewish settlement in England dates from 1070. Afte
Usury
…of lending at usury?" Then Cato answered, "What do you think of murder?" In England, the departing Crusaders were joined by crowds of debtors in the massacres of Jews at London and York in 1189–1190. In 1275, Edward I of England passed the Statute of the Jewry which made usury illegal and linked it to blasphemy, in order to seize the assets of the…
One of two surviving Jewish houses, the Jew's House in Lincoln, immediately below Jew's Court
Clifford's Tower, where the Jews of York were killed in 1190
Edward I was the first English monarch to use antisemitism as an instrument of state policy.
Extract of the Statute of Jewry, c. 1275