to the conclusion that it was a sin against justice. This
recognition of the essential injustice of usury marked a turning-point
in the history of the treatment of the subject; and Alexander III.
seems entitled to be designated the 'pioneer of its scientific
study.'[3] Innocent III. followed Alexander in the opinion that usury
was unjust in itself, and from his time forward there was but little
further disagreement upon the matter amongst the theologians.[4]

[Footnote 1: Cleary, _op. cit._, p. 64.]

[Footnote 2: _Ibid._]

[Footnote 3: Cleary, _op. cit._, p. 65.]

[Footnote 4: _Ibid._, p. 68.]

In 1274 Gregory X., in the Council of Lyons, ordained that no
community, corporation, or individual should permit foreign usurers to
hire houses, but that they should expel them from their territory;
and the disobedient, if prelates, were to have their lands put under
interdict, and, if laymen, to be visited by their ordinary with
ecclesiastical censures.[1] By a further canon he ordained that the
wills of usurers who did not make restitution should be invalid.[2]
This brought usury definitely within the jurisdiction of the
ecclesiastical courts.[3] In 1311 the Council of Vienne declared all
secular legislation in favour of usury null and void, and branded as
heresy the belief that usury was not sinful.[4] The precise extent and
interpretation of this decree have given rise to a considerable amount
of discussion,[5] which need not detain us here, because by that time
the whole question of usury had come under the treatment of the great
scholastic writers, whose teaching is more particularly the subject
matter of the present essay.

[Footnote 1: _Liber Sextus_, v. 5, 1.]

[Footnote 2: _Ibid._, c. 2.]

[Footnote 3: Ashley, _op. cit._, vol. i. pt. i. p. 150.]

[Footnote 4: _Clementinarum_, v. 5, 1.]

[Footnote 5: Cleary, _op. cit._, pp. 74-8.]

Even as late as the first half of the thirteenth century there was
no serious discussion of usury by the theologians. William of Paris,
Alexander of Hales, and Albertus Magnus simply pronounced it sinful
on account of the texts in the Old and New Testaments, which we have
quoted above.[1] It was Aquinas who really put the teaching on usury
upon the new foundation, which was destined to support it for so
many hundred years, and which even at the present day appeals to many
sympathetic and impartial inquirers. Mr. Lecky apologises for the
obscurity of his account of the argument o