The rich who were in a position to take advantage of the situation became the moneylenders when the increasing tax demands in the last declining days of the Empire crippled and eventually destroyed the peasant class by reducing tenant-farmers to serfs. By the 3rd century, acute currency problems in the Empire drove such banking into decline. Banking was of the small, back-street variety, run by the urban lower-middle class of petty shopkeepers. Investment was always regarded as a matter of seeking personal profit, often on a large scale. Mostly, it was undertaken by exceedingly rich men prepared to take on a high risk if the profit looked good interest rates were fixed privately and were almost entirely unrestricted by law. Moneylending during this period was largely a matter of private loans advanced to persons persistently in debt or temporarily so until harvest time. Monthly rates tended to range from simple fractions to 3–4 percent, perhaps because lenders used Roman numerals. They quoted them on a monthly basis, and the most common rates were multiples of twelve. The annual rates of interest on loans varied in the range of 4–12 percent, but when the interest rate was higher, it typically was not 15–16 percent but either 24 percent or 48 percent. Anybody that had any available liquid assets and wished to lend it out could easily do so. During the Principate period, most banking activities were conducted by private individuals who operated as large banking firms do today. Theological historian John Noonan argues that "the doctrine was enunciated by popes, expressed by three ecumenical councils, proclaimed by bishops, and taught unanimously by theologians." Roman Empire īanking during the Roman Empire was different from modern banking.
But the Hebrew took a different view of the matter. 5000 BC, if not earlier.Among the Mesopotamians, Hittites, Phoenicians and Egyptians, interest was legal and often fixed by the state. Food money in the shape of olives, dates, seeds or animals was lent out as early as c. Hence if you lent 'food money', or monetary tokens of any kind, it was legitimate to charge interest. These societies regarded inanimate matter as alive, like plants, animals and people, and capable of reproducing itself.
Most early religious systems in the ancient Near East, and the secular codes arising from them, did not forbid usury. Ĭertain negative historical renditions of usury carry with them social connotations of perceived "unjust" or "discriminatory" lending practices. Usury (in the original sense of any interest) was denounced by religious leaders and philosophers in the ancient world, including Moses, Plato, Aristotle, Cato, Cicero, Seneca, Aquinas, Gautama Buddha and Muhammad. 8 Avoidance mechanisms and interest-free lending.Religious prohibitions on usury are predicated upon the belief that charging interest on a loan is a sin. Though the Roman Empire eventually allowed loans with carefully restricted interest rates, the Catholic Church in medieval Europe, as well as the Reformed Churches, regarded the charging of interest at any rate as sinful (as well as charging a fee for the use of money, such as at a bureau de change). At times, many states from ancient Greece to ancient Rome have outlawed loans with any interest. Similar condemnations are found in religious texts from Buddhism, Judaism ( ribbit in Hebrew), Christianity, and Islam ( riba in Arabic).
During the Sutra period in India (7th to 2nd centuries BC) there were laws prohibiting the highest castes from practicing usury. In many historical societies including ancient Christian, Jewish, and Islamic societies, usury meant the charging of interest of any kind, and was considered wrong, or was made illegal. Someone who practices usury can be called a usurer, but in modern colloquial English may be called a loan shark. A loan may be considered usurious because of excessive or abusive interest rates or other factors defined by the laws of a state. The term may be used in a moral sense-condemning, taking advantage of others' misfortunes-or in a legal sense, where an interest rate is charged in excess of the maximum rate that is allowed by law. Usury ( / ˈ j uː ʒ ər i/) is the practice of making unethical or immoral monetary loans that unfairly enrich the lender. Of Usury, from Brant's Stultifera Navis ( Ship of Fools), 1494 woodcut attributed to Albrecht Dürer
0 kommentar(er)
