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Usury in Christendom: The Mortal Sin that Was and Now is Not
Unforgettable revelations abound in this indispensable study of the rise of the Money Power.
Usury in Christendom provides the reader with a detailed understanding of how a den of thieves robbed the followers of Christ of their patrimony. It is grounded in an extensive study of rare and primary sources and represents a landmark revisionist history of how the breeders of money gained dominion over the West.
For most of the first 1500 years of Christianity usury, the lending of money at interest, was unanimously condemned by the Fathers of the Early Church, and by popes, councils and saints, as a damnable sin equivalent to robbery and even murder. Any interest on loans of money, not just exorbitant interest, was defined de fide as a grave transgression against God and man.
Hoffman confronts the reader with a startling datum: the overthrow of magisterial dogma and the approval of scripture-twisting heresy occurred inside the Church centuries before the Enlightenment and the dawn of the modern era, culminating in the overthrow of divine truth; an epochal act of nullification.
Usury in Christendom: The Mortal Sin that Was and Now is Not resurrects the suppressed biblical, patristic and medieval Catholic doctrine on interest on money, provides new information on the record of early Protestant resistance to the usury revolution, and the discernment, by Dante and other visionaries, of the sub-rosa connection between usury and a host of abominations that continue to plague us today.
Western civilization was profoundly disfigured by the ecclesiastic exculpation of the charging of interest on debt. The result has been a pursuit of usurious profit unconstrained by the Word of God, the dogma of His true Church, and the consensus patrum of fifteen centuries.
Usury in Christendom provides the reader with a detailed understanding of how a den of thieves robbed the followers of Christ of their patrimony. It is grounded in an extensive study of rare and primary sources and represents a landmark revisionist history of how the breeders of money gained dominion over the West.
For most of the first 1500 years of Christianity usury, the lending of money at interest, was unanimously condemned by the Fathers of the Early Church, and by popes, councils and saints, as a damnable sin equivalent to robbery and even murder. Any interest on loans of money, not just exorbitant interest, was defined de fide as a grave transgression against God and man.
Hoffman confronts the reader with a startling datum: the overthrow of magisterial dogma and the approval of scripture-twisting heresy occurred inside the Church centuries before the Enlightenment and the dawn of the modern era, culminating in the overthrow of divine truth; an epochal act of nullification.
Usury in Christendom: The Mortal Sin that Was and Now is Not resurrects the suppressed biblical, patristic and medieval Catholic doctrine on interest on money, provides new information on the record of early Protestant resistance to the usury revolution, and the discernment, by Dante and other visionaries, of the sub-rosa connection between usury and a host of abominations that continue to plague us today.
Western civilization was profoundly disfigured by the ecclesiastic exculpation of the charging of interest on debt. The result has been a pursuit of usurious profit unconstrained by the Word of God, the dogma of His true Church, and the consensus patrum of fifteen centuries.
416 pages, Paperback
First published November 15, 2012
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315 people want to read
About the author
Michael A. Hoffman II
13 books96 followersMichael A. Hoffman II is an independent scholar, a former reporter for the New York bureau of the Associated Press, and the author of ten books of radical history, journalism and literature.
He studied political science and history under Faiz Abu-Jaber at the State University of New York at Oswego.
He investigates political and occult crime by decoding what he calls twilight language.
He studied political science and history under Faiz Abu-Jaber at the State University of New York at Oswego.
He investigates political and occult crime by decoding what he calls twilight language.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
April 29, 2017
This is an exceptionally well researched book. Michael Hoffman writes about the rise of money power and usury. He talks about usury in religious doctrine, the early Protestant resistance to it and how humanity changed when the restraints on usury began to be lifted.During the Renaissance Italian bankers were giving large amounts of money to the Pope to ward off condemnation of usurious practices.Following the Reformation religious prohibitions of usury and interest began to crumble but moral prohibitions continued to exists.When the Church began to embrace the concept of capitalism the condemnations started to diminish-the Church unofficially recognized the needs of businesses and gradually capitalism became a driving force in the world.Hoffman is critical of the Catholic Church,he believes they tolerated the rise in Christian usury whereas the Protestant Church resisted & continued to regard it as a sin against humanity.
* Usury is the enemy’s weapon of choice as it keeps people too scared to speak out for fear of losing the thing that keeps them enslaved. The majority desire to live by bank credit in a debt based economy and nobody will stop the 1% elite because everyone shares in their covetousness ... which the Holy Bible outright calls idolatry.
* Usury is the enemy’s weapon of choice as it keeps people too scared to speak out for fear of losing the thing that keeps them enslaved. The majority desire to live by bank credit in a debt based economy and nobody will stop the 1% elite because everyone shares in their covetousness ... which the Holy Bible outright calls idolatry.
September 17, 2013
Hoffman demonstrates in the most comprehensive way that usury (charging interest) was universally outlawed by the Church for the first 1400 years of her life and forbidden in Christendom. It was widely viewed as THE sin, the greatest affront to God and neighbor one could possibly admit. He also points out that England in the time when usury was forbidden was one of the greatest periods of England's history, a time when a peasant had to work a mere fourteen weeks out of the year to provide for his family for that entire year.
The book misses out on its fifth star simply because of the formatting and citational methology he uses. In an era when professional layout can be done on your home computer there is no excuse for this sort of layout problems. Likewise, he does not cite all his quotations, which is annoying when you want to know where to find them. He does cite a number of them, just not all of them. Otherwise, a solid study of usury in christendom.
The book misses out on its fifth star simply because of the formatting and citational methology he uses. In an era when professional layout can be done on your home computer there is no excuse for this sort of layout problems. Likewise, he does not cite all his quotations, which is annoying when you want to know where to find them. He does cite a number of them, just not all of them. Otherwise, a solid study of usury in christendom.
June 15, 2016
Hoffman’s broad thesis is that the Catholic church practically ceased viewing usury as a mortal sin due to clever re-phrasings of the law. A corollary is that the Protestants did not begin usury (or capitalism). Many Protestants opposed it, and those who did support it used neo-Catholic arguments.
Hoffman’s narrative doesn’t appear to follow a noticeable pattern, but his argument is fairly clear: the church has uniformly condemned usury, defined as receiving extra on the loan. The key villains are the Medici and Fugger banking clans. And while later Popes would condemn worker exploitation, none undid the damage of Renaissance popes in making usury acceptable. And by the time of JPII and Benedict XVI, it became mandatory
The Argument Against Usury
(1) God is the supreme owner of land and leases it to men (Hoffman 30).
(2) The idea of just price is often ridiculed, but misunderstood. It does not exist within a vacuum. A just price cannot work in a society that uses interest (43).
(3) The Old Testament intended usury to be used as a weapon against the nokri, the Canaanite in the land. It was not to be used against the ger, the sojourner.
(4) Money is fungible, so it cannot reproduce artificially.
(5) God’s provision for man in nature is a presupposition against usury. “To make a claim to wealth that outstrips that provision...is to produce injustice” (105).
(6) When money becomes abstracted (from use), its usefulness becomes obscure.
(7) Profit can only come from nature’s goods, which requires discipline and patience.
(8) The Logic of Mutuum: in a mutuum loan, ownership actually passes from creditor to debtor, so to “receive a fee for this, I profit from what is yours, not mine. Therefore, the creditor sells nothing that is his, but only time, which is God’s” (99, emphasis added).
(9) In a modern day usurious system, “the worker is separated from the material means of production to be brought again into contact only by means of the credit system in which everything is capitalized” (333).
Pros
Hoffman’s case appears to be air-tight, if at times incomplete. He destroys the historiography of the ChesterBelloc school, which blames usury and capitalism on the Jew and Protestants. They never bother to investigate the Medici banking clan. Hoffman also gives a fine bibliography.
Cons
This book could have used a professional editor and formatter. Secondly, Hoffman isn’t consistent in how he cites sources. On one page he will give us a detailed source in Latin but elsewhere he will say, “St Basil said this” or King St. Alfred the Great said this, but not tell us where. Thirdly, while his argument is usually fine and polished, occasionally (Chapter 8) he rants and collapses a number of complex ethical discussions into a sentence or two.
Hoffman’s narrative doesn’t appear to follow a noticeable pattern, but his argument is fairly clear: the church has uniformly condemned usury, defined as receiving extra on the loan. The key villains are the Medici and Fugger banking clans. And while later Popes would condemn worker exploitation, none undid the damage of Renaissance popes in making usury acceptable. And by the time of JPII and Benedict XVI, it became mandatory
The Argument Against Usury
(1) God is the supreme owner of land and leases it to men (Hoffman 30).
(2) The idea of just price is often ridiculed, but misunderstood. It does not exist within a vacuum. A just price cannot work in a society that uses interest (43).
(3) The Old Testament intended usury to be used as a weapon against the nokri, the Canaanite in the land. It was not to be used against the ger, the sojourner.
(4) Money is fungible, so it cannot reproduce artificially.
(5) God’s provision for man in nature is a presupposition against usury. “To make a claim to wealth that outstrips that provision...is to produce injustice” (105).
(6) When money becomes abstracted (from use), its usefulness becomes obscure.
(7) Profit can only come from nature’s goods, which requires discipline and patience.
(8) The Logic of Mutuum: in a mutuum loan, ownership actually passes from creditor to debtor, so to “receive a fee for this, I profit from what is yours, not mine. Therefore, the creditor sells nothing that is his, but only time, which is God’s” (99, emphasis added).
(9) In a modern day usurious system, “the worker is separated from the material means of production to be brought again into contact only by means of the credit system in which everything is capitalized” (333).
Pros
Hoffman’s case appears to be air-tight, if at times incomplete. He destroys the historiography of the ChesterBelloc school, which blames usury and capitalism on the Jew and Protestants. They never bother to investigate the Medici banking clan. Hoffman also gives a fine bibliography.
Cons
This book could have used a professional editor and formatter. Secondly, Hoffman isn’t consistent in how he cites sources. On one page he will give us a detailed source in Latin but elsewhere he will say, “St Basil said this” or King St. Alfred the Great said this, but not tell us where. Thirdly, while his argument is usually fine and polished, occasionally (Chapter 8) he rants and collapses a number of complex ethical discussions into a sentence or two.
May 30, 2017
While clearly a well-researched book, it does leave a lot more questions in the mind. For instance, does the notion of usury being ANY loan of money that bears interest hold true? Zippy Catholic certainly does not appear to believe so, claiming that loans to corporations or governments are collateralized and therefore not usury. But then, how to explain the gap between the zeal of the Church in crushing any loans that appeared usurious for close to 1400 years? Was it a case of pure economic ignorance, and that once more complicated enterprises arose, there became a need for more clarity? But if the doctrine that usury is always wrong as stated in the Bible is true, what does that make attempts to be more "clear" other than dissembling?
It is true that money cannot beget more money, for it is naturally sterile. So in a banking system where there are only 100 tokens to go around, how does one make loans that require that more than 100 tokens exist, except to "create" more tokens from nothing, a God-like act? Isn't this what makes usury so execrable in the first place?
It is true that money cannot beget more money, for it is naturally sterile. So in a banking system where there are only 100 tokens to go around, how does one make loans that require that more than 100 tokens exist, except to "create" more tokens from nothing, a God-like act? Isn't this what makes usury so execrable in the first place?
April 17, 2015
Even if one is not religious it's good to know that there have been, historically, people in the Church who truly wanted an economy based on divine law (at least in this case, the same as NATURAL LAW). One cannot make something out of nothing. Simple as that.
Also good to know the standard history books, when it comes to the subject of usury, are little more than comic-book representations of reality.
Also good to know the standard history books, when it comes to the subject of usury, are little more than comic-book representations of reality.
March 24, 2023
One of America's banned authors who's words are so dangerous that the only place he is invited to speak at is a Nation of Islam conference. Here he gives us a history of charging interesting in lending money, aka renting money. This is a convoluted and difficult history, but this books makes it all kosher. Highly recommended!
January 18, 2020
Michael Hoffmann is wrong. Nowhere in the Bible is usury forbidden to Christians. Nowhere! It is not a mortal sin, nor has it ever been a mortal sin. The Bible only forbids usury to Hebrews, forbidding them to practice usury on other Hebrews. That's all. The early Catholic church was tricked into forbidding usury to Christians, thereby handing complete control of Christian finances over to the Hebrews for centuries, with disastrous consequences. Contrary to their claims, Islam also permits usury, simply by renaming it "commission".
Hoffmann is an excellent researcher and author, but in this book his basic premise is completely wrong, because he has blindly followed Catholic dogma and second-hand translations from the Latin Vulgate, instead of reading the Bible himself, translated from the original Greek and Hebrew by William Tyndale, especially the New Testament.
Hoffmann is an excellent researcher and author, but in this book his basic premise is completely wrong, because he has blindly followed Catholic dogma and second-hand translations from the Latin Vulgate, instead of reading the Bible himself, translated from the original Greek and Hebrew by William Tyndale, especially the New Testament.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews