Disputation — Bontempi, Palladium Theologicum V · from Schola Thomistica
Disputation VI: On the Loan and Usury
I shall treat these two under a single title, since Usury is nothing other than the abuse of the Loan; of which the pages of both Testaments speak clearly; moreover, the Canons of Councils and the decrees of Pontiffs plainly condemn it. Yet Scholastics are not lacking who strive to purge so shameful a vice from every stain, and who rather cut up than examine the material of the most delicate consequence with empty little distinctions — men who have come to such rashness as to calumniate simple usuries as licit to laymen before Alexander III, although they were most expressly condemned in the Council of Nicaea, can. 8, as I shall say below.
De mutuo et Usura.
Haec duo uno titulo expediam, cum Usura nihil aliud sit, quam Mutui abusus; de quo utriusque testamenti pagina clare proloquitur; insuper Conciliorum Canones, ac Pontificum decreta plane eum damnant: Non tamen desunt Scholastici, qui ab omni labe tam turpe vitium purgare nituntur; ac materiam delicatissimae consequentiae inanibus distinctiunculis discerpunt potius quam discutiant, qui eo temeritatis deveneruut, ut simplices usuras laïcis licitas ante Alexandrum III. calumnient, cum tamen in Concilio Nicaeno can. 8. disertissime sint damnatae, ut infra dicam.
Within this disputation
- Question I: What a loan and usury are, and why usury is a sin
- Question II: Whether it is usury to lend so that, when I have need, you lend back to me, or buy from me at a just price
- Question III: Whether it is lawful to lend on the pact that the borrower confer an office or an ecclesiastical benefice
- Question IV: Whether it is usury to receive beyond the principal any other emolument whatever besides money
- Question V: Whether the lender can receive anything on account of risk and ceasing profit, and what
- Question VI: Whether it is lawful to lend wheat, or something else, with the pact that it be restored in the same measure, even if the price has risen at the time of restitution
- Question VII: Whether, and how, gain acquired from usury is to be restored
- Question VIII: Whether it is lawful to seek a loan from a usurer