On Tobit

The prophetic book entitled Tobit has been read. Although Scripture has set out the virtues of the holy prophet fully for us, I think I should use a brief discourse before you to review his merits and works, so that what Scripture has arranged at length in the manner of a history we may take in more compactly, gathering the kinds of his virtues as in a kind of summary.

He was a just man, merciful, hospitable; and though endowed with this choir of virtues he underwent the hardship of captivity. He bore it humbly and patiently, grieving more over the common wrong than over his own, and not lamenting that the support of his virtues had done him no good, but rather judging that this disgrace had been inflicted on him as a lesser price than his sins deserved.

He brought on himself an edict that none of the children of the captivity should give burial to the dead; but the prohibition did not hold him back so much as it spurred him on, lest he seem to abandon a duty of piety out of fear of death; for the price of mercy was the penalty of death. Caught as guilty of such a ‘crime,’ he was at last, with difficulty, restored to his family through a friend, his property plundered, himself poor and an exile.

Again he busied himself with these duties, seeking a stranger with whom to share his food whenever there was any. So when he had come back weary from the work of burial and the means of a meal were set before him, he sent his son to look for a companion at table. While the guest was being fetched, news came of the remains of an unburied body, and he left the meal; he did not think it devout to take food himself while a lifeless body lay in public.

This was his daily work, and a great one; for if the law commands us to cover the naked who are living, how much more ought we to cover the dead! If we are accustomed to escort travellers on longer journeys, how much more those who have set out for that eternal home from which they will never return? “I,” says Job, “wept over everyone who was weak.” Who is weaker than one who has died, of whom Scripture says elsewhere: “Weep over the dead”? And Ecclesiastes says: “The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools in the house of feasting.” Nothing is more excellent than this duty: to bestow it on one who can no longer repay you, to protect a sharer of your nature from the birds, to protect him from the beasts. Wild animals are said to have shown this humane care to dead bodies; will human beings refuse it?

While the prophet, wearied by so holy a duty, was resting in his room, he fell into blindness from the white droppings falling from a sparrows’ nest. He did not groan in complaint or say: “Is this the reward for my labors?” He grieved more at being deprived of the means of his services than of his eyes, and he thought his blindness not a punishment but a hindrance. And when he was relieving their living by his wife’s wages, he took care that nothing stolen should enter his house. His wife had received a kid as wages; but he, consulting honesty more than his own sustenance, would not withhold good faith from the one to whom he owed his food. He had entrusted money to his neighbor, and in all his life, in such great need, he did not ask for it back. Only when he saw himself worn out and laid low by old age did he make it known to his son, not so much wishing to reclaim the deposit as anxious not to defraud his heir.

So in depositing his money rather than lending it at interest he kept the duty of a just man; for that lending by which interest is sought is evil. But that lending is not evil of which it is written: “Lend to your neighbor in the time of his need.” For David too says: “The just man shows mercy and lends.” That other lending is rightly accursed: to give money at interest, which the law forbids. Tobit shunned this, and he warned his son not to pass over the Lord’s command: to give alms from his substance, not to lend money at interest, not to turn his face from any poor man. One who gives such warnings condemns the interest of moneylending, from which many have made gain, and for many lending money has been a business. And indeed the saints forbade it.

The more serious an evil moneylending is, the more praiseworthy is the one who shuns it. Give money if you have it; let what lies idle with you benefit another. Give as if you will not get it back, so that, if it is returned, it counts as gain. One who does not return the money returns gratitude. If you are cheated of money, you acquire righteousness; for the just man is he who shows mercy and lends. If money is lost, mercy is gained; for it is written: “He who shows mercy lends to his neighbor.”

Many do not lend for fear of loss, being afraid of fraud, and this is what they usually reply to those who ask. To each of them it is said: “Lose money for the sake of a brother and a friend, and do not hide it under a stone to be lost. Put your treasure in the commandments of the Most High, and it will profit you more than gold.” But men’s ears have grown deaf to such saving precepts, and the rich above all have their ears stopped with the bronze of their money. While they count their money they do not hear the answers. As soon as someone, pressed by necessity or anxious to ransom his own whom a barbarian is selling as captives, begins to ask, the rich man at once turns away his face. He does not recognize their common nature, does not pity the humility of the suppliant, does not relieve his need, does not consider their common frailty. He stands unbending, head thrown back; he is not swayed by prayers, not moved by tears, not broken by wailing. He swears he has nothing, indeed that he himself is looking for a moneylender to meet his own needs. Why do you add an oath to your hardness and avarice? You are not cleared by perjury, but bound.

But when interest or a pledge is mentioned, then the moneylender lowers his brow and smiles; the man he had denied knowing before, he now recalls as if from a friendship of his father’s. He receives him with a kiss, calls him the pledge of an inherited affection, and tells him not to weep. “We will look at home,” he says, “to see whether we have any money. For your sake I will break up my father’s silver, which is finely wrought. It will be a great loss. What interest will make up the value of the inlaid work? But for a friend I will not shrink from the loss. When you pay me back, I will have it made again.” So before he gives, he hurries to get back, and he who says he is helping with the principal demands interest. “On the Kalends,” he says, “you will pay the interest; the principal, meanwhile, if you have nothing to repay it with, I will not ask for.” So, to give once, he harasses often, and makes sure the man is always in his debt. This is the art with which he handles the man. First he binds him with written bonds and ties him with the bonds of his own word. The money is counted out, liberty is made over; the poor wretch is released from a smaller debt and bound to a greater.

Such are your kindnesses, you rich: you give less and demand more. Such is your humanity, that you despoil even while you help. Even a poor man is fruitful for your gain. The needy man is a debtor of interest: under your compulsion he has something to repay, but nothing to spend. Merciful men indeed! The one whom others set free you make over to yourselves. He who lacks food pays interest. Is anything harsher? He seeks medicine, you offer poison; he begs for bread, you hold out a sword; he begs for freedom, you impose slavery; he prays for release, you tighten the knot of a hideous noose.

Holy David especially laments this injustice, saying: “I have seen iniquity and contradiction in the city.” And, he says, “usury and deceit have not departed from its streets.” And when he went on to speak of the betrayal of Judas, he put this first, either because the crime of moneylending was added, beyond the odium of sacrilege, to those who conspired in the Lord’s death, or because so great a sacrilege would be amply avenged by the usury of moneylending. Wicked moneylenders were those who gave money in order to kill the author of salvation; wicked also are these who give in order to kill the innocent. And that man too who took money as the betrayer, Judas, himself hanged himself with a noose. He thought Judas himself should be condemned with this curse, that the moneylender should search out his substance. For what the proscription of tyrants or the hand of robbers usually accomplishes, the wickedness of the moneylender alone regularly brings about. More learned men, however, think that the devil himself is compared to a moneylender, who overturns the goods of the soul and the patrimony of a precious mind by a kind of loan of usurious iniquity. So he catches by expense, so he entices with gold, so he entangles in guilt, so he demands the head in place of the treasure.

What is more unjust than you, who are not satisfied even with repayment of the principal? What is more unjust than you, who give money and bind a life and a patrimony? You take gold and silver as a pledge, and do you still call him a debtor who has entrusted more to you than he received from you? You claim to be creditors, though you owe more; you, I say, call yourselves creditors, who trusted not a man but a pledge.

Rightly is what you give called faenus, “interest”: it is as cheap and worthless as faenum, hay. What is owed you call the sors, the “lot.” And indeed, as in a funeral urn, the wretched lot is shaken, to be paid off by the punishment of a debtor about to perish. The defendants stand pale awaiting the fall of the lot. Those for whose condemnation a lot is drawn do not tremble so; those dejected and anxious ones whose captivity hangs on the fall of the lot are not so afraid. For there one man’s captivity is decreed, here that of many. And perhaps it is called the lot because patrimonies are at stake, turning over under this lot. A great and memorable kindness of God is proclaimed especially by the prophet’s mouth, which he conferred on the fathers: that he set them free from usuries and iniquities. And he says aptly, “from usuries he set them free,” because usuries bring slavery; as if to say: he rescued them from the chain of slavery and restored them to liberty.

A grievous term is that of “debtors.” Sins are called debts, and criminals are also called debtors; for these too, like those, are judged on a capital charge. Faults, however, have a difference of names as of deeds; debts, though of differing amounts, have one name, one burden, one danger. So the unhappy man who asks for a loan of money does not know what he is asking; he does not know what he is receiving.

The moneylender’s money does not know how to stay long in one place; it is accustomed to pass through many hands. It cannot be held in one purse; it wants to be turned over and counted; it requires use, so as to acquire usury. It is a kind of tide of the sea, not a harvest. Money never rests. It slips away as if dashed on a rock: so it strikes the lap of the debtor and at once slips back to where it came from. It comes with a murmur and returns with a groan. Yet often the sea lies calm under the winds, but the wave of interest is always tossed. It drowns the shipwrecked, spits them out naked, strips the clothed, leaves them unburied. So you ask for a coin and take on a shipwreck. On one side Charybdis roars around you, on the other the Sirens, who, as the fables tell, by a show of pleasure and the sweetness of their song lured men into hidden shoals and cheated them of the hope and desire of returning home.

At once sellers of perfume and of various spices rush in like hounds caught by the keen scent of roaming prey: hunters, fishermen, fowlers, innkeepers too who mix water with the wine and loudly praise the nobility of its ancient stock, its country, and its vintage. Parasites suddenly crowd round and greet the man they used to despise; they escort him, invite him to merriment, urge him to spend, saying: “Come, let us enjoy the good things that exist, and let us use the creation as in youth, eagerly. Let us fill ourselves with costly wine and perfumes, and let not the flower of the time pass us by. Let us crown ourselves with roses before they wither. Let there be no meadow which our luxury does not pass through; everywhere let us leave signs of our merriment, for this is our portion and this our lot.”

And truly their whole lot has been spent, while you remain without a lot of good things. Scripture did not show you lots of that kind; it is not among such lots that holy David says we should sleep, when he says: “If you sleep among the middle of the lots.” For if you had slept in the middle of those lots, that is, of the Old and New Testaments, the desire for money would not have plunged you into the abyss of the worst moneylending; rather, the grace of spiritual faith would have given you silver and fashioned you into the likeness of gold by the instruction of divine wisdom. Indeed, if we have set down one testimony of divine Scripture and turned away from that luxurious banquet, surely this man too could have been saved, had he clung to the heavenly oracles.

Let us nevertheless return to the banquet, not to taste its dishes but to show others that they are to be avoided. The table is loaded with foreign and exquisite foods; gleaming servants are brought in, bought at a great price and fed at greater expense; the drinking goes on into the night; the day closes with the banquet and gives out before the drunkenness does. He rises full of wine, empty of wealth; he sleeps until daylight and on waking thinks it was a dream. For just as in sleep a man seems to himself suddenly rich from poor, so he is suddenly poor from rich. Meanwhile, while the money flows away, the interest overflows. Time diminishes, the interest grows; the treasure is emptied, the principal is heaped up. Little by little the guests withdraw; the sureties gather. In the morning the moneylender knocks at the doors, complains that the appointed days of payment have passed, assails him with insults while awake, rouses him from sleep. No night is quiet, no day pleasant, no sun cheerful. Little by little the gilded and silk garments are taken off and sold at half price. With tears the wife, now sadder, lays aside her ornaments, bought dear and to be sold cheap. The slaves who waited at table are put up at auction, and, badly trained, they put buyers off. The money is offered to the creditor: “This,” he says, “barely pays the interest; you owe the principal.”

His patrimony exhausted and the interest reduced, he goes back still liable for the principal; he receives a respite more grim than a truce in war, as though he must fight again in two days. For in war victory is uncertain, here poverty is certain; there a man covers himself with a shield, here he goes to meet the foe naked; there a breastplate encloses his chest, here he is wholly enclosed in prison; there he loads his hands with weapons and arms them with arrows, here he offers them, empty of money, to be bound with chains. Often both are led off captive: the one has the fortune of war to blame, the other has no one to blame but himself. Nothing is more unbearable than misery that cannot be excused. Conscience makes the weight of the injury bitterer.

Then he takes stock with himself, then he remembers the Scriptures, then he says: “Was it not written for me: ‘Drink water from your own vessels and from the springs of your own wells’? What had I to do with the moneylender’s well, where even the water is shut in? Vegetables with security were sweeter than a feast got from another’s money with anxiety. I should not have sought what belonged to others. Then, when I had fallen into debt, I should have sought the remedy from my own springs. There were smaller vessels at home. Better to lack servants than food, better to put my clothing up for sale than to make over my liberty. What good was it that I was ashamed to make my poverty public? See, another has made it public.”

“I did not want to sell my nurses; see, another is assigning them by judgment.” This reflection comes late. You should have feared for your own things when you took what belonged to others; you should have applied help when the first wounds were spreading. It would have been better at the start to cut expenses and to relieve the necessity of debt by the straits of your household than, enriched for an hour with others’ goods, to be stripped afterwards even of your own.

We blame the debtor for having acted too imprudently; but nothing is more wicked than the moneylenders, who reckon others’ losses their gain and count as their own loss whatever others possess. They hunt for new heirs; through their agents they spy out rich young men; they attach themselves to them, pretending a friendship from father’s and grandfather’s time; they want to learn their household needs. If they find some occasion, they reproach their modesty and chide their shyness for not having hoped and presumed on them earlier. But if they come upon no snares of any necessity, they weave tales: they say a fine estate is for sale, a spacious house; they pile up its yields of produce, exaggerate its annual returns, and urge him to buy. They do the same, praising costly garments and fine necklaces. When he says he has no money, they press their own on him, saying: “Use it as your own;

from the produce of the property you buy you will multiply the price and repay the debt.” They hold out others’ farms to the young man in order to strip him of his own. They spread their nets; as soon as he has entered the ground ringed by the hunters’ toils, they drive him into the nets of bonds and the snares of interest. They ask that his grandfather’s country house, his father’s tomb, be pledged to them. A day is set for payment; the agreement is overlooked while payment can be put off. When they have made him secure enough, they suddenly fall on him and press harder; when he makes excuses they bear down on him, saying: “You have your estates, we do not have our money. We gave gold, we hold wood. The profits of the produce come to you; nothing accrues to us of the money. Your excuse is idle; at least let the bond be renewed.”

And so, while the young man at first thinks that nothing of his clothing or even of his possessions need be sold, or asks for a delay in doing so, the interest is added to the principal and the monthly hundredth piles up. Now he begins to sigh, now to recognize his trouble. Day and night he thinks of the interest; whatever he meets he takes for the moneylender; whatever creaks, he seems to hear the moneylender’s voice. If you have it, why do you not pay? If you do not have it, why do you add evil to evil and seek a remedy from the wound? Why do you endure the moneylender’s siege every day and dread the storming? It is an old saying: “When the moneylender and the debtor meet, the Lord looks upon them both.” The one seeks his prey like a dog; the other, like prey in the open, turns aside. The one like a lion seeks whom he may devour; the other like a young bullock dreads the robber’s attack. The one like a hawk seeks to seize a swan with his talons; the other like a goose or a coot prefers to throw himself over cliffs or plunge into the depths rather than endure this hawk of human form. Why do you flee daily? Even if the moneylender does not meet you, want meets you like a good runner. So the Lord sees both, the moneylender and the debtor; he watches both as they meet, a witness of the one’s iniquity and the other’s injury; he condemns the one’s avarice, the other’s folly. The one counts every step of the debtor and lies in wait for his turnings; the other at once hides his head behind the columns, for a debtor has no standing. On the fingers of both the reckoning of interest is gone over again and again. Equal care, but unequal pull: the one rejoices at the growth of interest, the other is crushed by the pile of debt; the one counts his gains, the other his hardships.

Why do you flee a man whom you could have had no need to fear? Why do you flee, or how long will you flee? If anyone knocks at night, you think it is the moneylender: under the bed at once! If you sense someone suddenly coming in, you leap outside. A dog barks, and your heart pounds, sweat pours out, panting shakes you; you look for a lie to put off the moneylender, and when you have got a delay you rejoice. The moneylender pretends to be burdened by your ruin, but he grants it gladly: like a hunter who has ringed in a beast, he is sure of his prey. You kiss his head, embrace his knees, and like a stag struck by a poisoned arrow you go on a little and at last fall, overcome by the poison; or like a fish pierced by a trident, wherever it flees it carries its wound. And indeed that fish swallows death in the bait; it gulps the hook while seeking food, but still it does not see the hook, which the morsel covers. You see the hook and swallow it. Your hook is the creditor’s interest; you devour the hook and the worm always gnaws at you. It is the bait itself that deceives. And so the food of interest is of no use to you, and the hook serves only to wound. Or do you not know that one once caught in a noose tightens it the more on himself if he flees, and one caught in the nets pulls the nets down on himself the more by fleeing? You flee through the streets, since you cannot be safe within your walls. The moneylender finds you when he wishes. At last, when you have filled up the time, he rushes in like a wolf at night, does not let you sleep, and at daybreak drags you into public or forces you to sign the deeds of sale. To escape the loss of face, you sign at once, ready to sell your grandfather’s tomb, sparing your father’s, of course, so that some cover of decency may be kept. The hungry soil is bought; the complaint is thrown at him that he has sold barren land and loaded the seller with expenses, and the losses of the present are added to the losses of the former time. Soon even the lands that were praised are sold, and what is brought in is no longer the means of farming but chains.

Still, when he looks for sureties, a respite is granted him, not so that he may find a way to freedom, but so that he may add a partner in slavery to share his misery. But what help can the addition of another’s calamity bring? Now his friends too flee, his table companions do not recognize him; he himself shuns the sight of everyone, and as a boxer dodges the various blows of his opponents, so he avoids meeting respectable men, and anxious lest he run into anyone, he goes out with a watchful eye. He returns ready for chains, returns wishing for death, thinking that, if he died, it would bring him a respite. He returns, wretchedly condemning himself for not having shunned another’s money and for having bound himself by the moneylender’s bronze.

O how many wretches have others’ goods made! “What have you to do,” he says, “with drinking the water of Gihon?” What, I say, have you to do with drinking the moneylender’s cup? “Many,” someone says, “have borrowed for a time, met their needs, and repaid the money.” And how many have strangled themselves because of interest? You consider those, you do not count these. You remember that some escaped; you do not remember that some perished. You reckon the coins repaid; you do not count the nooses sought, which many, too modest to bear insult or too frail to bear injury, have chosen by seeking death rather than the disgrace of so shameful an agreement, fearing the reproach of life more than the punishment of death.

I myself have seen a pitiable sight: children led to auction for a father’s debt, held as heirs of his calamity though they had no share in his inheritance, and the creditor not blushing at so monstrous a crime. He presses, urges, claims them. “Raised on my money,” he says, “let them acknowledge slavery in return for their keep; let them undergo bidding in return for the expense. Let the spear be raised over the price of each one.” Not without reason is the auction spear raised where a head is sought; not without reason does it come to auction where the lot is demanded. This is the moneylender’s inhumanity, this the debtor’s folly: that from the children to whom he leaves no money he takes away freedom; instead of a will he leaves a bond; instead of the profit of an inheritance, a contract of obligation. What does Scripture’s curse of a father upon his children mean, where there is no offense of impious sin? Or can any curse be harsher, any slavery heavier? And the dead man often has this advantage after death, that he does not see the miseries of his children.

Often a father himself sells his children by the authority of begetting, though not with the voice of love, and drags the poor things to auction with shamefaced look, saying: “Pay, children, the cost of my gluttony; pay the price of your father’s table. Vomit up what you did not devour, give back what you did not receive; you are the better for this, that by your own price you redeem your father, by your own slavery you buy your father’s freedom.”

Suppose someone who can help comes forward. Who could fill such a Charybdis, who could understand the moneylender’s accounts, who could satisfy his avarice? What price will he not inflate when he sees a redeemer? For he feeds not so much on his own gain as on another’s loss. True indeed, true is the divine sentence, as God’s own. When he was angry at the impiety of the Jewish people because it went after foreign gods, he said: “To which moneylender have I sold you?” For one who has been bound to a moneylender is sold, and sold not at one price but at a daily price; he is sold not with a limit but with a lasting increase. There is a new auction of interest every month, a new sale under daily bidding. Whoever offers more always drags him off; he is knocked down as merchandise, never valued as one already sold. Great, then, is the force of the heavenly sentence. The Lord did not think it enough to say: “To whom have I sold you?” He added: “to a moneylender.” Offended, he could find nothing harsher with which to punish the faithless. Forsaken, he remonstrates with them for fleeing the author of salvation, as if the Lord had sold them to some moneylender, a penalty fit for one who abandons the Lord. Slaves have something to fear more than the penalties of prison and chains; free men have something to dread for their carelessness of freedom.

Notice at the same time that moneylending has been judged a cause of transgression, since one who could bind himself to a moneylender easily departs from the Lord; for moneylending is the root of lying, the cause of faithlessness. “I did not sell you,” he says, “but you were sold by your sins.” So one who binds himself to a moneylender sells himself, and what is worse, sells himself not for bronze but for guilt.

Who is this moneylender of sin but the devil, from whom Eve borrowed sin and so put the whole human race in debt with the interest of a liable inheritance? Indeed, like a wicked moneylender he held the bond which the Lord afterwards blotted out with his own blood. For what had been written in the letters of death had to be dissolved by death. So the devil is a moneylender. Indeed, he showed the Savior his riches, saying: “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” But the Lord, the payer of others’ debts, owed him nothing, he who could say: “Behold, the prince of this world comes and finds nothing of his in me.” He owed nothing, but he paid for all, as he himself testifies, saying: “What I did not steal, I then paid back.”

How does the malice of this prince of the world differ? The moneylender binds the head with money, holds the hand, draws the lot, demands the hundredth. O sad name from a sweet one! The Lord set free the hundredth sheep (that hundredth is of salvation, this one of death), and good ground yields a hundredfold fruit. Woe to those who say that what is bitter is sweet and what is sweet bitter! What is more bitter than usury, what sweeter than grace? Should they not, by the very word with which they name the hundredth, call to mind the Redeemer, who came to save the hundredth sheep, not to destroy it?

Who is a harsher exactor? And this too is a sad name. Indeed the Lord says: “My people, your exactors cheat you”; and in the Gospel you have: “While you are going with your adversary to the magistrate, make an effort to be freed from him, lest he bring you to the judge, and the judge hand you over to the exactor, and the exactor put you in prison.” Recognize who this exactor is, who exacts even the last farthing. And the same man calls himself a creditor, and even in this name he commits fraud, like one who smears a cup of poison with honey, so that death may lie hidden under a pleasant smell and the smeared rim of the cup may conceal the force of the fraud. The creditor puts forward his name as though he trusted, yet he is as one who does not trust, to whom the trusting man gives a pledge.

How often have I seen the dead held by moneylenders as a pledge and burial refused while interest was demanded! I gladly agreed with them that they should bind their debtor, so that, with him taken, the surety might go free; for these are the laws of moneylending. So I said: “Hold your defendant, and so that he cannot slip away from you, take him home, shut him in your room, you who are harsher than executioners; for the one you hold the prison does not receive, the exactor releases. The prison lets go those guilty of sins after death; you shut them up. By the severity of the laws the dead man is released; by you he is held. Surely this man is now said to have fulfilled his lot. Still, I do not begrudge you keeping your pledge. There is no difference between funeral and interest, nothing between death and the lot: usurious interest sounds, yes sounds, the funeral wail. Now truly he whom you are suing has suffered loss of his head; yet bind him with stronger bonds, so that he does not fail to feel your chains. The debtor is hard and stiff, and one who no longer knows how to blush. One thing indeed you need not fear: that he will ask for food.” So I ordered

the body to be lifted and the funeral procession to be led to the moneylender’s house; but from there too sounds of wailing such as this rang out from those shut in. There too you would have believed there was a funeral, there you would have thought the dead were mourned; nor was the impression false, except that it was clear more were going to die there. Overcome by the custom of religion (for elsewhere even such pledges are said to be accepted), the moneylender asked that the remains be carried to the place of burial. Only then did I see humane moneylenders. I pretended to be put out; yet, mindful of their humanity, I took care that they should not complain afterwards that they had been cheated, until, putting their own necks under the bier, they themselves carried the dead man to the tomb, weeping with deeper grief for the funeral of their money.

Hear another thing no less bitter. These men watch the gatherings of gamblers and judge the misfortune of the loser to be their own advantage. They stand surety for each one. At first chance plays out various outcomes; victory often passes to different players, and its rewards and misery change in turn. All are beaten and all win; the moneylender alone gains. With the others the name of having won is empty; with the moneylender alone is the fruit, not yearly but momentary. They alone make profit from the loss of all; to them alone belongs the interest of the victory. You may see the rest suddenly needy, suddenly rich, then stripped, changing their condition with each throw. Their life turns like a die; their fortune rolls on the board; play is made of danger, and danger of play; as many stakes, so many proscriptions. The shouting of those applauding, the weeping of the despoiled, the groaning of the lamenting. Among them the creditor sits like a tyrant, condemning each by a capital lot; he brandishes the spears of auction, and holds a deathly auction of the spoils of each. Some he makes over to proscription, others to slavery: not so many were killed under tyrants. I would more rightly call this a gamble of life than of money; what is valid for ever is carried off in a moment. Drunkenness judges, and no one appeals. Gambling too has its laws, which the rights of the forum do not undo. If you can believe it, one who thinks he should resist is branded with infamy, and the sentence of infamous men brands a disgrace more heavily than a judicial censure; for those condemned before the judge are glorious among them, while those condemned among them are criminals before the judge too. Moses established a noble court of elders; yet they judged the lighter matters, and were accustomed to reserve the weighty word, that is, the more important cases, for Moses’ judgment. Here it is said: “The council of gamblers has judged,” and the power of gamblers is feared more than that of lions. Among these wild beasts you live and move, moneylender; from these beasts you snatch their food; you are thought fouler than they, and you are feared as crueller than they.

They say that the peoples of the Huns make war on all nations, yet are subject to moneylenders; and though they live without laws, they obey the laws of gambling alone. They play dice under arms, carry dice together with weapons, and more of them perish by their own throws than by the enemy’s. In their own victory they become captives and suffer the plundering of their own people, which they do not know how to suffer from an enemy. For this reason they never lay aside the pursuit of war: when the loser at dice has lost the whole gift of his plunder, he seeks the means to play by the peril of fighting. Often they are carried away with such passion that, when the loser has handed over his weapons, the only things they value highly, he stakes his life on one throw of the dice and makes himself over to the power of the winner or the moneylender. Indeed it is established that one of them, known even to the Roman emperor for his loyalty, paid with the punishment of a death he was ordered to suffer the price of the slavery he had brought on himself, beaten by such a lot. So the moneylender presses even the necks of the Huns and drives them onto the sword; he presses the barbarians by the terror of his cruelty.

What is fouler than one who lends today and demands it back tomorrow? “And such a man,” it says, “is hateful.” The offer is indeed alluring, but the exaction is monstrous. Indeed the very kindness of the offer makes the cruelty of the exaction. He brings out money; he demands hypothecs and stores them in his storehouses. One sum of money is given by moneylenders, and how many are exacted from debtors! What names they have made for themselves! A coin is given: it is called interest; it is called the lot, it is called the head; it is written as debt. This monstrous prodigy of many heads makes a manifold exaction: he calls it a contract, he names it a bond, hypothecs.

he demands; he seizes a pledge, calls it a trust; he asserts an obligation, proclaims interest, praises the hundredths. The moneylender’s money is a kind of viper, which brings forth such great evils. Yet the viper, fruitful for punishment, its womb dragged out, is burst by its own offspring and by its mother’s death teaches that the brood does not fall short of the mother. For as soon as they begin to be serpents they tear her apart with their bites. There, where the poison is born, it is first proved. But the moneylender’s money conceives all its evils: it gives birth, it nourishes, and it grows the more in its own brood, more numerous by its grim offspring, no less winding than a serpent; gathering itself wholly into a coil so as to protect its head, it lashes with the rest of its body and thrusts out the head alone to wound. With huge coils it binds those it has seized; with the head alone it kills. If the head is safe, even if the rest of it has been wasted away, it revives.

Serpents also have different seasons for mating and giving birth; but usurious money creeps on from the day the agreement is made with growing interest. It does not know how to suffer labor, because it pours the pains rather onto others. There, pains as of a woman in labor. Hence the Greeks called interest tokos (“childbirth”), because it seems to stir up the pains of labor in the debtor’s soul. The Kalends come: the principal gives birth to the hundredth. Each month comes, interest is begotten, the evil offspring of evil parents. This is the brood of vipers. The hundredth has grown: it is demanded, not paid; it is added to the principal. The prophetic curse comes true, “deceit upon deceit,” interest the worse offspring of a wicked seed. And so it no longer begins to be a hundredth but the whole sum; that is, not the hundredth of the interest, but interest on the hundredth.

I think that usura (“interest”) too is named from usus (“use”), because as clothes are worn through by use, so patrimonies are worn through by interest. … It is a word of pain. What good can there be in a thing that begins with pain and with obligation? They say that hares bear young, rear them, and at once conceive again: so too with these engravers of interest, interest is begotten and begotten again. It is nourished and born, and once born it already conceives. The roots of trees too are first planted so that they may take hold; when they have taken hold, then they begin to grow green, later to sprout. But usurious money, scarcely planted, already sprouts. Seeds break out in due time, animals give birth in due time; for there is “a time to give birth and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted, a time to kill and a time to heal,” and further on: “a time to acquire and a time to give back, a time to keep and a time to cast away,” as Ecclesiastes says. Usurious money is sown today and bears fruit tomorrow; it always gives birth and never dies; it is always planted and hardly ever uprooted. The moneylender wants always to acquire, never to lose; never to keep his money, always to cast it out; never to heal, always to kill.

And since the book of Ecclesiastes by Solomon is a good teacher in all things, let us stay with it a little. “The eye,” it says, “will not be satisfied with seeing, and the ear will not be satisfied with hearing.” Nor is the moneylender filled by receiving, nor is his desire satisfied by hearing the daily counting of bronze. And again: “Everything that has been is the very thing that will be.” Money always grows; avarice knows no leisure, interest no holidays. “All the torrents,” it says, “run into the sea, and the sea is not filled.” This sea is the moneylender: he swallows the patrimonies of all like waves, and himself does not know how to be filled. Yet many use the sea for gain; no one uses the moneylender except for loss. There it is the profit of many, here the shipwreck of all.

There are many animals that begin to breed quickly but also quickly cease to breed; the principal breeds quickly and never stops; indeed, once it has received the beginning of growth, it extends its increase without limit. Moreover, everything that grows, when it has reached the form, measure, and size of its nature, ceases to increase; but the moneylenders’ money always increases with time, and going beyond the form of the mother principal it keeps no measure. Many animals too, when the young born of them begin to breed, lose the use of generation as if their strength were spent; but the principal of a loan, when it has been equalled by the growing hundredths, both renews its old age and multiplies its usual offspring by addition.

This evil is neither new nor trivial, since it is forbidden by the command of the ancient and divine law. The people that had despoiled Egypt and crossed the sea on foot is warned to beware of shipwreck by money lent at interest. And whereas on other sins it gave directions with a warning once or repeated a few times, about lending at interest it gave notice more often. You have in Exodus: “If you lend money to the ward, the orphan, the poor man, you shall not choke him in your house; you shall not lay interest on him.” It shows what it is to choke, namely to lay interest on someone; for the creditor’s noose strangles, and what is worse, strangles the soul. By this word it expressed both the violence of a robber and the knot of a hideous death. “If you take your neighbor’s garment as a pledge, you shall return it before sunset; for this is his only covering, this the garment for his shame. In what shall he sleep? So if he cries out to me, I will hear him.” Have you heard, moneylenders, what the law says, of which the Lord said: “I have not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it”? Do you abolish what the Lord did not abolish? To demand interest, it says, is to choke. This too was said late, outside, by some of their wise men: “What is lending at interest?” “To kill a man,” he said. But certainly Cato did not come before Moses, who received the law; he was much later.

“If you take your neighbor’s garment as a pledge, you shall return it before sunset,” lest the shame of the stripped man appear. But you strip and lay bare, and do not give back. See that the sun does not go down on your avarice, lest the sun of righteousness set for you because you do not hold to righteousness, or the sun of iniquity go down upon your crimes. The day perishes for the unwilling man too, and the night rushes in, as for Judas, who, when the devil had put it into his heart, rose to betray, and it was night; for the sun of righteousness had set for him and the one who entered his heart had lain down upon him. He made darkness for him, so that he should not see the author of light. There the wretch perished at that supper at which others are saved. So give back the garment to the debtor, in which he may sleep and be at rest. If you will not give it back, “I will hear him,” he says, “because I am merciful.” If you do not hear, I will hear; I will have mercy; I will not despise the prayer of the needy.

In Deuteronomy too it is written: “You shall not exact from your brother interest on money, interest on food, and interest on anything you lend to your brother. If you lend to a foreigner, you shall exact interest from him, but from your brother you shall not exact it.” You see how much weight there is in the words. “Do not exact,” it says, “interest from your brother”; that is, from one with whom you ought to have all things in common. Do you exact interest from him? Your brother is a sharer of your nature and a co-heir of grace. Do not exact more from one from whom it is hard to ask back even what you gave, unless he has the means to pay.

And because many, evading the precepts of the law, when they have given money to merchants, do not exact interest in money but take from their goods what amounts to the profits of interest, let them hear what the law says: “You shall not take interest on food nor on anything you lend to your brother.” For that is fraud and evasion of the law, not keeping it. And do you think you act piously because you receive from the merchant something like a loan? From that source he commits fraud in the price of his goods, from which he pays you interest. You are the author of that fraud, you are its partner; whatever he has cheated goes to your profit. Food is interest, clothing is interest, and whatever is added to the principal is interest. Whatever name you give it, it is interest. If it is lawful, why do you shun the word, why do you draw a veil over it? If it is unlawful, why do you seek the increase?

What is worse, this is the vice of very many, and above all of the rich, whose cellars are stocked under this heading. If someone thinks he should give a banquet, he sends to a merchant to bring him a cask of wormwood wine free; he directs an innkeeper to find him Picene or Tyrian wine; a butcher to procure him a sow’s womb; another to supply fruit. So they call humanity what stands at another’s peril. You drink, and another melts in tears; you feast, and choke others with your food; you delight in music, and another laments with pitiable wailing; you taste fruit, and another swallows a thorn. “Do they gather grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles?” Interest is a thorn, the hundredth is a thorn, moneylending is a thistle; it burns cruelly. How then can you have fruit from thorns? If this fruit does not grow from thorns, will that eternal fruit grow? You grow rich from hardships, you seek gain from tears, you feed on another’s hunger, you strike silver from the spoils of stripped men, and you think yourself rich, you who beg a coin from a poor man? But hear what the Savior says: “Woe to you rich, who have your consolation!”

But perhaps you say that it is written: “To the foreigner you shall lend at interest,” and you do not consider what the Gospel says, which is fuller. But let us set that aside for the moment; consider the words of the law itself. “To your brother,” it says, “you shall not lend at interest; from the foreigner you shall exact it.” Who was then the foreigner but Amalek, but the Amorite, but the enemy? There, it says, exact interest. From him whom you rightly wish to harm, against whom arms are lawfully borne, interest is lawfully demanded. Him whom you cannot easily conquer in war, you can quickly avenge yourself on by the hundredth. Exact interest from him whom it is no crime to kill. One who demands interest fights without iron; one who has been a usurious exactor of his enemy avenges himself on the foe without a sword. So where there is the right of war, there is also the right of interest. But your brother is every one who belongs first to the faith, then to the people of Roman law: “I will tell your name to my brothers; in the midst of the church I will praise you.”

Indeed in Leviticus too the law prescribes that interest is not to be asked of a brother. For you have it thus: “And your brother shall live with you. You shall not give him your money at interest, and you shall not give him your food to receive back more.” In general this sentence of God has excluded every increase of the principal. Hence David too judged blessed and worthy of a heavenly dwelling the one who did not give his money at interest. If then one who did not give is blessed, without doubt one who gave at interest is cursed. Why then do you choose the curse rather than the blessing? You can be blessed if you will, you can be just. For the just man, according to Ezekiel, is one who will return the pledge to the debtor, will not give his money at interest, will not take a surplus, and will turn his hand from injustice. “This man is just; he shall surely live,” says the Lord. “But one who has not returned a pledge and has set his eyes on idols has done iniquity. He has given at interest and taken a surplus; this man shall not live. He has done all these iniquities; he shall surely die; his blood shall be upon him.” See how he has joined the moneylender with the idolater, as though making the crime equal. Choose then what is sweet.

Why are you always gloomy, always most bitter, always anxious? Let mercy come forth from you at last, let truth come forth; let lying be sent away, let fraud be hated. You have taught perjury. It is called the moneylender’s oath when perjury is being prepared. You often swear falsely, when the money has been repaid, that the bond is missing; afterwards you swear falsely that you have not received the money. So do not be always wretched, always greedy, always sad. Lions change their ferocity. “Out of the eater,” it says, “came forth food, and out of the strong and the gloomy came forth sweetness.” The Greek has “and the gloomy”; so we find it. Yet this is understood of the strong one, because the lion is strong in ferocity, and the fierce one is gloomy. So from you also, who devour money and avarice, let mercy come forth (for this is the food of the needy), and from the gloomy let sweetness come forth, so that you forgive one who has nothing to pay with. Why do you draw sins along as with a long rope and like the yoke-strap of a heifer? This indeed happens when you prolong the interest. You hold a poor debtor: let there be some grace at least where there is no hope of profit. And I say this in accordance with your own avarice.

Moreover, the Lord in the Gospel judges that we should rather lend to those from whom no repayment is hoped for. For he says: “If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what thanks have you? For sinners lend to sinners in order to receive. But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing, and your reward will be great in heaven, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, as your Father also is merciful.” Notice what name the moneylender has received from the Lord, the same name that belongs also to one bound to your interest: “Sinners,” he says, “lend to sinners in order to receive.” Both are sinners, the moneylender and the debtor. “But you,” he says, “love your enemies.” Do not examine what your enemies deserve, but what you ought to do. Lend to those from whom you do not hope to receive back what was given. Here there is no loss but gain. You give very little, you will receive much. You give on earth, and it will be paid to you in heaven; you lose the interest, you will have a great reward; you cease to be moneylenders, you will be sons of the Most High; you will be merciful, proving yourselves heirs of the eternal Father.

But you delight in the names of moneylenders and interest. I do not begrudge you that either. I will teach you how you can be good moneylenders, how you may seek good interest. Solomon says: “He lends to the Lord who has mercy on the poor, and he will repay him according to his gift.” See, good lending has been made out of evil; see, a blameless moneylender; see, praiseworthy interest. So do not think me grudging toward your profits. Do you think I am taking a human debtor away from you? I provide God, I substitute Christ, I point out him who cannot cheat you. Lend your money, then, to the Lord in the hand of the poor. He is bound and held; he writes down whatever the needy man has received (his Gospel is the bond); he stands surety for all the needy; he pledges his good faith. Why do you hesitate to give? If some rich man of this world is offered you who promises on his own credit for some debtor, you count out the money at once. For us the Lord of heaven and founder of this world is the poor man, and still you deliberate; what richer guarantor are you looking for?

But you allege that he became poor, though he was rich. You have seen, then, that his credit is rich, his credit is sufficient. He became poor when he paid for us, and still his very poverty does not deceive; for he made us rich, whom you thought poor. For the apostle says: “He became poor, though he was rich, so that by his poverty you might become rich.” Good is the poverty that bestows riches. So do not fear poverty, that you may be rich. Give idle money, and you will receive fruitful grace; you will relieve the needs of the poor, and your anxiety about guarding it will be lessened. What the poor man receives will not perish, and what you give to the needy will be kept for you without a guard. If you seek the increase of interest: in the law there is a blessing, in the Gospel a heavenly reward. What is sweeter than a blessing, what is greater than heaven? If interest in food is desired, that too is at hand, as we read; for he who has mercy on the poor is himself fed.

Return the pledges you hold, then, since you have found a sufficient guarantor. But they still grumble, saying that it is permitted to hold pledges, and they defend themselves by the law. For they say: It is written in Deuteronomy: “If your neighbor owes you anything, you shall not enter his house to take a pledge, but you shall stand outside, and the man who owes you will bring the pledge out to you. But if that man is poor, you shall not sleep with his pledge, but you shall surely return his pledge to him at sunset, and he will sleep in his garment and bless you, and it will be mercy to you before the Lord your God.” And elsewhere, they say, it is written: “You shall not take a mill or the upper millstone as a pledge, for this man is pledging a life.” And elsewhere: “You shall not take a widow’s garment as a pledge.” From this they argue that particular pledges are forbidden, not all: those of the poor man and the widow, and that a mill and an upper millstone are forbidden to be taken in pledge.

But since the Lord himself says through the prophet Ezekiel that one who returned a pledge is just and one who kept it unjust, he surely urges that not some particular pledge but every pledge in general be returned. Job says: “The written bond that I had against someone, drawn up under oath, I read, putting it on as a crown, and did I not tear it up and give it back, receiving nothing from the debtor?” Since the Lord commands that we should hope for nothing from those to whom we have lent that we ought to receive back, how do they think a pledge is to be retained according to the law?

And lest they break out again in the same way and say that they are even urged to lend at interest by the oracle of the law, since it is written: “You shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow,” it is time to discuss more fully and expressly, and to teach, what is to be lent and to whom the statutes of the law prescribe it; for the question of lending comes before the question of the pledge. “The sinner,” it says, “will borrow and not repay, but the just man has mercy and gives.” You hear, debtor, what you ought to avoid; you hear, creditor, what you ought to imitate. And further on: “I was young and have grown old, and I have not seen the just man forsaken, nor his seed seeking bread. All day long he has mercy and lends.” Where does this just man get what to lend all day long? Is the rich man then just, and the richer each is, the more just? Will one who has more to lend be more just? But it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.

Tell me then, holy David, what does he lend? I have brought a testimony against myself, unless you help me. Peter used to say: “Silver and gold I have not.” Was he not just? Explain to me, then, what he lends. For you said: “Blessed is the man who has mercy and lends; he will order his words in judgment.” I have found what the just man lends. Let Peter too teach me what he himself lends, he who said to the needy man looking at him and at John: “Silver and gold I have not.” Will you give nothing then to the poor man, apostle? Yet you give, and give more than others; you give the needy what others cannot bestow; you give the needy something after which he cannot be in want; you give the needy what even the rich long to receive; you give the needy what those who have this silver and gold do not know how to confer, because avarice hinders them; you give the needy so as to make him richer than the rich. You have stirred my mind; I long for this gift of yours. Tell me, I beg, what you give. Do not keep me long in suspense; I want to ask, if you will pay quickly. But you have paid quickly: you did not put off the needy man, you did not despise the prayer of the poor, you did not make him despair longer, you did not go up to the temple empty, though you said: “Silver and gold I have not.” Not only those go up with full hands who have gold and silver; the poor man too goes up not empty; he too went up not empty, because he had no gold and silver. Let us hear what this poor man gives. “But what I have,” he says, “I give you. In the name of Jesus of Nazareth, rise and walk.” O poverty to be desired, O neediness richer! The man to whom the rich used to give was lame; one poor man gave, and at once he who was lame was made whole.

So the just man has something to lend; he has silver too to lend: he lends his words. This is the just man’s silver; for “the words of the Lord are pure words, silver tried by fire, proved in the earth, purified seven times.” This is what one lends who receives the law, who meditates on the law, who practices the law. This Peter lent, this Paul lent. To them it was said that they should go to the men of the nations: to Peter, to the centurion Cornelius, when it was said to him: “Rise and go, doubting nothing, for I have sent them.” And he rose and went. And further on he said: “Can we forbid water, so that these should not be baptized who have received the Holy Spirit?” And he ordered them to be baptized; that is: “You shall lend to the nations,” so that you forgive sins and take away debts, “but you shall not borrow”; for the sinner borrows and will not repay his sins, because he is a sinner. To Paul it is said: “You shall lend to the nations,” for he was sent to the nations; to John it is said: “You shall lend to the nations”; to James it is said … to whom it was said: “Go, baptize the nations.”

It is said to the people of the fathers: “If you keep the commandments, you will be blessed and will lend the word to the nations.” Indeed, what follows shows that it is not said of money: “You will be ruler over many nations, but no one will rule over you. May the Lord your God make you the head and not the tail, and you will then be above and not beneath, if you hear the voice of the Lord your God.” And it follows: “But if you do not hear, cursed are you in the city and cursed are you in the field.” And further on: “Cursed is the offspring of your womb.” It is surely not money that makes one blessed, but the knowledge of God, the preaching of the word: if we lend the grace of the Lord, if we bestow the words of the Lord on the needy, if we keep the heavenly commandments. And on the other hand, it is not the lack of money to lend that makes one cursed; but if zeal is lacking, if the keeping of the heavenly statutes is lacking, you will be cursed.

Indeed, the mystery of the church is clearly expressed. For first he said to the disciple of the law: “If you hear the law and keep it, you will lend to the nations.” This was done by our fathers. Moses lent to the nations, who gained proselytes; Joshua son of Nun lent, Gideon lent, Samuel, David, Solomon, Elijah, Elisha lent; and if anyone wished to know the word, he went to them: the queen of the south came to hear the wisdom of Solomon.

When the Jewish people began not to keep the law, newcomers, that is those born of the people of the nations who believed in the Lord Jesus, began to lend that ancient people the interpretation of the Scriptures. Timothy, born of a Greek father, lent the word to the Jews when he had received the priesthood; and today we priests in the church lend the word to the Jews who have passed from the synagogue to the church; we lend both new and old money. For what they had they no longer have: “they have eyes and do not see, they have ears and do not hear.” They have the money and do not have it, because they do not know its use, they do not know its value, they have not recognized its figure and form. For if they had recognized it, they would never have denied the author of that money, saying: “We do not want this man to reign over us.” He, having received the kingdom and returning, ordered his servants to be called to whom he had given money, and he praised those who had lent out the money; but to the one who kept his master’s money idle he answered: “You knew that I am a severe man; I take up what I did not lay down and reap what I did not sow. Why then did you not put my money on the table? And when I came I would have demanded it with interest.”

You have heard what the money of the good moneylender is: what money gains good interest; what money does not disgrace the lender nor oppress the debtor; what money rust cannot cover nor moth penetrate; what money is not from an earthly treasure but an eternal one; what money makes the receiver rich and takes nothing from the lender. This money has interest, so that it bears not a hundredth part of what you gave but a hundredfold fruit. Open wide, then, the lap of your mind to receive the counted sum of this money; fix the gaze of your heart to recognize the image and inscription of this money. Indeed, examine this money; set up on the table of your soul a counting board, firm in virtues and squared; store it in the treasury of your breast, from which the learned scribe brings out things new and old. You see what this money is like, how it joins in itself the hated names of creditor and debtor. I who was inveighing against moneylenders now call forth the debtor. I want you to be lenders of this money, so that those who would borrow may hasten to you of their own accord; through it you can acquire not a coin but a kingdom, through it you may seek not curses but the grace of blessing.

This money is lent by the people of the nations, who knew how to receive what was lent, how to discern it, how to examine it. You refused, being in need of spiritual lending; you began to be in want. Of you, then, it was said by the Son of God: “The sinner will borrow and will not repay.” To you it is said: “The stranger who is among you will rise above you, but you will go down to the lowest.” For one who does not know Christ does not know the highest; one who does not ascend to Christ is always in the depths; but the people that receives the word is at the summit. This people holds the whole patrimony of faith; of it the law says: “He will lend to you, but you will not lend to him; he will be the head for you, but you will be the tail”; that is, he will be first, you last and cast off. “I will take away from Judea head and tail,” beginning and end: the beginning is Christ, who, when asked who he was, answered: “The beginning, who also speak to you.” The end too he calls Christ; for he is “the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.” So one who does not believe unto righteousness has neither beginning nor end, but is himself his own end.

We have learned what lawful lending is; let us learn also what the pledge is that the law orders to be returned before sunset. Hear what it is from the apostle, who says: “God has given the pledge of the Spirit in our hearts.” Now three things are spoken of: a pledge, a thing entrusted, and a deposit. A pledge they call what is received for money lent; a thing entrusted and a deposit, what we have committed to someone for safekeeping. Hence the apostle says: “I know whom I have believed, and I am sure that he is able to guard what I have entrusted until that day.” The same apostle taught what a deposit is, saying: “Guard the good deposit through the Holy Spirit, who dwells in us.” Is the Spirit the guardian of entrusted silver and gold, or is money guarded by the Holy Spirit? A spiritual pledge, then, is guarded by the Spirit, lest the birds of the sky come and take it from our hearts.

Let us ask, then, that Christ may guard in us this pledge which he himself gave, and preserve his deposit and what he entrusted; for he received nothing from us, but himself entrusted to us what was not ours. And so one who violates another’s deposit suffers the loss of his honor. If we ought not to violate by any fraud what a man has entrusted to us, how much more is it fitting that we keep in good faith a divine and spiritual deposit, lest we suffer grave losses both of reputation and of advantage!

This then is the pledge which the law forbids to be taken as a pledge and carried off by force. For Scripture has it thus: “If your neighbor owes you anything, you shall not enter his house to take a pledge, and the man who owes you will bring the pledge out to you. But if that man is poor, you shall not sleep with his pledge, but you shall surely return his pledge to him at sunset, and he will sleep in his garment and bless you, and it will be mercy to you.”

So you will say to me: “See, the law forbade a pledge to be taken away, not to be received, and ordered it returned to the poor, not to all.” As for bodily pledges, Ezra too has taught us enough that you moneylenders can no longer go against the declaration of your fathers. For when those who had lent and received others’ pledges were ordered to restore them, they said: “We return them, and we seek nothing from them.” Good fathers, who decreed that debtors’ pledges should be returned; good moneylenders too, who answered that they would both return the pledges and not demand the money they had given. Both the sentence of your fathers’ decision and the declaration of the creditors bind you to these terms.

There is also another pledge, which the spiritual law forbids to be taken away and, if it has been given, orders to be returned before sunset, which the debtor returns and himself brought out. Now a debtor is everyone who hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it. The evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in his heart. Do not enter his house, then, to take that pledge. For woe to the one who causes one of these little ones to stumble! If by his own folly he has lost his pledge, you will have no fault. But if he is poor, return the pledge before sunset; and the pledge is a garment. If he seems rich to himself, he deceives himself if he hands over his pledge; but if he is poor, not having the riches of the Spirit, return his garment to him before sunset.

If it were a bodily pledge in question, it should surely rather have been returned by day, lest the shame of the naked body be exposed by daylight; for darkness does not expose the naked. And if the concern were that the poor man had nothing to cover himself with while sleeping, it would surely say that a blanket or a cloak was to be returned. But by saying “garment” it rather means the tunic which we put on and with which we are clothed. Return to the poor man, then, his tunic, so that he may sleep in it at night.

Does it not seem to you to signify that poor man who is ordered to go with one tunic and not to seek a second, sent by Christ to preach the gospel? For he is the poor in spirit who can sleep; for one sated with riches, there is no one who lets him sleep. The poor man sleeps the sleep of resurrection, which the rich man cannot sleep, because he is choked by riches and pleasures. He sleeps the rest of Christ, who says: “I slept and rested and rose.” This is that tunic woven from the top, which Christ wore, which those soldiers whom you recognize could not tear. For none of them tears the garment of Christ, but divides it, as it is written: “They divided my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots.” The evangelists divided his garments among them, and for his clothing, that is, for the preaching of the gospel with which the Lord Jesus is clothed even today, they cast lots: that lot, certainly, which fell on Matthias, so that he was added as the twelfth to the number of the apostles when the name of the traitor was excluded. And it is well said of the evangelists that they cast lots; for a lot hangs as it were on divine judgment. And so, because they did not speak by their own power, and not all said all the same things, but many said different things that another had not said, we recognize that the grace of the Holy Spirit assigned to them as by lot what each should say of the works of the Lord Jesus, so that they divided among themselves, at his bidding, his deeds to be written down.

There is also that tunic which the apostle points out, saying: “Put on the Lord Jesus.” This is the tunic that covers our unseemly parts and surrounds them with more abundant honor in Christ. We put on the heart of mercy in Christ; we put on the glory of the cross, which is “to the Jews a stumbling block, to the Greeks foolishness.” Those blush at it who think it something to blush at; but for us, far be it to glory except in the cross of the Lord Jesus. These ignoble parts of ours have more abundant honor, because through the Lord’s passion an eternal kingdom is prepared for us; for the more one has sinned, the more one loves. Let us then be buried with the Lord Jesus, that we may be worthy to share in his resurrection; let us strip off the old man with his deeds and put on the new, in whom is the forgiveness of sins. So the word of God is a good cloak and clothing.

With this clothing the sons of Noah covered their father’s nakedness, taking a garment on their shoulders and walking backward so as not to see their father’s private parts, that is, the bodily things that carry a certain shame of human generation. And so the one who wished to see received the reward fit for a narrower mind, that he should become a slave (“for everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin”); hence he remained among earthly things. Let no one take this garment from the poor man; or if he has taken it, let the sun not set on the stripped man before he restores it, lest the poor man’s sin be charged to the lender and he begin to toil not only under his own sin but under another’s too.

Let this pledge be returned in this night of the world; let one be clothed with this garment in the darkness of this world. This pledge belongs to the Lord’s lot, not to the opposite one. For we read of two lots in Leviticus, of which it is said: “One you shall make for the Lord, the other for the one sent away.” The one sent away has sent his lot away to the moneylenders; the servants of the Lord are in the lot of Christ. Placed in this lot, Aaron shut out the misery of the opposite lot when, standing between two parts of the people, he did not allow death to creep from the dead into the lot of the living, putting his own body in the way. The good pledge of this lot is the cloak of the word. Let no one take this tunic from you, debtors; pledge this tunic to no one, if you never wish to suffer shame, so that you may sleep among the lots as Aaron did, may sleep between the two Testaments, may sleep the sleep of resurrection and be able to restore yourselves. This is the garment. Even if you have pledged it, holy Solomon in the Proverbs urges that it be taken back, saying: “Take away your garment; for the insolent man passes by.”

The garment of wisdom is of those robes which Wisdom made for herself of fine linen and purple; that is, the robe of faith consists of the preaching of heavenly things and the blood of the Lord’s passion. Fine linen figures heavenly things; by the appearance of purple the mystery of the sacred blood is declared, by which the heavenly kingdom is conferred. Indeed, what precedes shows that the garment of wisdom is meant; for he said first: “Be wise, my son, that your heart may rejoice,” and two verses further on he says: “But the imprudent, coming upon it, pay the penalty. Take away your garment.” Take it away, then, lest you incur the penalty of imprudence; lest that most wicked common moneylender, recognizing you stripped of your own garment, try to uncover the confusion of your disgrace and persuade you to cover yourself with leaves, and, seeing yourself naked, you fear to come into the sight of God.

“Repay your neighbor in time,” it says; “keep your word brief and deal faithfully with him, and at all times you will find what you need.” Innocence does not like to defend itself with many words. Susanna did not need the assertion of her voice: she kept her word brief toward the Lord, and at once she was found worthy to obtain the testimony of her own chastity. The elders said a great deal, laboring to cover the truth with the paint of words; but not the daughter of Judah. She was silent before men, she spoke to God. A woman’s defence before the people itself would have been a cause for blushing, and while modesty was being defended, shamelessness would have been displayed. She kept her word brief, saying to the Lord: “You know that they have spoken falsely against me.” And the Lord stirred up the spirit of the boy Daniel as the avenger of chastity.

Keep your word brief, then, so that repayment, not your tongue, answers the creditor; or, mystically: keep your word brief, that is, bring it to completion; for “the Lord will make a word complete and cut short upon the earth,” that is, so that from many reckonings a summed total may be agreed for you. Deduct what was paid out in various expenses, so that you may keep safe what remains; as the Lord, out of the many dispensations of the Jews, out of that long reckoning of sins, at last completed and cut it short, so that a remnant might be saved by the election of grace and be kept for a seed, through whom he might revive the half-dead hope of the synagogue.

How shameful it is to repay with annoyance the kindness of one who has helped you! When you have cheated the one to whom you owe, you will find no creditor afterwards in your time of need. How unworthy it is that, when you cannot sustain your living even while you owe nothing, you think you can sustain both your living and a debt. Think first how you will pay, and then borrow. “I take the fruits of my fields,” he says. But how will those that do not suffice for use suffice for the increase of interest incurred? “But I will sell my property.” And from where will come the fruits for you to live on? Interest is not paid off by its own money but increased; by counting it is heaped up and grows.

Then, do you not consider the humiliation and shame of the one who asks? Until you receive, you kiss the hands of the proud moneylender; you lower your voice, lest its clearer sound offend his ear, lest more people hear you begging. Poverty carries no crime; there is no disgrace in need; but to owe is shameful, not to repay is shameless. You will ask for a delay when you begin to be summoned at the time fixed for payment; instead of money you will bring vexation, you will plead the time, you will pile up excuses, and though you promised the whole, you will barely restore half, so as not to seem to cheat entirely. You will make a friend an enemy; you will return insult for honor, cursing for blessing. Consider how this harms your reputation; recognize how far it differs from a good man.

So while you are free of chains, draw yourself back; call yourself back from the yoke and burden of slavery. Are you rich? Do not borrow. Are you poor? Do not borrow. If you are rich, you suffer no need to ask. If you are poor, consider the difficulty of repaying. Wealth is diminished by interest; poverty is not relieved by interest. For evil is never corrected by evil, nor is a wound cured by a wound, but it is made worse by an ulcer.

See to these things, lest, while you ask for money, you pledge your mill or your upper millstone. The mill is that by which fine flour is made, at which one woman grinds fine flour who is taken, and another who is left. Perhaps the one is taken who always grinds the word of God so as to have fine flour; she makes spiritual meal, cleans out the old leaven so as to be a new lump, guards her mill, interprets the Scriptures, keeps for herself the upper millstone. But that one is left who pledges her mill. When she has ground something carelessly, she pledges the stone that is on the mill. I ask what this stone is. I have read: “The stone which the builders rejected, this has become the head of the corner.” Why on the mill? Because he is the one who helps those who grind; he it is who says: “Search the Scriptures, in which you think you have eternal life.”

Do not, moneylender, take this upper millstone in pledge, lest you fall on it; for “everyone who falls on this stone will be broken, and on whomever it falls it will crush him.” Nor should you take a widow’s pledge. Both are grave even according to the letter: to take away from the needy the use and the tool of living, or to strip a widow of her pledge; but it is graver if you withhold the word from a soul widowed of the word, so as to impose on her the barrenness of widowhood.

And so that you may know that I urge these things with loving affection, and that it is permitted to lend well, I will show you which moneylender you ought to imitate. “There were,” he says, “two debtors to one moneylender; one owed five hundred denarii, the other fifty. When they had nothing to repay with, he forgave them both. Which of them, then, loves him more?” Simon the Pharisee answered and said: “I suppose the one to whom he forgave more.” And his judgment was praised, the Lord saying: “You have judged rightly.” The Pharisee judged rightly, though he had thought wrongly, supposing that the Lord did not know the woman’s sins rather than that he forgave them. But his judgment is praised so that every excuse may be taken from him.

More was forgiven the church, which was gathered from the people of the nations, since it owed more; but it also paid more, not to one who exacted but to one who forgave. It gave water for Christ’s feet, because it cleansed its own sins; it kissed his feet, bearing the tokens of peace; it poured oil on his feet, itself bestowing mercy on the poor (these are the feet of Christ, for in them Christ walks more innocently); and it wiped them with the hair of its head, for whoever has the disposition of humility is humbled before Christ. And therefore, he says, “her many sins are forgiven, because she loved much.”

Notice that the Lord both bestows mercy as one who is generous and dispenses judgment with compassion. He forgave beforehand by grace, but he knew to whom he was forgiving. The Jew has no excuse. To me, as a sinner, he forgave more; to him, as ungrateful, he granted less. Yet he knew that he, being ungrateful, could not repay what he had received, and that the church, mindful of grace, would repay the more, the more it had been granted.

So you have a moneylender to follow, if you wish to be rewarded with praise, if you wish there to be nothing for us to reprove. For we do not disparage the person but the avarice. Nor did it escape me that some said, when our discourse two days ago had pricked their feelings: “What did the bishop mean by treating against moneylenders, as if something new had been committed, as if earlier people had not done it too, as if lending at interest were not old?” It is true, and I do not deny it; but the fault too is old. Indeed sin is from Adam, guilt from the time of Eve, transgression from the beginning of the human condition. But Christ came for this reason: to abolish what had grown old, to found new things, and to renew by grace what guilt had made old; for this he offered himself to the passion, to renew by the Spirit and set all free. But the devil deceived Eve so as to trip up the man and put the inheritance in debt. What do moneylenders do?

They deceive those they have put in debt; they bind sureties. But Tobit did not seek a pledge or demand a surety. You must run, then, to find a surety and bind him with your debts. See, another enemy is being prepared. For when you have nothing to pay the debt with, he will be held for you. You will be found a cheat in his regard, and a deceiver, since you will have deceived a friend. He will be stripped, he will be led into chains for you, you will find him a harsher exactor than the creditor, as he alleges: “Press your fellow citizen for whom you stood surety.” So it will come about that you too begin to be ungrateful and pass over what is written: “Do not forget the kindness of your surety; for he gave his good life for you.” You will have to say: “Who asked you to pledge your word? For if you had not pledged your word, I would not have received the money. I received counterfeit money; he gave me bronze mixed with gold. Would that you had not offered yourself! Perhaps the creditor put you up to it, or you him.”

So beware of binding yourself for another’s debt, lest you be said to have sold this too, and lest, if the debtor gives you some token of gratitude, as the custom of friendship has it, you seem to have bought it. Or if you wish to intervene, moved by a friend’s entreaties and ashamed to refuse, intervene in such a way that you know that, if he is not equal to paying the debt, it must be paid from your own means. Come prepared for this. For you have read: “Do not stand surety beyond your strength; for if you stand surety, think of it as paying it back”; and further on: “Help your neighbor according to your strength, and take heed to yourself that you do not fall”; that is, do not bind yourself for a larger sum than the resources of your means can bear and pay. For if you hand over what you have, you have lost wealth, you have not lost good faith. You do not feel the losses to your reputation; you have redeemed a friend without fraud on your part. Elsewhere too the Proverbs of Solomon warn you of this: “Standing surety, stand surety for your friends, as one who binds himself as surety for his friends.” But if you do not have the means, hear what Solomon says: “Do not give yourself as surety out of respect for a person; for if you have nothing to pay with, he will take the bedding from under your sides.” So the good lender gains gratitude, the wicked one execration.

But holy Tobit, not content with these limits of virtue, knew too that a hired man must be paid his wages. He offered as much as half, and deservedly found an angel in place of a hired man. And how do you know, lest perhaps you cheat some just man of his wages, or worse, a weak one (for woe to the one who causes one of these little ones to stumble!), how do you know whether there is an angel in him? For we ought not to doubt that there can be an angel in a hired man, since Christ can be there, who is wont to be even in the least.

So give the hired man his wages, and do not cheat him of the wages of his labor; for you too are Christ’s hired man, and he has engaged you for his vineyard, and a heavenly wage is laid up for you. So do not harm the servant working in truth, nor the hired man giving his life; do not despise the needy man who spends his life in his own labor and sustains it by his wages. For this is to kill a man: to deny him the support owed to his life. You too are a hired man on this earth: give the hired man his wages, so that you too can say to the Lord when you pray: “Give a reward to those who wait for you.”

Tobit says to you: “Luxury is the mother of famine,” and in this he teaches self-restraint. He also says: “Pay the wages of every man who has worked for you on the same day, and let not a man’s wages remain with you; and your reward will not be lessened.” He says to you: “Do not drink wine to drunkenness”; he says to you: “Share your bread with the hungry” (you see what he wants you to lend) “and cover the naked with your garments. From all that you have in abundance give alms. At all times bless the Lord.” In these things, then, is eternal lending and everlasting interest.