Bankers and Hell

From Florence at The Economist, where a sketch of art reveals that the recent assault on bankers is nothing new — in fact, there’s biblical warrant for some of this.

DO BANKERS inevitably go to hell? What many people today merely hope will come to pass was for Christians in the early 1400s a matter of faith. After all, the Bible, like the Koran, was explicit in its condemnation of lending money at interest, the basis of most banking operations. So in many parts of Christendom moneylending was left to Jews. In several northern cities of medieval Italy, however, ingenious Christians started to find ways round the banking ban. Their contrivances, though legal, were not popular with the church, which held that usurers, by charging for the duration of a loan, were not trading in goods but in time, and this was God’s….

And should today’s bankers take heed? Though usury has long since lost its power to inspire any penitential effort among Christians, modern moneylenders are accused of other sins: Pope Benedict calls for “moral renewal” in Italy and the Church of England agonises about the godlessness of the City of London. Yet most bankers seem to dread damnation in the hereafter as little as censure in the here and now. Too bad. Without the fear of God, they are unlikely to pay for a new Renaissance.