# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1864_S174
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

174 Martin Chemnitz on Usury.

usury was condemned outright; for thus says Cato in his work on agriculture: "Our forefathers held it so, and established it by law, that a thief should be condemned twofold, a usurer fourfold; by so much the worse did they regard a usurer than a thief." And Cicero says, in the second book On Duties: "When Cato was asked what was the best way to acquire wealth, and had answered: through farming, and another had asked him about usury, he said: What is it to kill a man?" Later, however, as Tacitus says in the fifth book, it was ordained in the Twelve Tables that usury should not exceed a twelfth, that is, one percent (per month). But when usury grew beyond measure and drained the city, restrictions on usury were established by public laws: 1. Interest on interest was forbidden. Cicero, in the sixth book to Atticus, calls this "renewal of usury"; in the fifth book to Atticus, in the last letter, he calls it ἀνατοκισμός [compounding of interest]. 2. The exceeding of the centesima (hundredth) was forbidden. For the laws call the centesima the highest usury. Plutarch, in his Lucullus, calls it the ἑκατοστή [hundredth]. For the debtors made the promise to pay the interest on usury on the first day of every month. The centesima is therefore so named from the hundred first days of the month; or from the hundredth part of the capital, which was to be paid on each first day of the month. The Athenians had the drachma usury, which paid one drachma monthly for every pound.*) At the time of the Nicene Council, the hemiolic (one-and-a-half-fold) usury was in use, which was abolished at that time. 3. It was forbidden to demand double the amount, in which the single amount is already contained, that is, once the interest (usurae) has reached the amount of the capital, it can no longer be demanded further; but if payment is nevertheless continued, it is credited toward the capital, so that when it equals double the sum, the debtor is freed both from the interest and from repayment of the capital. 4. The nexus (the binding) for the sake of usury was forbidden, that is, that a debtor should be made a bondsman on account of non-payment of it. This is reported in almost the same order by Plutarch in his Lucullus.

...ordinary expression, by no means (?) a disparaging one. "To wucher" [practice usury] meant as much as "to increase" (to take the increase of the money lent). In our times, "Wucher" is generally understood to mean any excessive gain. But by it one understands especially money-usury, or the demanding of an excessively large, immoderate interest or profit on and from lent capital.'" As untrue as it is, accordingly, that the word Wucher, when it was still used in its original meaning of interest on lent capital, meant nothing derogatory, so it is nevertheless true that Wucher formerly had this meaning and is used in this meaning also in Holy Scripture; hence, for example, Meyer renders the passage: "If you lend money to my people, the poor among you, you shall not bring him to harm, and you shall not practice usury upon him" (Exodus 22:24), so as to prevent this passage from being misunderstood in our time, as follows: "If you lend money —, you shall not impose interest upon him." T. F.

*) A pound weighed a hundred Attic drachmas. D. R.