The Christian Church's position on usury began with the First Council of Nicaea in 325, which prohibited clergy from using usury. Later ecumenical councils applied this rule to any member of any religious denomination. The Lateran III decreed that people who accepted interest on loans could receive neither the sacraments nor Christian burial. Pope Clement V condemned the practice of charging interest as "odious to God and man, damned by the holy canons and contrary to Christian charity." Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned” The historical performance of usury as an evil enterprise arises not only from a spiritual vision, but also from the social implications of practices perceived as “ unfair” or “discriminatory”. Christians, based on biblical rules, have condemned interest. - taking absolutely, and from 1179 those who practiced it were excommunicated. Despite its Jewish roots, the criticism of usury was very favorably taken up as a cause by the institutions of the Christian Church where the debate prevailed with great intensity for more than a thousand years. The Old Testament decrees were resurrected and a New Testament reference to usury was added to fuel the matter. Relying on the authority of these texts, the Roman Catholic Church had prohibited the taking of interests by the clergy in the fourth century AD; rule which they extended in the 5th century to the laity. In the 8th century, under Charlemagne, they went even further and declared usury a general criminal offense. This anti-usury movement continued to gain momentum in the early Middle Ages and perhaps reached its peak in 1311 when Pope Clement V made the absolute ban on usury and declared all secular legislation in its favor. The rise of Protestantism and its pro-capitalist influence is also associated with this change. As a result of all these influences, by 1620, according to the theologian Ruston, "usury moved from being an offense to public morality that a Christian government was supposed to repress to becoming a matter of private conscience and a new generation of Christian moralists. redefined usury as excessive interest.” Keep in mind: this is just a sample. Get a personalized article from our expert writers now. This is what the Church of Scotland suggests when it states in its report on the ethics of investment and banking: "We accept that the practice of charging interest on business loans and personal is not, in itself, incompatible with Christian ethics. What is more difficult to determine is whether the interest rate charged is fair or excessive. Likewise, it is telling that, contrary to the clear moral injunction against usury still expressed by the Church in the text of Pope Leo XIII as "a voracious usury... an evil frequently condemned by the Church but nevertheless still deceptively practiced by materialistic men", Pope John Paul II's 1989 Solicitude Rei Socialis makes no explicit mention of usury except the vagueest implication as an acknowledgment of the debt crisis from the third world..