Which policy of the Church caused humanity greater harm - its position on interest, or the Inquisition?

Question

http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/andrew_white/Chapter19.html

I would say its position on interest.

It was called the Dark Ages for a reason. Innovation crawled at a snail's pace for a reason. Hundreds of millions of people lived their lives in bondage, unable to escape feudalism, beause they could not borrow money to start their own farms or markets, because credit was not available, because taking interest on loans was considered by the Church to be a deadly sin.

Only cities where merchants ignored this tenet thrived and gave rise to merchant classes. Only when most cities bucked Church law did a middle class start to arise in Europe.

If not for this barrier to credit, life arguably would NOT have been "nasty, brutish and short" for most people by the times Hobbes wrote.

Does the indirect but definite and tangible harm done to hundreds of millions over several centuries trump the direct harm done to thousands over two centuries?

Answer 1

in my opinion it is there stand on contraception that does the most harm,  they are denying millions of couples the opertunity to plan for much loved and wanted children,m instead people have children they don't really want, and sometimes neglecting them.  Others are using abortion as a form of contraceptive in the mistaken belief that one sin every now and then is better than sinning daily, by using contraception.  It's past time the church changed it stand on this issue

Answer 2

In addition to Naz F's fine answer on usury and interest, you seem to also be misinformed about the Inquisition.

Modern historians have long known that the popular view of the Inquisition is a myth. The Inquisition was actually an attempt by the Catholic Church to stop unjust executions.

Heresy was a capital offense against the state. Rulers of the state, whose authority was believed to come from God, had no patience for heretics. Neither did common people, who saw heretics as dangerous outsiders who would bring down divine wrath.

When someone was accused of heresy in the early Middle Ages, they were brought to the local lord for judgment, just as if they had stolen a pig. It was not easy to discern whether the accused was really a heretic. The lord needed some basic theological training, very few did. The sad result is that uncounted thousands across Europe were executed by secular authorities without fair trials or a competent judge of the crime.

The Catholic Church's response to this problem was the Inquisition, an attempt to provide fair trials for accused heretics using laws of evidence and presided over by knowledgeable judges.

From the perspective of secular authorities, heretics were traitors to God and the king and therefore deserved death. From the perspective of the Church, however, heretics were lost sheep who had strayed from the flock. As shepherds, the pope and bishops had a duty to bring them back into the fold, just as the Good Shepherd had commanded them. So, while medieval secular leaders were trying to safeguard their kingdoms, the Church was trying to save souls. The Inquisition provided a means for heretics to escape death and return to the community.

Most people tried for heresy by the Inquisition were either acquitted or had their sentences suspended. Those found guilty of grave error were allowed to confess their sin, do penance, and be restored to the Body of Christ. The underlying assumption of the Inquisition was that, like lost sheep, heretics had simply strayed.

If, however, an inquisitor determined that a particular sheep had purposely left the flock, there was nothing more that could be done. Unrepentant or obstinate heretics were excommunicated and given over to secular authorities. Despite popular myth, the Inquisition did not burn heretics. It was the secular authorities that held heresy to be a capital offense, not the Church. The simple fact is that the medieval Inquisition saved uncounted thousands of innocent (and even not-so-innocent) people who would otherwise have been roasted by secular lords or mob rule.

Where did this myth come from? After 1530, the Inquisition began to turn its attention to the new heresy of Lutheranism. It was the Protestant Reformation and the rivalries it spawned that would give birth to the myth. Innumerable books and pamphlets poured from the printing presses of Protestant countries at war with Spain accusing the Spanish Inquisition of inhuman depravity and horrible atrocities in the New World.

For more information, see:

The Real Inquisition, By Thomas F. Madden, National Review (2004) http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/ma...

Inquisition by Edward Peters (1988)

The Spanish Inquisition by Henry Kamen (1997)

The Spanish Inquisition: Fact Versus Fiction, By Marvin R. O'Connell (1996): http://www.catholiceducation.org/article...

With love in Christ.

Answer 3

religion and church are  brainwashers and dictatores for  thousand of years  ( mindcontrol )  this is the reason the communist  are the enemy  of religion  they are from the same  cloth

Answer 4

***NB:  The Church considered a reasonable rate of interest to be about 1%/month, according to the Council of Nicea, 325 AD.  There was, it seems, no change in the policy against excessive interest till about the 1100's.  There's a lot of wackos out there with an agenda against the Catholic church - so be CAREFUL about what you read -  but here's a reliable source on this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usury  (I did read your own source, by the way.)

You're right about the 'interest' bit, and how it traps people in poverty - In my opinion, right reasoning, wrong continent.

What you say applies to modern-day INDIA very well.  As you'll find if you google 'microcredit',

co-operatives are being started to lend to the urban poor at reasonable rates, and help them move out of poverty.  (One of the proponents of this in India got a Nobel Prize for it, and is in the current cabinet.)

But, what you've noted doesn't apply to medieval Europe.  -You're obviously new to medieval studies- for 5 reasons:

1) The restriction was not against interest, but against USURY, or EXCESSIVE interest.  I am not splitting hairs here.  This meant anyone could lend/borrow, so long as it was at a REASONABLE rate of interest.  We have anti-usury laws in effect still today, in Canada and the US, and these do not restrict credit.

2)Though the church forbid usury, this was a mortal sin only for the LENDER.  (Obviously, victims of a sin couldn't be guilty for it.)  This meant the restriction on interest applied only to Christians - If you wanted to borrow, you could always borrow from Jews, people of other faiths, or (I know they're Christian) Italians...And, any Christian could lend, so long as rates were 'reasonable.'

3) The farmers were 'peasants', which meant they worked land they rented from their lord.

('Lord' here means nobleman, or sometimes, the church.) You couldn't leave the land you worked, because legally your person was the property of your lord.  Try to leave, and he would send out his police/knights to return you to his estate - It was kind of like slavery.

4) You couldn't buy your own land to start a farm, even if you wanted to.  Land was in 3 classes:  Belonging to nobles, belonging to the church, or commons.  (Anyone could graze their sheep on it, for instance.)  Like a communist country, you couldn't own land.

5) And - this will surprise you - peasants couldn't save money to start an enterprise, because...no one had it!  People bought/sold things through barter, or services rendered.  (For example, the 'rent' a tenant paid his lord was a certain amount of days' labor per year.)  If you worked in the lord's castle, you were 'paid' room and board - good deal,for the Middle Ages.  Everything needed was made on the lord's estate, so coinage was only needed - rarely - to trade with other estates.   If anyone saw a coin at all, it MIGHT be your local lord.

The end of the economic exploitation of feudalism ended with the rise of the towns - as you note.