Laudator Temporis Acti

Augustine, Sermons 77A.4 (Sancti Aureli Augustini Tractatus; sive, Sermones inediti ex codice Guelferbytano 4096, ed. G. Morin [Zurich: Rascher, 1918] p. 162; tr. Edmund Hill):

Keep yourselves from usury and extortionate interest; don't have anything to do with money-lenders, give them a wide birth. The day will come when they are told, Your money perish with you (Acts 8:20). The day of judgment will come, when on account of that money and with that money they will burn in everlasting fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth (Mt 8:12). That money will bear witness against them. Don't give money in that way, don't receive it in that way, or you will find yourselves on the day of judgment rendering a bad account of yourselves to God. I mean, what will they get out of it—except, for the sake of some money which they are either going to lose while still alive or to leave behind when dead, the loss of their souls which they cannot redeem from pawn? As the holy gospel says, What does it profit a person, if he gains the whole world, but suffers the loss of his own soul? Or what will a person give in exchange for his soul? (Mt 16:26)

So be on your guard, my brothers and sisters, against usury and charging extortionate interest, and don't say, "And what are we going to live on?" This is not a way of earning a living, but of earning death. Don't say, "And what are we going to live on?" There are other employments by which people can support themselves. Don't do something which God forbids, don't live on that, O wretched, and miserable, and unhappy creature! You observe that that is what you live on, and you don't observe that that is what you may die of. "And what," you say, "shall I live on?" I can be asked the same question by the whoremonger, I can be asked it by the bandit. Is that a good justification for banditry, or for carrying on the pimping trade, that people who do such things get their living by them? Woe to the wretches who get their living by such means, because these are the means by which they get their death. It is better to be a beggar than to live by unlawful means.

Cavete ab usuris et a foenore; nolite habere societatem cum foeneratoribus, dimittite eos. Veniet dies, quando eis dicetur: Pecunia vestra vobiscum sit in interitum. Veniet dies iudicii, quando pro ipsa pecunia, et cum ipsa pecunia, ardebunt in igne sempiterno, ubi erit fletus et stridor dentium Pecunia illa in testimonium illis erit. Nolite sic dare, nolite sic accipere, ne incipiatis in die iudicii malam rationem de vobis Deo reddere. Quid enim eis prodest, nisi ut pro pecunia, quam aut vivi perdituri sunt, aut mortui relicturi, animam suam perdant, quam redimere non possunt? Sicut dicit sanctum Evangelium: Quid prodest homini, si totum mundum lucretur, animae autem suae detrimentum patiatur? Aut quam dabit homo commutationem pro anima sua?

Cavete ergo, fratres mei, ab usuris et a foenore, et nolite dicere: Et unde vivemus? Hoc non est vitam quaerere, sed mortem. Nolite dicere: Et unde vivemus? Sunt aliae causae, unde se homines transigant. Quod prohibet Deus, nolite facere, nolite inde vivere. O miser, et miserabilis, et infelix! Attendis quia inde vivis, et non attendis unde moriaris. Et unde, inquis, vivam? Hoc mihi et leno potest dicere, hoc mihi et latro potest dicere; numquid ideo latrocinia facienda sunt, aut lenocinia exercenda, quia qui ea faciunt inde vivunt? Vae miseris qui inde vivunt, quia inde moriuntur. Melius mendicatur, quam de illicito vivatur.

Hill's note ad loc.:

The seriousness and urgency of his attack on usury, on taking interest on loans, will doubtless surprise modern readers, used as we are to the whole business of banking. But perhaps we should ask ourselves, in these days of the "third world debt problem," when the problem is almost wholly caused by spiraling rates of interest, whether Catholic moral teaching has not too readily jettisoned the biblical prohibition of usury, which was certainly strongly maintained right up to the Renaissance and Reformation. Would it not be salutary for modern financiers and bankers to observe Augustine's comparison of their profession with those of the pimp and the bandit?

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