ABSTRACT
Over the centuries, the Christian church took increasingly restrictive measures against usury. It inherited from the ancient world a hostile stance toward charging fees for loans, Plato seeing such fees as harmful to the social fabric and Aristotle claiming that the charging of interest is a violation of commutative justice and wrong because money is sterile. Jewish bankers came to dominate the market for small loans. In the eleventh century they began the switch from being merchants to money-lenders. By the later medieval period, lending had become "the most widespread occupation of the Jews". The plight of the poor oppressed by high fees charged on their loans came to the attention of the Franciscans. In fifteenth-century Italy members of the Observant branch of the Friars Minor, such as Bernardino da Siena and Giacomo della Marca, were noted for their penitential preaching to the masses. Among the vices they denounced was that of usury.
