I'm trying to make a lesson on the Renaissance and I wanted to expand on the Medici Bank. I can't seem to locate a solid answer on How the Medici Bank got around Usury. Can anyone help explain this?
The fourteenth (Lyon, 1274) and fifteenth (Vienne, 1311-1312) Ecumenical Councils established that usury was sin. record scratch But Matthew of Paris writes in his 1235 Chronica Majora that nearly all English bishops are indebted to Lombard (northern Italian) Bankers.
When condemning Usury, who was the church really trying to control, the lenders or the borrowers? They had only just succeed in forcing through the imposition of clerical celibacy less than two centuries prior. Religion, like all social constructs, is seldom set in stone, and more often than not circumstances dictate doctrine.
Vieri, of the Cambio branch of the Medici, began lending money in 1348, thirty-seven years after the council in Vienne. He wasn't the first banker in Florence, but he was certainly the richest and most well-respected. It didn't take much for usury to be interpreted as the lending of money at excessive interest rates, with the intention of provoking default and the consequential seizure of collateral.
Check out the comments in this thread. The Raymond de Roover volume I cite might be of interest to you.