When the prophetic book which is entitled Tobit has been read, although Scripture has fully made known to us the virtues of the holy prophet, nevertheless I think I ought to use a brief discourse before you in recounting his merits and works, so that what Scripture has set forth at greater length in historical fashion, we may comprehend more concisely, gathering as it were into a kind of summary the kinds of his virtues. He was a man just, merciful, hospitable; and, endowed with this chorus of virtues, he underwent the hardship of captivity, which he bore humbly and patiently, grieving over the common injury more than his private one, nor lamenting that the supports of his virtues had profited him nothing, but rather judging that contumely to have been inflicted upon him at a price less than that of his own sins.
He earned an edict that none of the sons of the captivity should give a dead man to burial; but he was not so much called back by the prohibition as roused by it, lest he should seem to abandon the duty of piety through fear of death; for the price of his mercy was the penalty of death. Caught as one guilty of such a crime, scarcely at length through a friend, with his patrimony plundered, was he, a needy exile, restored to his own. Again he was engaged in these duties: if there was any food, seeking a stranger with whom he might take his meal. And so, when weary he had returned from the office of burial, the means of eating being set before him, he sent his son to seek a companion for the feast.
While the guest is being summoned, the remains of an unburied body being announced, he abandoned the feast, nor did he think it pious that he himself should take food while a lifeless body lay in public. This was his daily work, and a great one indeed; for if the law commands us to clothe the living naked, how much more ought we to cover the dead! If we are wont to escort travelers to more distant places, how much more those who have set out for that eternal home, whence they return no more? 'I,' says Job, 'wept over every weak one.' Who is weaker than the dead, of whom Scripture says elsewhere: 'Weep over the dead'? And Ecclesiastes says: 'The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of feasting.'
Nothing is more excellent than this office—to bestow upon him who can no longer repay you, to rescue from the birds, to rescue from the beasts a partner of our nature. Wild beasts are reported to have shown this humanity to dead bodies: will men deny it? Wearied with so holy an office, while the prophet rests in his chamber, a whiteness falling from a sparrows' nest brought blindness upon him. Nor did he complain or groan, nor say: 'Is this the reward of my labors?' He grieved rather to be cheated of the gift of his services than of his eyes, and thought his blindness not a punishment but an impediment. And when he relieved his sustenance by his wife's wages, he took care lest anything stolen should enter his house. His wife had received a kid as wages;
but he, consulting honesty more than piety toward her to whom he owed his sustenance, did not withhold his trust. He had entrusted money to his neighbor, which in such great need he did not demand throughout the whole span of his life. Scarcely, when he saw himself worn out and laid low by old age, did he disclose it to his son, not so much desiring to demand back the deposit as anxious lest he defraud his heir. In that he entrusted the money and did not lend it at interest, he kept the duty of a just man; for usury is evil, by which interest is sought. But that lending is not evil of which it is written: 'Lend to thy neighbor in the time of his need.' For David also says: 'The just man has mercy and lends.' That other lending is by right execrable—to give money at interest, which the law forbids.
But Tobit fled from this, who admonished his son that he should not transgress the Lord's commandment, that he should give alms out of his substance, should not lend money at interest, should not turn his face away from any poor man. He who admonishes these things condemns the interest of usury, from which many have made gain, and to lend money to many has been a trade. And indeed the saints forbade it. The graver an evil usury is, the more praiseworthy is he who flees from it. Give money, if you have it: let what is idle to you profit another. Give as though not about to receive it back, so that it may pass from your gain if it be repaid. He who does not repay the money repays gratitude. If you are cheated of money, you gain righteousness; for he is just who has mercy and lends. If money is lost, mercy is purchased;
for it is written: 'He who shows mercy lends to his neighbor.' Many, for fear of loss, do not lend, since they dread fraud, and this is what they are wont to answer those who ask. To each one of these it is said: 'Lose money for the sake of a brother and a friend, and do not hide it under a stone unto destruction. Place thy treasure in the precepts of the Most High, and it shall profit thee more than gold.' But the ears of men have grown deaf to such salutary precepts, and especially the rich keep their ears closed with that copper of their money. While they count their money, they do not hear the responses.
As soon as anyone, constrained by necessity or anxious for the redemption of his own—whom a barbarian sells as captives—has begun to ask, at once the rich man turns away his face, does not acknowledge nature, does not pity the lowliness of the suppliant, does not relieve his necessity, does not consider their common frailty; he stands inflexible, leaning back, is not bent by prayers, is not moved by tears, is not broken by wailings, swearing that he has nothing—nay, that he himself even seeks a moneylender to relieve his own needs. Why do you add the oath of a sacrament to your hardness and greed? You are not absolved by perjury, but rather bound.
But when mention has been made of interest or of a pledge, then, with brow lowered, the moneylender smiled, and the very man whom before he denied knowing, he now welcomes with a kiss, as though recalling a fatherly friendship. He calls him the pledge of a hereditary affection, forbids the heir. 'We will look at home,' he says, 'whether we have any money; I will break for your sake my father's silver, which is finely wrought. There will be very much loss. What interest will compensate for the value of the inlaid work? But for a friend's sake I will not dread the loss. When you have repaid, I will remake it.' And so, before he gives, he hastens to receive, and he who says he is helping in the main demands interest. 'On the calends,' he says, 'you shall give the interest; the principal meanwhile, if you have not the means to repay it, I do not require.'
Thus, when he gives once, he frequently harasses, and ever contrives that there be a debt to him. By this art he handles the man. And so he first binds him with bonds and fetters him with the knots of his own voice. The money is counted out, freedom is forfeited; the wretched man is absolved of a lesser debt, bound by a greater. Such are your benefactions, you rich men: you give less and exact more. Such is your humanity, that you despoil even while you help. The poor man too is fruitful to you for gain. The needy man is a source of interest: at your compelling, he has what he may repay, he has not what he may spend. Truly merciful men, you bind to yourselves the one whom others absolve! He pays interest who lacks food. Is anything graver? He seeks a medicine, you offer poison:
he implores bread, you hold out a sword; he begs for liberty, you impose servitude; he prays for release, you tighten the knot of a hideous noose. This injustice especially holy David deplores, saying: 'I saw iniquity and contradiction in the city.' 'And usury and deceit,' he says, 'have not departed from its streets.' And so, when he had subjoined the betrayal of Judas, he set this before it—either because, beyond the odium of sacrilege, the crime of usury was added to those who conspired in the Lord's death, or because such great sacrilege was avenged amply and abundantly enough by the usury of lending. Evil moneylenders are they who gave money to kill the author of salvation; evil too are these who give in order to kill an innocent man.
And he too, who received the money as the betrayer Judas, hanged himself also with a noose. Even Judas himself men thought ought to be condemned with this curse, that his moneylender should scrutinize his substance. For what the proscription of tyrants or the hand of robbers is wont to work, this the wickedness of the moneylender alone is wont to bring about. But the more learned think the devil himself is compared to the moneylender, who overturns the goods of the soul and the patrimony of the precious mind by a certain usury of usurious iniquity. Thus he takes by expense, thus he allures by gold, thus he enmeshes by guilt, thus he demands back the head in place of the treasure. What is more iniquitous than you, who are not even thus content with the redemption of the head? What is more iniquitous than you, who give money and bind both life and patrimony?
You take gold and silver as a pledge, and still call him a debtor who has trusted you with more than he received from you? You assert yourselves to be creditors, you who owe more; you, I say, call yourselves creditors, you who have trusted not the man but the pledge. Well is that called a 'loan' (faenus) which you give: so cheap and worthless (faeneum) it is. You call 'the lot' (sors) what is owed. For indeed, like a deadly urn, the wretched lot (sors) of the doomed debtor is rolled about, to be paid off by his punishment. The accused stand pale at the outcome of the lot. They do not so tremble whose condemnation is drawn by lot; they are not so cast down and anxious whose captivity is awaited by the outcome of the lot. For there the captivity of one man is forfeited, here that of very many.
And perhaps for this reason it is called 'the lot' (sors), because in the outcome lie the patrimonies that are rolled about under this lot. A great and memorable benefit of God. This is specially proclaimed by the prophetic mouth, that he conferred it upon the fathers, that he freed them from usuries and iniquities. And properly he says: 'He freed them from usuries,' because usuries bring in servitude, as if he said: 'Rescued from the bond of servitude, he restored them to liberty.' A heavy word is 'debtors.' Sins are called debts; criminals too are called debtors; for these too, like those, are sentenced upon their head. Yet faults have a diversity of their names as of their deeds; debts, though of diverse amounts, have one name, one burden, one peril.
The unhappy man, therefore, who seeks borrowed money does not know what he asks; he is ignorant of what he receives. The moneylender's money knows not how to stand longer in one place, being wont to pass through very many. It knows not how to be held in one purse; it longs to be turned over and counted; it seeks use, that it may acquire usury. It is a wave of the sea, not a fruit. Money never rests. It slips away as if dashed against a rock: thus it strikes the lap of the debtor and at once glides back to where it came from. It comes with a murmur, it returns with a groan. Yet often the sea stands calm to the winds; ever is the wave of usury tossed. It drowns the shipwrecked, it spews out the naked, it strips the clothed, it leaves them unburied. You ask, then, for a coin, and take up a shipwreck.
On this side Charybdis roars around, on that side the Sirens, who, by the appearance of pleasure and the sweetness of melodious charm, used—as the fables tell—to cheat of the hope and desire of returning home those whom they had led into hidden shoals. At once vendors of unguent and of various wares rush in, like certain dogs caught by the keen scent of wandering prey: hunters, fishermen, fowlers, innkeepers too who mix water with the wine, who din around the nobility of his ancient lineage and of his fatherland and the birthday of the wine. Parasites suddenly standing about salute him whom before they were wont to scorn, escort him, provoke him to mirth, incite him to expense, saying: 'Come, and let us enjoy the good things that are, and let us use the creation as in youth, quickly.
Let us fill ourselves with precious wine and unguents, and let not the flower of the season pass us by. Let us crown ourselves with roses before they wither. Let there be no meadow that our luxury does not pass through; everywhere let us leave the signs of our mirth, for this is our portion and this is our lot.' And truly the lot of all these became theirs, but you remain without a share in good things. Scripture has shown you no such lot; among such lots holy David does not mention any sleeping, saying: 'If you sleep among the midst of the lots.'
For if you had slept in the midst of those lots, that is, of the Old and New Testaments, the desire of money would not have plunged you into the whirlpool of the basest usury, but the grace of spiritual faith would have given you silver and would have formed it into the likeness of gold by the instruction of divine wisdom. For indeed, if we have set forth one testimony of divine Scripture and have turned away from that luxurious feast, surely that man too could have been saved, had he clung to the heavenly oracles. Let us, however, return to the feast, not that we may taste its banquets, but that we may show them to others as things to be avoided.
The table is loaded with foreign and choice foods; gleaming servants are brought in, bought at great price, to be fed at greater expense; drinking goes on into the night, the day is closed with feasting, and gives way to drunkenness. That man rises full of wine, empty of wealth, sleeps into the daylight, and waking thinks it a dream. For indeed, just as in sleep one suddenly seems to himself rich from poor, so also needy from rich. Meanwhile, while the money flows away, the interest overflows. Time is diminished, the loan is increased; the treasure is emptied out, the principal is heaped up. Little by little the guests withdraw themselves, the sureties gather; in the morning the moneylender knocks at the doors, complains that the prescribed days of payment have passed, assails the waking man with injuries, rouses the sleeper from his slumber.
Nights are not quiet, the day is not sweet, the sun is not pleasant. Little by little the gilded and silken garments are taken away and sold for half their worth. With tears the wife lays down her ornaments, now sadder, bought at a dearer price, to be sold at a cheaper. At auction the boys, the servants of the table, are set up, and, ill-accustomed, they turn away the buyer. Money is offered to the creditor: 'Scarcely,' he says, 'does this pay the interest; you owe the principal.' With his patrimony exhausted, he returns liable for his very head, and with the loan diminished, he receives a respite sadder than those of war, as though about to do battle after two days. For in war victory is uncertain, here want is certain: there he covers himself with a shield, here he runs naked to meet it; there the breastplate encloses the chest, here he is wholly enclosed in prison;
there he loads his hands with darts, arms himself with arrows; here he offers his hands, empty of money, to be bound with fetters. Most often each is led away captive: that one has something to accuse for the adverse outcome of war, this one has none but himself to accuse. Nothing is more intolerable than that misery which cannot be excused. Conscience embitters the weight of the injury. Then he reckons with himself, then he recalls the Scriptures, then he says: 'Was it not written for me: Drink water from thy own vessels and from the springs of thy own wells? What have I to do with the moneylender's well, where even the water is shut up? Sweeter were the herbs with security than the banquet obtained from another's goods with anxiety. I ought not to have sought what was another's. Then, when I had fallen into debt, I ought to have sought a remedy from my own springs.'
There were at home smaller vessels. It were better to lack table-service than food, better to put up clothing for sale than to forfeit liberty. What did it profit me that I was ashamed to make public my poverty? Behold, another has made it public. I was unwilling to sell my nurses; behold, another adjudges them away. This consideration is too late. Then was it fitting to fear for your own, when you took what was another's; then was it fitting to come to your own aid, when the first wounds were creeping forth. It had been better at the beginning to lessen expense and to relieve the necessity of debt by the straits of the family estate, than that, enriched for an hour by another's goods, you should afterward be stripped even of your own. We accuse the debtor,
for having conducted himself too imprudently; yet nothing is more worthless than the moneylenders, who reckon their gains from others' losses and count as their own loss whatever is possessed by others. They lie in wait for new heirs, they spy out wealthy youths through their agents, they attach themselves feigning a paternal and ancestral friendship, they wish to learn the household needs of these. If they find any pretext, they accuse his modesty, they blame his shame, that he had not before hoped for and presumed upon their help; but if they have met with no snares of any necessity, they weave tales, they say a noble estate is for sale, a spacious house; they pile up the yields of the fruits, they exaggerate the annual returns, they urge him to buy it up.
Likewise they do, praising precious garments and noble jewels. To him who denies that he has money, they press their own upon him, saying: 'Use it as your own; out of the fruits of the purchased possession you will multiply the price and repay the debt.' They hold out another's estates before the youth, that they may despoil him of his own; they spread their nets, and as soon as he has entered the spaces enclosed by the snare, they drive him into the nets of bonds, the toils of usuries; they seek to have his ancestral hall, his father's tomb, made over to them as security. A day is set for payment, the agreement is dissembled, so long as payment can be delayed. When they have made him secure enough, they suddenly fall upon him and press the more vehemently, bear down on him as he pleads his case, saying: 'You possess your estates, we do not have our money:
we gave gold, we hold timber; for you the proceeds of the fruits come forth, to us not a bit of money accrues. The plea is idle: at least let the bond be renewed.' And so, while at first the youth thinks that nothing of his garments or even of his possessions ought to be sold, or asks delay for doing these things, the interest is applied to the principal, the one-percent monthly charge is heaped up. Now he begins to sigh, now to recognize his evil. Day and night he thinks of the interest; whatever comes to meet him, he thinks it the moneylender; whatever creaks, he seems to himself to hear the moneylender's voice. If you have it, why do you not pay? If you have it not, why do you join evil to evil, and from a wound seek a remedy? Why do you daily endure the moneylender's siege, and dread his assault?
There is an old saying: 'The Lord makes a watch over both the moneylender and the debtor when they meet one another.' The one, like a dog, seeks his prey; the other, like an exposed prey, turns aside. The one, like a lion, seeks whom he may devour; the other, like a young ox, dreads the onset of the plunderer. The one, like a hawk, seeks to assail the swan with his talons; the other, like a goose or a coot, would rather hurl himself onto sheer crags or plunge into the depths than endure that hawk of a human body. Why do you daily flee? Even if the moneylender does not meet you, want meets you like a good runner. Therefore the Lord sees them both, the moneylender and the debtor, as they meet; he watches them both, a witness of the iniquity of the one, the injury of the other:
He condemns the greed of the one, the folly of the other. The one counts the debtor's every step, lies in wait for his turnings aside; the other forthwith hides his head behind the columns; for the debtor has no standing. By both, the reckoning of the interest is recomputed again and again upon the fingers. Equal is their care, but unequal their feeling: the one rejoices at the increase of the loan, the other is afflicted by the heap of his debt; the one counts his gains, the other his hardships. Why do you flee a man whom you could even refrain from fearing? Why do you flee, or how long will you flee? If anyone knocks at night, you think it the moneylender: at once under the bed. If you perceive anyone suddenly entering, you leap out of doors.
The dog barks, and your heart throbs, sweat pours forth, panting shakes you; you cast about for some lie by which to put off the moneylender, and when you have wrung a postponement from him, you rejoice. The moneylender pretends to be burdened by your ruin, yet he grants it gladly: like a hunter who has surrounded the wild beast, he is secure of his prey. You kiss his head, you embrace his knees, and like a stag struck by the poison of an arrow, you advance a little way, then at last, overcome by the venom, you sink down; or like a fish that has been pierced by the trident, wherever it flees it carries the wound with it. And truly that fish devours death in the bait; it gulps down the hook while it seeks food, yet it does not see the hook which the bait conceals: but you see the hook and gulp it down.
Your hook is the debtor's interest owed to the creditor; you swallow the hook, and the worm gnaws at you forever. This very thing is the bait that deceives. And so for you the food of usury is of no use, while the hook is for your wounding. Or do you not know that a creature once ensnared binds itself the tighter by the knot if it tries to flee, and that, caught within the nets, the more it flees the more it casts the nets down upon itself? You flee through the open streets, when you cannot be safe within your own walls. The moneylender finds you whenever he wishes. And so, when you have fulfilled the term, he rushes in like a wolf by night, allows you no sleep, and when day is awaited drags you to the public square, or compels you to subscribe to deeds of sale. So that you may steal away to the loss of your honor, you sign on the spot, about to sell your ancestral tomb, that at least some pretext of decency from your father may be put forward.
What is barren is bought up for a song; he boasts that he has sold an unproductive thing, that he has burdened the seller with losses, and the damages of the present time are charged against the losses of an earlier time. Soon even the prized possessions are sold, and now no longer instruments but fetters are brought in. Yet to one still seeking sureties a reprieve is granted, not that he may find any spoil of liberty, but that he may add a sharer of his servitude, one who would join himself to the wretched man. But what help can the addition of another's calamity afford? Now even his friends flee, his table-companions no longer recognize him: he himself too shuns the sight of all, and as a boxer dodges the varied blows of his opponents, so this man avoids meeting honorable people, and anxious, wherever he stumbles upon someone, he slips away with watchful eye.
He returns ready for his chains, he returns longing for death, reckoning that, were he to die, death would bring him a respite. He returns wretchedly condemning himself, because he did not shun another's money and bound himself with the moneylender's coin. O how many wretches have other men's goods made! 'What does it profit you,' says the prophet, 'to drink the water of the Gihon?' What, I say, does it profit you to drink the moneylender's cup? 'Many,' he says, 'have borrowed for a time and provided for their needs and repaid the money.' And how many have strangled themselves on account of usury? You regard the former, you do not count the latter. You remember that some escaped, you do not remember that some perished.
You reckon up the coins repaid, you do not count the nooses sought, which very many—the more modest driven to outrage, the more frail to self-injury—have preferred, by seeking out destruction, to the disgrace of so shameful a bargain, dreading the reproach of life more than the punishment of death. I myself have seen a pitiable spectacle: children led off to the auction-block for their father's debt, and held as heirs of calamity who were not partakers of the inheritance—and the creditor not blushing at so monstrous a crime. He presses, he urges, he hands them over for sale. 'Let them,' he says, 'who were nourished by my money acknowledge servitude in return for their feeding, and undergo the auction in return for their keep. Let the spear be brandished over the prices of each.' Not undeservedly is the spear brandished, where the head itself is the prize.
Not undeservedly does it come to the auction, where the principal itself is demanded. This is the moneylender's inhumanity, this the debtor's folly: that from his sons, to whom he leaves no money, he takes away their liberty; that in place of a testament he bequeaths a bond, in place of the profit of an inheritance the written bond of obligation. What does a father's writing of a curse upon his children mean, where there is no offense of impious sin? Or can there be any harsher curse or heavier servitude? And often after death the deceased has these advantages, that he does not behold the miseries of his sons. Frequently a father too sells his children by the authority of begetting them, but not with the voice of fatherly love, and with shamefaced countenance drags the wretched ones to the auction, saying:
'Pay, my children, the cost of my gluttony, pay the price of my father's table; vomit up what you did not devour, give back what you did not receive; you are the better for this, that with your own price you redeem your father, with your servitude you purchase your father's liberty.' Suppose someone come forward who is able to help. Who could fill so great a Charybdis, who could acknowledge the moneylender's accounts, who could satisfy his greed? What prices will this man not pile up, when he has seen a redeemer? For he feeds not so much on his own gain as on another's loss. True indeed, true is the saying, divine as it is from God. He, when he was angry on account of the impiety of the people of the Jews, because they went after foreign gods, says: 'To what moneylender have I sold you?'
For he who has been bound to the moneylender is sold, and sold not at one price but at a daily one; sold not with a fixed limit, but with a continual accretion. There is a new auction of interest every single month, a new sale under daily bidding. Whoever offers more always drags him off; the man is put up for sale, yet is never reckoned as though sold. Great therefore is the force of the heavenly sentence. The Lord did not think it enough to say, 'To whom have I sold you?' He added, 'to a moneylender.' Offended, he could find nothing heavier by which to take vengeance on the faithless. Forsaken, he demands a reckoning, why they so fled from the Author of salvation, as though the Lord had sold them to some moneylender—a fitting punishment for one who forsakes his Lord.
Slaves have something they dread more than the punishments and chains of prison; the free have something to fear because of their neglect of liberty. Mark this too, that usury is judged to be the occasion of transgression, since he easily departs from his Lord who could bind himself to a moneylender; for interest is the root of falsehood, the cause of faithlessness. 'I,' he says, 'did not sell you, but you were sold by your sins; by your sins you have been sold.' Therefore he who binds himself to a moneylender sells his own self, and, what is worse, sells himself not for money but by his own guilt. Who is this moneylender of sin but the devil, from whom Eve, having borrowed sin, lent out the whole human race at the interest of a guilt-laden succession?
In short, like a wicked moneylender he held the bond, which afterward the Lord blotted out with his own blood. For what was written in the characters of death had to be dissolved by death. The devil, then, is a moneylender. Indeed he displayed his riches to the Savior, saying: 'All these will I give you, if you will fall down and worship me.' But the Lord, the payer of another's debt, owed him nothing, he who could say: 'Behold, the prince of this world comes, and finds nothing of his own in me.' He owed nothing, yet he paid on behalf of all, as he himself testifies, saying: 'What I did not seize, then I was paying back.' How does this differ from the malice of the prince of this world? The moneylender of money binds the head, holds the hand, draws out the principal, exacts the hundredth part. O name made bitter out of sweet!