Alessandra Dignani
Dottoressa di ricerca in Diritto e Innovazione dell’Università degli Studi di Macerata
Starting from an analysis of Canto XVII of Inferno, this contribution aims to investigate Dante’s writing as a significant testimony for reconstructing the state of the legal and moral debate on usury in the Late Middle Ages. In particular, it seeks to outline the main theoretical positions that emerged in the debate at the time, illustrating the arguments put forward both in favor of and against the lawfulness of usury.
Summary: 1. Introduction: Dante and the law. – 2. The encounter with the usurers in Canto XVII of Inferno- 3. The key points of the debate on usury between the Early and Late Middle Ages – 4. From the expansion of the merchant class to the transformation of usury regulations: concluding remarks.
1. Despite lacking the formal legal education of some of his contemporaries, such as Cino da Pistoia, Dante was a man of his time, deeply involved in the political affairs of Florence and a shrewd (and critical) commentator on the state of Italy at that time.
His already naturally acute sensitivity was painfully heightened by the unjust trial that saw him condemned to exile. [1] Far from his beloved Florence, and destined to remain a wanderer until his death, the Florentine composed his Comedy, which, among other things, was the literary stratagem through which the poet gave vent to the animosity caused by the oppression that both he and his homeland suffered at the hands of the corrupt figures of the time[2].
The Comedy, starting with Inferno, is in fact full of juridical references which, between punishments and privileges, have the merit of illustrating Dante’s positions on law and justice[3], and give the careful reader a glimpse into the legal situation of the time.
Although Dante’s main intention was to express a political reflection, he could not help but imbue his vision of law with a marked theological connotation.[4] Emblematic, in this sense, is the passage in which the poet condemns usurers, relegating them to the fiery sand, forced to endure a rain of fire—a punishment that closely resembles that inflicted on fraudsters, the same category to which the municipality of Florence had associated Dante himself in his condemnation. This parallelism reveals not only the social gravity attributed to usury in the context of the time, but also the profound moral contempt that the poet reserves for it.
2. “E quando noi a lei venuti semo,/ poco più oltre veggio in su la rena/ gente seder propinqua al loco scemo.”
With this triplet, in Canto XVII of Inferno, Dante introduces the encounter with the usurers, located in the third ring of the seventh circle of Hell. Although the poet devotes few verses to sinners in this category—the climax of the canto being Dante and Virgil’s descent into Malebolge—these passages are dense with meaning and laden with moral and doctrinal implications.
At the invitation of Virgil, who is momentarily busy dealing with the monster Geryon, Dante approaches those “gente mesta” with caution, avoiding lingering longer than necessary, for fear that the moral “pestilence” they carry might somehow infect him.[5]
And so the Canto continues: “ Per li occhi fora scoppiava lor duolo; /di qua, di là soccorrien con le mani/ quando a’ vapori, e quando al caldo suolo:/non altrimenti fan di state i cani/ or col ceffo or col piè, quando son morsi/o da pulci o da mosche o da tafani.” Through a degrading simile, which reveals a clear moral condemnation devoid of any indulgence, Dante portrays the condition of the damned, guilty, in life, of the sin of usury. While avoiding explicitly naming the individual sinners, the poet scatters unmistakable clues: the noble insignia hanging from their necks clearly allude to the historical identity of the families involved.[6]
Specifically, Dante invokes three notable families: the Gianfigliazzi, Florentines belonging to the Black Guelph faction, identified by their coat of arms—a blue lion on a gold field; the Obriachi, also Florentines but Ghibelline—whose coat of arms features a white goose on a red background; and finally the Scrovegni of Padua, distinguished by a blue sow on a white field. It is precisely with a member of this last family that Dante enters into dialogue: according to most critics, he’s Reginaldo degli Scrovegni, who addresses the poet, naming two rival fellow citizens, Vitaliano del Dente and Giovanni Buiamonti, as future companions in prison. The unifying element among all the mentioned characters is their banking activity, conducted in ways that led to rapid enrichment. In Dante’s time, it should be noted, there was no substantial distinction between credit and usury, regardless of the personal ethics of those who practiced them. The distinction between legitimate credit and usury, in fact, is the result of much later reflection and is based on modern legislation.[7]
3. The issue of the lawfulness of usury, so strongly stigmatized by Dante, has certainly not been the subject of recent disputes and debates alone[8], but has its roots in ancient times[9].
In Roman law tradition, references to usury appear sporadic and lack a systematic organization of the case[10]. In Roman law, the mutuum contract – always understood as gratuitous – did not give rise to any obligation beyond the simple repayment of the sum received. However, the parties could legitimately enter into an accessory pactum, under which the debtor undertook to pay compensation for the use of the money lent, giving rise to the legal concept of interest.
The rules governing unlawful usury, on the other hand, were different, identified as the pathological situation in which the agreed interest rate exceeded the legal limit. In such cases, Roman law provided for specific measures of containment and sanctions to protect the contractual balance and the weaker party in the relationship.[11]
In the early Middle Ages, partly due to the gradual establishment of Christian tradition, there was a radical reversal of the concept that had developed in Roman times: any sum returned that exceeded the bare amount lent was considered, from a moral and doctrinal point of view, to be unlawfully received. From a purely theological point of view, since the only substantial difference between the act of lending an asset and that of returning what has been received lies in the succession in time of two distinct acts, it follows that interest ends up, in fact, remunerating the use of time. Now, from the perspective of medieval theology, time is not a resource available to man, but an element that belongs exclusively to God, the creator and ordainer of time itself. For this reason, profiting from time is tantamount to an undue claim, as well as an intrinsically unlawful act, since it is based on the appropriation of something that is beyond the availability of human beings.[12]
The legal issue of the lawfulness of usury, which was less noticeable in early medieval society, as it was structured around an economy that was still closed and based mainly on land ownership, emerged strongly following the so-called commercial revolution that took place at the end of the year 1000. This transformation marked a genuine economic boom, driven by the gradual abandonment of the traditional concept of wealth, linked exclusively to land ownership, and the emergence of a new paradigm based on trade and the growing circulation of money.[13]
Starting in the 12th century, these ethical and religious precepts began to translate into more structured legal norms, aided by the affirmation of ius commune and the simultaneous development of the communes, protagonists of a new economic ferment, animated by commercial relations that, over the decades, became increasingly extensive and complex.
In this context of renewed legal and economic vitality, the need for a clear definition of the concept of usury became increasingly urgent. Jurists were therefore entrusted with the task of rigorously distinguishing between lawful and unlawful commercial practices through a careful dogmatic investigation that began with an analysis of the loan agreement, considered the fundamental paradigm for defining the limits of lawfulness in money lending.[14].
The reasoning of thinkers opposed to the legitimacy of interest-bearing loans was based on two main lines of argument. The first, based on the principle of the sterility of money, was rooted in the idea that money is not a productive asset, but merely a conventional tool, useful for measuring value and exchanging goods, but lacking in intrinsic value. If money, as an extra naturam asset, cannot generate natural returns, it is therefore logically and morally unacceptable to argue that it can, on its own, give rise to further money.
Thomas Aquinas[15], drawing on Aristotelian philosophy[16], also firmly reiterated the absolute sterility of money. According to this view, money is a consumable good, the use of which necessarily implies its destruction: to use it means to lose it, not to make it bear fruit. It follows that, from the moment the ownership of the loaned sum passes entirely to the borrower, there is no rational or legal basis for the lender to claim a profit simply for having granted a loan.
This approach is further legitimized by the idea, central to early medieval economic thought, that money remains a neutral instrument, incapable of generating value on its own. From this perspective, the demand for interest is therefore considered not only unlawful, but ontologically unfounded, as it lacks any natural, economic, or moral justification.
The second line of reasoning is based on the legal principle of the transfer of the dominium sortis. According to those who oppose the lawfulness of usury, once a loan is finalized with the traditio, it involves the transfer of ownership of the money from the lender to the borrower. The creditor, therefore, ceases to have any right of ownership over the sum granted. It follows that the claim to receive interest on the money lent translates into an attempt to derive benefit from an asset that no longer belongs to one’s own assets, which represents both a logical and moral violation.
In addition, there is an ethical and legal consideration: requesting two payments – on the one hand, the repayment of the loaned sum, and on the other, a payment for its use – is equivalent to violating the fundamental principles of aequitas, constituting a form of undue duplication of compensation. In other words, the usurer would demand double earnings: from the repayment of the capital, which is legitimate, and from an additional price, which is instead without contractual and moral justification, as it refers to an asset that is no longer available to him.[17]
In this changed context, an interest-bearing loan, although sometimes legally permitted in certain circumstances thanks to the intervention of jurists in defining new contractual cases, continued to be severely condemned by religious doctrine. It was in fact linked to the deadly sin of greed, as it was antithetical to the theological virtue of charity. The usurer, in demanding a profit from the mere passage of time through interest on the money lent, was considered guilty of an unnatural act: he was, in fact, selling time that did not belong to him, since it was not the domain of man, but only of God.
While, on the one hand, between 1200 and 1300 there was an increasing recourse to interest-bearing loans, on the other hand, canonists and exponents of scholastic doctrine attempted to curb their influence in order to protect Christian values.
In the midst of the dispute over the lawfulness of interest-bearing loans between the 13th and 14th centuries, the two great mendicant orders, the Franciscans and the Dominicans, also took distinct positions. The latter, however, were among Dante’s most tenacious opponents, even going so far as to censor his works, including the Comedy, and forbidding their brothers from reading them. Yet it is precisely in Canto XVII of Inferno that the Dominicans could have seen in Dante a favor towards their doctrinal theses on the illegality of interest in loan contracts, in stark opposition to the more flexible position held by some members of the Franciscan Order.
In fact, while the Franciscans—despite preaching an ideal of absolute poverty—in some cases admitted the lawfulness of receiving interest, justifying it as a form of compensation or as a means of supporting pious works, the Dominicans remained faithful to a strict condemnation of usury, basing their arguments on the Aristotelian idea of the natural sterility of money.
Dante follows this same line of thinking, entrusting Virgil—his rational guide and spokesperson for his moral and doctrinal vision—with the severe condemnation of usury as a sin against nature, an offense directed at God himself.[18]
The presence of usurers in Hell, and not in Purgatory, has a precise systemic value: it signals the absence of any possibility of redemption for this sin, which is considered deliberate and persistent. Their placement in the third circle of the seventh circle, subjected to a rain of fire in the fiery desert, is certainly not accidental: it is the symbolic manifestation of an unbridled lust for wealth, considered by Dante to be the most corrosive root of the moral and civil degeneration of Florence in his time—and, by extension, of the whole of Italy.
In this sense, the figure of the usurer becomes an emblem of ethical degradation which, fueled by greed, destroys the spiritual and community fabric, rendering any form of justice and order futile.[19]
4. Dante’s aversion to usury is so radical that some of the poet’s exegetes have hypothesized a symbolic interpretation of the famous prophetic “hound” mentioned in Canto I of Inferno (vv. 101-102), a figure destined to redeem humanity from the “she-wolf,” an allegory of greed. In this perspective, the greyhound would represent not so much a concrete historical character as a metaphor for the struggle waged by the Dominican friars, whom Dante, despite being opposed by them, attributes a salvific function, against the spread of greed and the growing influence of the merchant-bourgeois class, whose social and economic rise was closely linked to the spread of interest-bearing loans.[20]
Although both Dante and the Dominicans, together with distinguished contemporary jurists, strenuously opposed all forms of interest-bearing loans, the progressive and unstoppable rise of the merchant class ended up overwhelming moral and doctrinal resistance, leading to a profound legal re-evaluation of the limits within which interest-bearing loans could be considered illegal. This led to a paradigm shift: instead of loans for welfare purposes, aimed at poor people in need, a structured credit system emerged, aimed at profit and organized in increasingly complex forms, serving large-scale financial transactions.[21]
In this new context, there was no longer an absolute ban on usury, but rather a differentiation between types of loans, based on the awareness that the original rationale for the prohibition—founded on the protection of the weak—had to be reevaluated in light of economic and cultural changes.[22] At the same time, the concept of money also underwent an evolution: from a mere sterile instrument for measuring value, it was transformed into a productive asset, capable of generating profit and therefore legitimately usable as a means of investment. This meant that many credit transactions were gradually removed from the discipline of traditional lending, giving rise to new contractual forms, subject to different and more flexible regulations.
Emblematic in this sense was the turning point brought about by Giovanni de’ Medici, son of Lorenzo il Magnifico, who became Pope Leo X. In 1515, with the bull Inter multiplices, he officially authorized the mendicant orders to found the Monti di Pietà, credit institutions that granted loans at moderate interest rates.[23]
In short, although usury continued to be considered, at the time, one of the most serious sins from a theological point of view, there is no doubt that, from a legal point of view, the driving force of the economy imposed compromises that were considered unavoidable. Even Dante’s greyhound, a symbol of moral regeneration and restoration of the natural order, faced with the irresistible changing times and the emergence of new cultural, economic, and regulatory needs, could only succumb, diminished by the weight of historical reality.
[1] Officially, Alighieri was convicted of bribery, fraud, forgery, malice, extortion, and illicit gains; however, it is well known that the real reason was political animosity.
[2] J. Steinberg, Dante e i confini del diritto, Chicago-London, 2013, p. 10, cites the episode of the devils who bar the poet’s access to the gates of Dis, mockingly indifferent to the nature of the privilege that allows Dante to cross the first of the realms of the afterlife (Canto IX of Inferno), as a metaphor for the difficult cohesion between the multiple jurisdictions affecting Italy in the 1300s.
[3] J. Steinberg, cit., pag. 11 “la minaccia principale all’ordine legale veniva da lui collocata altrove: nella disintegrazione del tessuto culturale che aveva a lungo sostenuto il diritto. I conflitti giurisdizionali tra Chiesa e Impero e le guerre che flagellavano la penisola italiana avevano gravemente compromesso la fiducia dei cittadini. L’opinione pubblica era stata contaminata dalla politica di fazione, gli ufficiali corrotti avevano eroso la fiducia collettiva, i privilegi del clero e della nobiltà erano stati mercificati, e tradizionali modelli di comportamento economico avevano smesso di essere rispettati: il corso ordinario del diritto positivo aveva così finito per diventare solo un’altra forma di violenza legittimata”.
[4] P. Landi, Dante e il diritto – Parte I, essay written for Centro studi Rosario Livatino and available online at https://www.centrostudilivatino.it/dante-e-il-diritto-parte-1/.
[5] These are the words that Virgil pronounces on usurers, v. 39- 42: “”va, e vedi la lor mena./ Li tuoi ragionamenti sian là corti;/mentre che torni, parlerò con questa,/che ne conceda i suoi omeri forti”.
[6] “Poi che nel viso a certi li occhi porsi,/ ne’ quali ’l doloroso foco casca,/non ne conobbi alcun; ma io m’accorsi/ che dal collo a ciascun pendea una tasca/ch’avea certo colore e certo segno,/ e quindi par che ’l loro occhio si pasca./ E com’io riguardando tra lor vegno,/ in una borsa gialla vidi azzurro/ che d’un leone avea faccia e contegno./ Poi, procedendo di mio sguardo il curro,/vidine un’altra come sangue rossa,/ mostrando un’oca bianca più che burro./ E un che d’una scrofa azzurra e grossa/ segnato avea lo suo sacchetto bianco,/ mi disse: “Che fai tu in questa fossa?/ Or te ne va; e perché se’ vivo anco,/sappi che ’l mio vicin Vitalïano/ sederà qui dal mio sinistro fianco./ Con questi Fiorentin son padoano:/spesse fïate mi ’ntronan li orecchi/gridando: “Vegna ’l cavalier sovrano,/ che recherà la tasca con tre becchi!”./Qui distorse la bocca e di fuor trasse/ la lingua, come bue che ’l naso lecchi.!” (Inf. 17. 52-75).
[7] As V. Karaneuski recalls in Gli usurai nel basso medioevo: Inferno, canto XVII, available online at: https://www.frammentirivista.it/usurai-basso-medioevo-inferno-dante/.
[8] In 1743, the year in which the Dutch theologian and jurist Nicolas Boredersen, author of the treatise “De usuris licitis et illicitis,” carried out a meticulous census of publications on the subject, there were more than two thousand works including glosses, commentaries on laws and canons, legal, theological, or philosophical-moral treatises, pamphlets, brochures, and collections of doctrinal or jurisprudential opinions, as reported by C. Gamba, Licita usura. Giuristi e moralisti tra Medioevo ed età moderna, Roma, 2004, p. 15.
[9] To the point that explicit references to it can be found in the Old Testament. In the books of Exodus (22:24–26) and Deuteronomy (23:20–21), there is a prohibition against lending money at interest to a poor member of God’s people, emphasizing the ethical and communal nature of the credit relationship.
[10] U. Brasiello, Usura (diritto romano), in Noviss. Dig. it, XX, Torino, 1975, 368
[11] V. Giuffrè, Mutuo (storia), in Enc. dir., XXVII, Milano, 1977, p. 414 ss.; G. Rotondi, Vecchie e nuove tendenze per la repressione dell’usura, in Riv. dir. civ., 1911, p. 239 ss.; U. Brasiello, cit., p. 368 ss.
[12] L. Morisi, L’usura nel diritto civile: storia, problemi e prospettive di riforma, 2018, p. 7.
[13] F. Ammannati, Il Commento Collettivo, Canto XVII “Vendere il giorno e la notte”, available at https://www.indiscreto.org/il-commento-collettivo-canto-xvii-vendere-il-giorno-e-la-notte/.
[14] M. Boari, Usura (dir. interm.), in Enc. dir., XLV, Milano, 1992, p. 1138 ss.
[15] S. Thomae Aquinatis, Summa theologica, IIa IIae, Quaest. LXXVIII, art. I, p. 376 “Pecunia autem secundum philosophum in 5 Ethico a medietate et in I Politico cap. 5 e 6, principaliter est inventa ad commutationes faciendas, et ita proprius et principalis pecuniae usus sit ipsius consumption sive distraction, secundum quod in commutation expenditure. Et propter hoc secundum se illicitum pro usu pecuniae mutuatae accipere pretium, quod dicitur usura; et sicut ali injuste acquisita tenetur homo restituere, ita restituitur pecuniam quam per usuram acceptat”.
[16] Aristotle, Etica Nicomachea, Milano, 2001.
[17] C. Gamba, cit., p. 20 ss.
[18] L. Cappelletti, L’avarizia e l’usura (parte prima): la questione del prestito ad interesse al tempo di Dante, available at: https://www.museocasadidante.it/lavarizia-e-lusura-parte-prima-la-questione-del-prestito-ad-interesse-al-tempo-di-dante/.
[19] Again J. Steinberg, cit., pag. 11
[20] L. Cappelletti, L’avarizia e l’usura (parte seconda): per un’ipotesi sul ‘veltro’, 2015, available at: https://www.museocasadidante.it/lavarizia-e-lusura-parte-seconda-per-unipotesi-sul-veltro/.
[21] M. A. Benedetto, Usura (diritto intermedio), in Noviss. Dig. it., XX, Torino, 1975, p. 378.
[22] G. C. Messa, Del contratto di mutuo, Milano, 1900 , p. 400 ss.
[23] M. A. Benedetto, cit., p. 377.