Note 64 — Chapter VIII · USURY AND THE JEWS

We hear, for example, that early in the thirteenth century interest was fixed by law at 12½ per cent. at Verona, while at Modena towards the end of the same century it seems to have been as high as 20 per cent. The Republic of Genoa, a hundred years later, despite Italy’s commercial prosperity, paid from 7 to 10 per cent. to her creditors. Much more oppressive were the conditions of the money market in France and England. Instances occur of 50 per cent., and there is an edict of Philip Augustus limiting the Jews in France to 48 per cent. At the beginning of the fourteenth century an ordinance of Philip the Fair allows 20 per cent. after the first year of a loan, while in England under Henry III. there are cases on record of 10 per cent. for two months.