Middle Ages 11: The Pulsating Body -- The Medieval World View
Historiansplaining: A historian tells you why everything you know is wrong
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The Usury of the Middle Ages
usury was absolutely athema for all sorts of reasons that fit into this understanding of society as a kind of organic, living being. You were, in a sense, taking a money, or old or silver, or whatever it was, out of the economy, and hoarding it for yourself. This was almost likea comparable to, likea acancer in a body a sucking resources into itself and starving the rest of the body. A precedent and prerogative were the real basis for authority. And over time, as especially as the population grew and towns and cities grew through the high middle ages, the creation of institutions to exercise inherited powers and authorities could grow almost at infinitum
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