The Negative Image of a Money Lender

The very name usurer evokes images of loan sharks and blood money. Behind them all is the devil, often represented as himself a kind of usurer. One french cardinal jacques de vitri recorded the story of a particularly influential money lender whose friends tried to pressure their parish priest to allow him to be buried in the local churchyard. Since the dead usurer's friends were very insistent, the priest yielded to their pressure and said, let us put his body on a donkey  and see god's will. The body was placed upon the donkey which, without deviating either to right or left, took it straight out of town to the place where thieves are hanged from the