0 the activity of lending someone money with the agreement that they will pay back a very much larger amount of money later
Because of usury laws, no estimate of free-market interest rates has been available since 1979.
Inquisitors may well have seen heretics as particularly prone to the sins of avarice and usury.
Many readers will be left wondering how exactly usury gradually shed its sinful associations and, in the guise of moderate interest-taking, began keeping respectable company.
In such a setting, it is understandable that most loans at interest were related to emergencies or consumer crises and usury was morally suspect.
Medieval moralists scorned any form of profit as "usury," seeing it as unjust exchange.
The first big capital funds in circulation accumulated through banking and usury, before they could be used in the sphere of production.
There are links here with penances for avarice or usury.
I am very conscious about how many parliamentarians shy away from opposition to usury because it is so embedded in our system.
