Greetings:
I've been reading the discussion about Thorold Rogers assessment of the
Middle Ages. I have just transcribed part of an audio cassette produced by Peter
Jon Simpson in 1988 wherein he discusses 'Life Without Usury' in the Middle
Ages.
Enjoy this read and enjoy this day!
Working with you for 'peace and plenty' by 2020
AND 'Bringing
usuryfree living alive in 2 oh oh 5'
I AM
Tom J. Kennedy otherwise known as 'Tommy UsuryFree'
www.cyberclass.net
www.usuryfree.net
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Life Without Usury
By Peter Jon Simpson
Can there be such an economy rooted in Christian
Law wherein usury and interest is a capital crime? The Dark Ages are a most
misunderstood period. Voltaire said that history is the tricks that the living
play on the dead. Voltaire was right. The Establishment teaches us that the
Middle Ages came just after the Dark Ages. Lots of dirt, tyranny, poverty and
borderline, hopeless living. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The greatest displays of a nation’s wealth, its
cathedrals, were built during the Middle Ages. The skilled labour used to
construct the cathedrals was mostly volunteer labour. Labour was donated to the
church to perfect skills, learn or upgrade new skills. How could such labour be
donated? At the dawn of the age, the usurers were driven from the land. Anyone
on either side of a usury contract was given thirty days to cease and desist.
Failure to comply meant expulsion from the land and the denial of the right to a
Christian burial. Usury dried up and blew away.
In the middle of the 19th Century,
Oxford Professor of Political History, Thorold Rogers wrote of that era: “At
that time a labourer could provide all the necessities for his family for a year
by working fourteen weeks.” The other thirty-eight weeks were his to do as he
pleased. Would you like to earn all of the money required to feed, shelter,
clothe and recreate your family for a year by working fourteen weeks? What would
you do with thirty-eight weeks of vacation per year?
Many parts of Europe
were so prosperous during the Middle Ages that hundreds of communities averaged
160 to 180 holidays a year. None were bank holidays. The people worked for
themselves, learned new skills, studied, went hunting or fishing, and many
volunteered their skills and trades for building those magnificent cathedrals.
Lord Liverhume, writing the century before Thorold Rogers said : “The men of the
15th Century were very well paid.”
Today we can still visit the remaining cathedrals
if we can afford to leave our contemporary responsibilities. Cabot in his book
‘The History of the Reformation’ stated that our forbearers possessed the wealth
and leisure for one hundred thousand pilgrims at a time to visit
Canterbury and other cathedrals.
This was in a land with one tenth today’s population. Cabot in his book ‘Rural
Rides’ stated that concerning Winchester Cathedral: “That building was made when
there were no poor rates, when every labouring man in England was clothed in
good will and cloth and when all had plenty of meat and bread and beer.”
The people of that age re-instated God’s Law,
particularly regarding economics. They neither gave usury, nor took it. There
was no chain letter money and banking system. Consequently, the lands were full
of spiritual and material wealth. There was a church every four square miles
throughout
England and
thirty-five magnificent cathedrals. Externally imposed laws were at a minimum.
The church, the king, the municipalities and the guilds had limited power. The
Court system evolved from the church and was separate from the government. The
reason the room stood when the judge entered the court was not out of respect
for the judge, it was because the judge carried the Bible onto the Bench with
him. And that bible was the final arbiter of the dispute before the court. The
court system, an outgrowth of the church was mostly autonomous. The church
interpreted the laws. Laymen wrote pamphlets concerning economic justice. Usury
was the aids of its day – economically speaking.
Today these facts are hidden from us by an
evolutionary, humanistic, government-save-me establishment. The Middle Ages are
often referred to as the Dark Ages. And our lives today. Instead of working
three days a week and having four to ourselves, we have two pay cheque familes
today, where a generation ago we only needed one pay cheque to afford our common
life style. Our wives must now work so we can afford what our parents had a
generation ago. We flee into alcohol, professional sports, movies and T.V. We
seek to escape the pressure of our due bills. 160 to 180 holidays a year to us
is a foreign a circumstance as the planet Saturn and her multi-coloured rings.
I am now convinced that if we as a people can
abolish usury from our society as our forbearers did in Europe seven hundred
years ago, we will leave our children and grandchildren a circumstance where
they will be able to make a society that is prosperous and just, peaceful and
plentiful. If we cannot as a people banish usury from our nation, we will
condemn our children and grandchildren to a world of poverty and tyranny. It
will be one hell of a fight where as Salomon P. Chase said: “The people will be
arrayed on one side, and the banks on the other, in a contest such as we have
never before seen in this country.
Our children’s future depends on our taking up
this challenge and winning. I believe that fight must originate as the American
Revolution 210 years ago, in our churches. We may have to educate and train our
churchmen at first. This fight must be staged and it must be won. As General
George Patton said: “We will go forward and meet the enemy and be victorious or
let no man come back alive.” If I didn’t think this fight could be won, I
wouldn’t have written my book (Avoid Bank Holidays) and created this 1988
update.
Life Without Usury is transcribed from the 1988 audio
cassette ‘Avoid Bank Holidays’ by Peter Jon Simpson. For a copy of this audio
cassette contact the UsuryFree Network, P. O. Box 372, Tamworth, Ontario K0K 3G0
Tel: 1.888.
NOUSURY
Life Without Usury
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