A more practical and far-reaching cause of enmity was the usury, through which a great portion of their wealth was acquired. The money-lender has everywhere been an unpopular character and, in the Middle Ages, he was especially so. When the Church pronounced any interest or any advantage, direct or indirect, derived from loans to be a sin for which the sinner could not be admitted to penance without making restitution; when the justification of taking interest was regarded as a heresy to be punished as such by the Inquisition, a stigma was placed on the money-lender, his gains were rendered hazardous, and his calling became one which an honorable Christian could not follow.[289] Mercantile Italy early outgrew these dogmas which retarded so greatly all material development and it managed to reconcile, _per fas et nefas_, the canons with the practical necessities of business, but elsewhere throughout Europe, wherever Jews were allowed to exist, the lending of money or goods on interest inevitably fell, for the most part, into their hands, for they were governed by their own moral code and were not subject to the Church. It exhausted all devices to coerce them through their rulers, but the object aimed at was too incompatible with the necessities of advancing civilization to have any influence save the indefinite postponement of relief to the borrower.[290] The unsavoriness of the calling, its risks and the scarcity of coin during the Middle Ages, conspired to render the current rates of interest exorbitantly oppressive. In Aragon the Jews were allowed to charge 20 per cent. per annum, in Castile 33-1/3,[291] and the constant repetition of these limitations and the provisions against all manner of ingenious devices, by fictitious sales and other frauds, to obtain an illegal increase, show how little the laws were respected in the grasping avarice with which the Jews speculated on the necessities of their customers.[292] In 1326 the aljama of Cuenca, considering the legal rate of 33-1/3 per cent. too low, refused absolutely to lend either money or wheat for the sowing. This caused great distress and the town-council entered into negotiations, resulting in an agreement by which the Jews were authorized to charge 40 per cent.[293] In 1385 the Córtes of Valladolid describe one cause of the necessity of submitting to whatever exactions the Jews saw fit to impose, when it says that the new lords, to whom Henry of Trastamara had granted towns and villages, were accustomed to imprison their vassals and starve and torture them to force payment of what they had not got, obliging them to get money from Jews to whom they gave whatever bonds were demanded.[294] Monarchs as well as peasants were subject to these impositions. In Navarre, a law of Felipe III, in 1330, limited the rate of interest to 20 per cent. and we find this paid by his grandson, Carlos III, in 1399, for a loan of 1000 florins but, in 1401, he paid at the rate of 35 per cent. for a loan of