Centuries ago, those who are now considered the richest, most envied and respected men and women were meat from hell. Bankers like Ana Patricia Botín, Carlos Torres or José Ignacio Goirigolzarri would not have been able to avoid a life after death surrounded by demons, burning pots and inelegant temperatures. However, in the thirteenth century, the emerging force of capitalism managed to twist the arm of the Church and force it to .
In the 21st century, the economic and commercial flourishing spurs the proliferation of the first bankers, the practitioners of usury. The Catholic Church does not take long to identify their activity as one of the most serious sins, related to greed and covetousness.
The ecclesiastics equated the loans with interest to a robbery to the Christians and even to God himself. Whoever lent to ‘brothers’ from the Christian community to make a profit was stealing from them, since Christianity exhorts to help others and give alms to the poor.
Time only belongs to God
But he was also usurping something from God: time. Returning the capital plus interest implied a time of work to achieve the sum and satisfy the usurer. The usurer was a time thief. And time belonged only to God.
Actually, credit was allowed by the Church when it was made with foreign peoples, especially with those who had open conflicts, as a way of exploiting the enemy in times of war. This conception especially benefited the Jews, for whom Christians were considered a different people. They, therefore, could be financed by getting rid of sin. On the other hand, the Christians recognized the Jews as members of their own community, so their legal lending activity was reduced to a minimum.
Thus, well into the twelfth century, the Jews were the only bankers available, but the economic flourishing and the greater circulation of money overwhelmed all their capacities: it became necessary for Christians to also be able to lend and obtain profits from it. Capitalism as a new economic model was being forged with such force that the Church was forced to redirect itself to adapt its doctrine to Quevedo’s ‘powerful gentleman’.
This change of mentality in the Church allowed the emergence of justification devices for usury-related operations in the 13th century, such as the Periculum Sortis, which contemplated the risk of losing the borrowed capital. Or the Ratio Incertitudinis, the calculation of the insecurity that is contracted in this service. But something more was needed, an even more complex ingenuity that would exonerate Christians dedicated to providing credit from hell without the ecclesiastical leadership losing theirs. Purgatory was molded for this purpose.
The idea of Purgatory, a place similar to hell but, unlike it, temporary, first emerged in the Tractatus de Purgatorio Sancti Patricci, a Latin text from the year 1180 written by the English monk Henry de Saltrey. The clergyman recounts the journey of Owein, an Irish gentleman who seeks to purge his sins, for which he accesses a cave whose entrance he places in Lake Derg in Ireland.
On his journey through the cave, he discovers a world populated by demons who torture souls with multiple ailments and teach them the path to heavenly salvation. Owein is thrown into the fire, tortured and forced to cross a fetid river full of evil creatures, but the mention of the name of Christ saves him from being destroyed at every crossroads.
When she manages to cross the river, at the bottom of which the gate to Hell is hidden, she is greeted by a single exit that leads directly to Paradise. Two archbishops receive Owein and accompany him through a place full of flowers, sweet perfumes and music. They explain to him that he is in a place where souls rest after having been purified in Purgatory, as a step prior to entering Heaven.
The idea of a space that functioned as a prelude to Eden so that Christians could do penance once they died fit like a glove to the new economic needs imposed by capitalism. Especially, to its fundamental activity: the loan with interest. The concept of Purgatory built in the Tractatus spread like wildfire among the European Clergy and was consolidated throughout the 13th century to accommodate all usurers: bankers can now be saved and capitalism has full freedom to develop without limits or limits. remorse.
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