and Arnold, Catholic Dictionary, London, 1884, and Smith and Cheetham, Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, London, 1875-'80; in each, under article Usury. This unanimity of the fathers of the Church brought about a crystallization of hostility to interest-bearing loans into numberless decrees of popes and councils and kings and legislatures throughout Christendom during more than fifteen hundred years, and the canon law was shaped in accordance with these. At first these were more especially directed against the clergy, but we soon find them extending to the laity. These prohibitions were enforced by the Council of Arles in 314, and a modern Church apologist insists that every great assembly of the Church, from the Council of Elvira in 306 to that of Vienne in 1311, inclusive, solemnly condemned lending money at interest. The greatest rulers under the sway of the Church--Justinian, in the Empire of the East; Charlemagne, in the Empire of the West; Alfred, in England; St. Louis, in France--yielded fully to this dogma. In the ninth century Alfred went so far as to confiscate the estates of money-lenders, denying them burial in Consecrated ground; and similar decrees were made in other parts of Europe. In the twelfth century the Greek Church seems to have relaxed its strictness somewhat, but the Roman Church grew more severe. St. Anselm proved from the Scriptures that the taking of interest is a breach of the Ten Commandments. Peter Lombard, in his Sentences, made the taking of interest purely and simply theft. St. Bernard, reviving religious earnestness in the Church, took the same view. In 1179 the Third Council of the Lateran decreed that impenitent money-lenders should be excluded from the altar, from absolution in the hour of death, and from Christian burial. Pope Urban III reiterated