18th and 19th century The encyclical was published one year after an influential and controversial three-volume defense of usury by
Francesco Scipione. Months after the publication of
Vix pervenit, Maffei published a second, almost identical edition of his treatise-which contained the full text of the encyclical and a dedication to Benedict XIV, his friend-with the
imprimatur of the Catholic Church. Papal historian John Pollard argues that the encyclical's prohibition on usury contributed to the dependence of the Holy See upon Jewish bankers like
James de Rothschild. The text of the encyclical was destroyed in several countries. In
France, the ban on usury persisted until the
French Revolution of 1789, the same year in which
Turgot's ''Mémoire sur les prets d'argent'', a defense of usury, was allowed to be published. By the 19th century, the debate over lending within the Catholic Church disappeared, as the provision of credit had become viewed as political economy issue rather than a theological one. In 1830, following the widespread acceptance of the
Napoleonic Code, which allowed interest, throughout Europe, The
Code of Canon Law promulgated in 1917, allowed those responsible for the church's financial affairs at the parish and diocesan levels to invest in interest-bearing
securities "for the legal rate of interest (unless it is evident that the legal rate is exorbitant), or even for a higher rate, provided that there be a just and proportionate reason". A specialist in Catholic social doctrine, Miller A., argues, circa 1994, that "the words 'bank' and 'banking' are almost nonexistent in the documents of modern Catholic social teaching. Perhaps because the medieval teaching was never formally retracted that money was unproductive and therefore money lending at interest was therefore immoral, yet the church itself became an active investor.... Or perhaps it was because the church was deeply involved in financial matters at the highest levels that it was in no position to criticise". Writing for
This Rock magazine, David Palm argued with a more holistic approach, taking into account
Mosaic Law, the teaching of
Jesus, the above-mentioned
Fifth Lateran Council, development of economic sciences and especially the development of the practical economy since the
Industrial Revolution, that the old economic mentality, expressed in
Vix Pervenit, simply fails to capture the entire complexity of the modern world. The Fifth Lateran Council (1515) defined usury as follow: "For, that is the real meaning of usury: when, from its use, a thing which produces nothing is applied to the acquiring of gain and profit without any work, any expense or any risk". According to Palm, the sin of usury as defined by the Fifth Lateran Council dogmatically still exists in the Catholic Church, but the nature of financial transaction has changed compared to the time of the Fifth Lateran Council: "A loan that was usurious at one point in history, due to the unfruitfulness of money, is not usurious later, when the development of
competitive markets has changed the nature of money itself". No other papal solemn pronouncement than
Vix pervenit touches the subject of usury, although in a 1999 speech
John Paul II qualified usury as a "grave social plague". ==See also==