The Scholastic Analysis of Usury

<p>John T. Noonan's <em>Scholastic Analysis of Usury </em>was heralded in 1959 in the <em>Catholic Historical Review </em>as an admirably complete and fascinating study of one of the thorniest problems that ever set scholastic heads aching. How hard they must have ached is seen from the wide range of Mr. Noonan's material and his careful analysis of each intricate phase of the problem from the Church's seemingly absolute condemnation of 'profit from a loan' in the twelfth century down to Pius XII's high praise of the banking system as such in the twentieth. </p>