“Kings and princes ought to look into this matter and forbid them by strict laws. But I hear that they have a finger in it themselves, and the saying of Isaiah [1:23] in fulfilled, ‘Your princes have become companions of thieves.’ They hang thieves who have stolen a gulden or half a gulden, but do business with those who rob the whole world and steal more than all the rest, so that the proverb remains true, ‘Big thieves hang little thieves.’ As the Roman senator Cato said, ‘Simple thieves lie in dungeons and stocks; public thieves walk abroad in gold and silk.’ “*
Martin Luther wrote these words in 1524 in his treatise, Trade and Usury. The expansion of international trade and particularly the availability of more gold and silver caused prices to rise in the first half of the sixteenth century in Europe. In this treatise Luther followed the philosophical and traditional Christian teaching regarding usury: it was sinful greed. Additionally, he excoriated the ‘trading companies’ that were acting as monopolies and, in his view, driving up prices greedily. In the section above, Luther has already written extensively about these trading practices. Here he is discussing the struggle of different greedy factions of society. Merchants complained about taxes and low prices, while nobles borrowed large sums from bankers. God sends knightly robbers as a punishment on both of them because the princes do not fulfill their duties by holding the merchants’ greed in check. Luther had already explained:
“Thus he [God] uses one rascal to flog the other, but without thereby giving us to understand that the knights are any the less robbers than the merchants, even though the merchants rob everybody every day, while a knight robs one or two people once or twice a year.”**
*Martin Luther, Trade and Usury, Luther’s Works, vol. 45 (Philadelphia, 1962), pp. 271-72.
**Luther, Trade and Usury, LW 45:270.
