Some things never change. It's horrible, really.

[rymenhild]

While innocently searching the Web for information regarding Thomas Aquinas' perspective on usury, I discovered the following piece of … analysis, courtesy of a discussion board at the Stormfront White Nationalist Community:

Usury is, in fact, as Ezra Pound wrote, against the law – of natural increase… just like sodomy.

The source can be found here: http:// www. storm front .org /archive/t-137903 Thomas_Aquinas _on_Usury .html. I have not linked directly, and have inserted spaces into the website address, in order to avoid raising the page's Google rank.

Interestingly, this particular page doesn't mention Jews at all, although other discussions of usury on the greater website do. I wonder if the writers assume that the connection between Jews and usury is known to all the site's readers. If so, the Stormfront authors would be making a neat little chain. Judaism, usury, the unnatural and sodomy all go together in one rejected category.

The other curious thing I found when, against my better judgment, I continued perusing the site, was a suggestion that Jews for Jesus are an evil proselytising cult … aimed at converting Christians to Judaism. Now, that's a new perspective. Link here: http:// www. storm front .org/ archive / t-152157 jewish_group_actively_recruiting .html

Comments

[muchabstracted.livejournal.com]

A medievalist, innocently searching online... there is no such thing.

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

*looks innocent*

[cataptromancer.livejournal.com]

There's lots of stuff connecting usury with sodomy in the middle ages, isn't there? Since the multiplication of money was seen as this weird kind of sterile reproduction? I think I'm getting this from Woods Medieval Economic Thought. And also that part in the plaint of nature where sodomy is compared to, uh, coining or something, right? (Memory not working fully right now, and too tired to really check references...but for what it's worth...)

[cataptromancer.livejournal.com]

Duh - sorry. I realized from finally _reading_ the post that you're way up on all the medieval discourse, and are simply pointing out that skinheads are thinking the same thing nowadays.

Which makes me wonder -- will skinheads soon begin to argue about the proper relation of faith and reason?

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

I thought I remembered that the connection existed in some medieval texts, but couldn't recall any sources offhand. Thank you for confirming it.

I'd be very interested to see what this load of skinheads thought about reason, really. Their grasp of philosophy and logic seems to be rather lacking.

[angevin2.livejournal.com]

I think you're right about this -- same goes for the Renaissance, hence, for instance, the usury motif in Shakespeare's sonnets, and especially the ones where the poet is urging his young friend to go out and reproduce. Although there it comes off as autoerotic rather than/as well as homoerotic. (I guess that would count as at least marginally sodomitical by Renaissance standards, or at least by the standards of some writers: the Protestant polemicist John Bale said that celibacy was a form of sodomy when practiced by the Catholic clergy...)

I've also seen the coining/sodomy juxtaposition -- I know it shows up in Cary's Edward II, where after the death of Gaveston, Edward, looking for a replacement minion, "seeks out some piece or copper-metal, whom by his royal stamp he might make current" at a court that's "made loose by his example." I seem to recall, too, having read an article that connects it specifically to the production of counterfeit coins, but I don't recall where (ELH, I think) or what texts got cited.

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the references - fascinating!

[a-trick-mind.livejournal.com]

At least they got the "evil proselytising cult" right.

Rick

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

It's disturbing to me that the word "right" can appropriately be used in combination with the website authors.

[deborah-judge.livejournal.com]

Jews for Jesus are an evil proselytising cult … aimed at converting Christians to Judaism.

I actually think there's some truth to that. The Messianic congregation that I spent time with in Israel was about half people who had been born Christian. Many wanted to convert to Judaism to be messianic Jews. They had this very wierd belief in Jewish Christians being some kind of extra-special Christian. Like it's the closest you could get to being with Jesus. Totally heretical from a Christian perspective, and fairly whacked out from mine.

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

If so, then both the Jewish center and the Christian fringe are afflicted with a certain kind of tunnel vision -- perceiving Jews for Jesus as a group solely intended to persecute themselves. Peculiar.

[shirei-shibolim.livejournal.com]

Jews for Jesus is actually separate from most of the people who identify as "Messianic Jews." The latter are a mixture of Jews who have adopted Christian beliefs and Christians who embrace Jewish ritual and peoplehood. The former are a missionary organization funded by several mainstream Protestant churches, with the express goal of converting Jews to Christianity.

[debka-notion.livejournal.com]

Totally heretical- but far from new. It was a Really Popular Heresy in teh 3rd-7th centuries CE. I don't know that much about it (just what I picked up from class) but there are CHurch documents against Christians keeping Shabbat, Kashrut, Passover, and even against Priests wearing tfillin- and if they're saying "Hey you, you're not allowed to do that, at all, no exceptions made", then well, we know it was happening. And that they found it threatening.

[navelofwine.livejournal.com]

So interesting.

[fleurdelis28.livejournal.com]

I came across them while looking for a Tolkien quote. My impression from that conversation is that they're bizarrely hard to generalize about, though it was all uniformly baffling in one way or another. Especially the part where it became clear that none of them agreed what they meant by white:
http://www.stormfront.org/archive/t-9041Elf_=_Aryan.html