ANOTACIONES SOBRE LA EVOLUCIÓN HISTÓRICA DE LOS INTERESES.

Abstract

Interest is one of the very oldest economic and legal institutions of them all. The regulation of interest can be traced back to ancient India, Mesopotamia and Egypt, although it is also related of old with its illicit counterpart, usury. So, since its origin people have tried to set some kind of restriction on usury, generally through the establishment of a system of interest rates. This unfavourable view of interest reached its zenith in the Middle Ages, when a general canonical prohibition was laid down against usury and, by extension, against interest as well, on religious and moral grounds (though the prohibition was not always respected in practice). However, with the Calvinist Reformation the prohibition gradually became more and more attenuated until it faded away entirely, especially in the Germanic realm. In the Latin realm the last vestiges of prohibition were swept away by the Napoleonic Code. Most current legal codes recognise that the charging of interest is a fact. Of course, nobody disputes the lawfulness of interest today, save in the Muslim realm, where sharia still upholds -at least in word- a prohibition against interest similar to that of Medieval canon law.