ABSTRACT
The relationship already noted between the toleration of the Jews and the toleration of 'Jewish usury' by Christian society could not have been closer, but this does not make it possible to claim that 'the Jews were tolerated because of their usury' or, on the contrary, that theological toleration lay at the origin of economic specialisation. There is probably some truth in each of these propositions. In medieval thought, neither the existence of Judaism nor the practice of lending at interest was in itself justified. Both were attributed to the obduracy of the human heart; they were both endured or borne, in the etymological sense of the term 'toleration'. Moreover, social criticism which protested against the imperfections of the world quite commonly lumped them together in the same disapproval.
