| http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contractum_trinius A contractum trinius was a set of contracts devised by European bankers and merchants in the Middle Ages as a method of circumventing canon law edicts prohibiting usury. At the time, most Christian nations heavily incorporated scripture into their laws, and as such it was illegal for any person to charge interest on a loan of money. To get around this, a set of three separate contracts were presented to someone seeking a loan: an investment, a sale of profit and an insurance contract. Each of these contracts were permissible under Church law, but together replicated the effect of an interest-bearing loan. The way this procedure worked was as follows: The lender would invest a sum equal to the amount of financing required by the borrower for one year. The lender would then purchase insurance for the investment from the borrower, and finally sell to the borrower the right to any profit made over a pre-arranged percentage of the investment. This system replicated the effects of a loan with any interest rate agreed between the two, yet provided protection to the lender against default, while the borrower remained under the protection of the law when it came to collection of the money by threats or force (loan sharking). And... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vix_Pervenit Vix Pervenit: On Usury and Other Dishonest Profit was an encyclical, promulgated by Pope Benedict XIV on November 1, 1745, which condemned the practice of charging interest on loans as usury. |
Insurance pre-dates Christianity by a considerable margin.