Filthy Lucre & Maundy Money
By Adrian Ash
March 21, 2008
Investment-bank heaven, hell,
and the clatter of money's morality today...
SO THE MONEY-CHANGERS never did get thrown out
of the temple during Easter Week 2008. They got open-ended
support instead from the money-lender of last resort, and
snapped up a near-broken bank for $2 a share.
Lost beneath the traffic jams, chocolate eggs and
mini-daffodils of Easter here in the United Kingdom, meantime,
sits a very odd and ancient custom which might also say
something about the value of filthy lucre, even today.
Each Thursday before the Good Friday Bank Holiday
– and to remember the Last Supper, when Christ washed his
disciples' feet (according to John) and issued his new, eleventh
commandment to "love one another as I have loved you"
– the English monarch gives specially-minted coins to a
special number of pensioners at a special church service dating
back eight hundred years or more.
This Maundy Money is pretty much the only kind of
money that the monarch ever handles. First coined in 1662 for
Charles II, it was handed out this week by Queen Elizabeth to 82
men and 82 women in Armagh, Northern Ireland – one for every
year of her life.
Surrounded by a 20-mile "ring of steel"
of police checkpoints (it was the first ever Maundy Thursday
service in Northern Ireland), she gave two small leather string
purses to each of the 164 church and community elders chosen to
gather before her in St.Patrick's cathedral.
The red purse contained a token sum of regular
cash, given to represent alms of food and clothing. The white
purse, in contrast, contained 82 pence in small silver coins.
Classed as legal tender and worth just $1.62 at
today's exchange rate, this year's Maundy money is vastly
under-priced compared to its 92.5% sterling silver fineness.
You'll find payments from previous years trading at a
significant mark-up to the legal value on eBay as well.
Maybe HRM doesn't know, care or mind about the
Maundy money's real cash value – which would seem to be the
whole point of alms-giving, after all. But the last known
sighting of her handling regular cash like an ordinary mortal
was way back in 1968, when she bought Prince Edward – then six
years old – some boiled sweets (bullseyes, as it happens) at a
shop near Balmoral, her Scottish retreat.
Which begs the question; just what does she
keep in that stout little handbag today?
Elizabeth II has no need of an Amex or gold Morgan
Stanley card, of course. Flunkeys remain on hand, more than 940
years after the first English king was crowned at Westminster,
to settle whatever bills she might run up. But this tradition of
separating the monarch from money – at least in the public's
imagination – bears only one exception each year. God's
anointed must otherwise stay away from the currency of everyday
life.
The silver coins given by to the poor and needy by
the English monarch – "defender of the faith"
under the Established Anglican Church – only serve to prove
the rule that there's something inherently bad about money, at
least in Christian theology.
Unless it's delivered on a silver platter with
great pomp and ceremony, that is.
Radix malorum cupiditas est, as Paul the
Apostle wrote to Timothy; "the love of money is the root of
all evil". Across the Mediterranean – where Christianity
had already taken shape in late Greek philosophy – Longinus
also blamed he gar philochrematia, "the love of
money", for the collapse of refined civilization.
Coined money was in fact an invention of the devil
himself according to Jacob of Saroug, a bishop of the Eastern
Church during the sixth century A.D.
"I do not mind if the priests use their rebitha
[the Syriac word for interest payments] to buy axes and smash
the temple of my idols," the devil told Jacob in a vision.
"The love of gold is a greater idol than any
image of a [false] god...It is worth as much to me as all those
idols put together! They have cast down my idols," smiled
the devil, "but they will never cast down the coins that we
shall put in their place."
Neither of the other Abramic faiths – Judaism or
Islam – have any such problem with cold, hard cash. The Jews
of medieval Europe were even encouraged by their Christian
tormentors to become money-lenders. Cast out into that damnable
(if lucrative) business of making money from money, they
breached the teachings of Augustine and Aquinas against usury.
But even the Pope needed bankers, and still does.
As for Islam, the 12th century theologian Ghazali
argued – by quoting the Koran – that honest trade is morally
preferable to self-denial. Sincere merchants, agreed Ibn Jazi
Al-Nahai, were doing God's work (literally "fighting the
Holy war" of jihad) in the very weights and
measures they used to do business.
"Death can come upon me nowhere more
pleasantly," said the Caliph Umar – quoted by John Buchan
in his treatise on money, Frozen Desire – "than
where I am engaged in business in the market, buying and selling
for profit on behalf of my family."
How alien to that poor, broken god sold for thirty
pieces of silver! And how soon forgotten and abused was his
poverty by Christ's followers themselves!
"In 1237," Buchan goes on, "the
bankrupt Latin government of Constantinople mortgaged [what it
believed to be] Christ's crown of thorns to a syndicate of
Venetian and Genoese merchants." Making a loan of 13,134
coins of "exceedingly pure" African gold known as hyperpyroi,
the syndicate had the crown of thorns sent to Venice. But the
French king, Louis IX, then stepped in and offered to repay
Constantinople's debt in return for the holy relic.
On its arrival in Paris on 18 August 1239, the
crown of thorns was paraded through the streets of the city with
King Louis – barefoot and in a hair shirt – leading the
procession. He then spent 20,000 marks building the church of
Saint-Chapelle to house it. Writes Buchan, the religious essence
of Christ's crown – "that it was of thorns, not of gold
– turns out to have been an illusion.
"It is of gold, after all. An entire doctrine
begins to turn to powder."
All this fretting might seem arcane, irrelevant,
utterly pointless today. In the proudly secular world of Western
finance – where, trying to accommodate the Islamic sharia
ban on usury (taking interest payments), the British government
simply created a loophole that let commercial investors and
banks avoid $40 million ($79.2m) in UK real-estate taxes over
two years – who cares about theology?
Yet the arguments over evil lending, immoral
profiteering, and who's been good or bad with money still go on.
We've delegated them to a new class of theologians, that's all
– the lawyers.
"The subprime blame game is shifting to the
courts," says the Houston Chronicle.
"Mortgage mess becomes prime territory for law firms,"
adds the Chicago Tribune.
"Societe Generale named in class action,"
reports a newswire. "UBS hit by another lawsuit," BusinessWeek
says...
"Merrill Lynch sues bond insurer,"
reports The Times of London. "Cayne risks law-suit
as he seeks counter-offer for Bear Stearns," it notes
elsewhere.
Usury, rebitha, who's been good or bad at
lending money...all the finer points (and pay-off) may have
changed. But the everyday clatter of money's morals rattles on.
And while Bear Stearns didn't quite make it to investment-bank
heaven last weekend, the rest of the industry is certainly going
through hell.
The lawyers will see to that.