What a bank manager should look like (John Calvin)
Anthony Seaton, writing that ‘the denigration of bankers should stop’ (26 March), begins with the medieval Venetian banchieri. I first encountered medieval Italian bankers before I ever met a Scottish one.
At Yale, where I did my second degree, my professor was a medieval economic historian born in Genoa. Naturally, we looked at Italian commerce and banking in the Middle Ages, especially at business contracts. The medieval church forbade money lent at interest, which was called usury. Shrewd Italian businessmen knew that interest had to be charged. So how could they escape the scrutiny of the church?
One way was by contractually insisting on a fine if the date when the loan had to be paid was missed. The lender and the loan seeker both agreed on the amount of the fine and the crucial date of payment. Of course, it was agreed that the loan would not be paid on that date. Fine equals interest.
I arrived in Edinburgh in the late 60s with not all of my US savings depleted. I would need all of it and more to fund my postgraduate career in Scotland. The bank I chose was nearest to the university, the Chambers Street branch of the Bank of Scotland. Things went reasonably well for an impoverished student until the account went dangerously low. By that time I was doing some undergraduate tutoring for the university, teaching an extra-mural course on the Renaissance for the university and course tutoring (on the Renaissance) for the Open University, all the while writing my thesis, and trying to be a husband.
It was when I went out of my depth in overdraft water that the Scottish bank manager requested my presence. I was ushered into his office. He was, as I recall, an older man, grey hair turning to white, lean, of average height, wearing a reasonable suit but not a showy, expensive one. He adjusted his face to look at me rather like a teacher whose student turned in a late essay. He was never hostile. In fact, he became more of a friendly family doctor whose patient was foolishly endangering his health.
He spoke to me about frugality, and I thought of Benjamin Franklin’s American enlightenment heritage which was drenched with Calvinist-inspired aphorisms. The bank manager could also have been preaching a good Calvinist sermon, warning me not about hellfire, but of the miseries of debt. I tried to explain that the Open University promised to pay me mid-month, but that translated into one day before the end of the month, if that. He gave me a not unfriendly look which said ‘mend your ways’, a secular version of ‘repent’.
I thought of that bank manager, when decades later, after the university gave me a full-time post, the Bank of Scotland telephoned me. ‘Could we interest you in taking out a loan?’ they politely inquired. The face of that Scottish bank manager came back to me. I can imagine what he would have said.
Gary Dickson is formerly a reader in history and is an honorary fellow at the school of history, classics and archaeology, University of Edinburgh
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