[HN Gopher] The Knights Templar started London's first bank (2017)
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The Knights Templar started London's first bank (2017)
Author : dananjaya86
Score : 221 points
Date : 2022-12-20 08:46 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| One way to do this over large distances is the bank of Alice and
| the bank of Bob meet and exchange papers/signatures/codes in
| advance, enough to do a years worth and then they can verify each
| other's cheques until the next exchange. They could settle in
| gold.
|
| For fraud prevention this system might allow for a "personal
| identification number" for the cheque to be memorised.
| andrepd wrote:
| A factoid that I knew thanks to Don Rosa stories!
| anon23anon wrote:
| This would explain so much of the conspiracy around them.
| xkcd1963 wrote:
| So I read the text until "Checks and balances" and found a
| mistake in the text which makes me believe now this was written
| by AI and maybe audited by a human.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| In Our Time, BBC radio show with Melvyn Bragg, has an episode on
| the Templars; https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001cpwt. Worth a
| listen if you're interested and want an inciteful overview.
| overthemoon wrote:
| > We don't actually know how the Templars made this system work
| and protected themselves against fraud. Was there a secret code
| verifying the document and the traveller's identity?
|
| Really? We don't know? If that's true, that surprises me.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| It does sound odd. Having some understanding how it worked
| would validate the theory. Else it only sounds like a theory,
| albeit with perhaps a couple limited documented instances.
| sophacles wrote:
| Is it that hard to beleive?
|
| The templars were a secret society (that is they had private
| initiation ceremonies just like any frat, social club, etc
| today - although the vows they swore were probably taken far
| more seriously).
|
| They had a lot of money. That money was confiscated by force,
| including the torture and killing of members. This was backed
| up by lots of claims of devil worship and the like to get
| common people to be OK with it.
|
| The money was tied to the records.
|
| Is it that surprising that in this process all the records were
| destroyed? The powerful didn't want the records and the legal
| hassle they entail, they just wanted the gold. The common folks
| didn't want to be spiritually corrupted by the blasphemous
| works (that they likely couldn't read anyway). The records were
| probably burned or scraped clean and re-used (see palimpsest)
| since paper and parchment were expensive commodities.
|
| There may be a document or two hiding in various corners of
| some old monastary library or in some book binding somewhere -
| as recently as 2001 some records surfaced from the vatican
| secret archives: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinon_Parchment
| but like a lot of other knowledge of that era, most of it is
| probably lost.
| bretbernhoft wrote:
| I've heard that the Knights Templar could transform common metals
| into gold, at a rate comparable to ancient Egypt.
| johnohara wrote:
| This article was an interesting (and quick) read. Thanks for
| posting it.
|
| FTA: _Few regulators have been quite as ardent as King Philip IV
| of France. ... He owed money to the Templars, and they refused to
| forgive his debts. ... the last grandmaster of the Templars,
| Jacques de Molay, was brought to the centre of Paris and publicly
| burned to death._
|
| Which is a novel way to default on your loan, close your account,
| and start doing business with Florentine Franzesi bankers.
|
| _The royal treasure was transferred from the Paris Temple to the
| Louvre around this time._
|
| In other words -- he seized the Templars assets.
|
| It's against this backdrop that the wikipedia page on Philip IV
| of France achieves renewed vitality and is worth perusing.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_IV_of_France
| danabrams wrote:
| Didn't read the article, but just going by the headline--London
| must have had a bank before 2017.
| spicymaki wrote:
| The tragic end to the Knights Templar brings to mind David
| Graeber's idea of bringing back the jubilee:
| https://davidgraeber.org/articles/after-the-jubilee/
|
| Excerpted from Wikipedia: The Templars were closely tied to the
| Crusades; as they became unable to secure their holdings in the
| Holy Land, support for the order faded. Rumors about the
| Templars' secret initiation ceremony created distrust, and King
| Philip IV of France, while being deeply in debt to the order,
| used this distrust to take advantage of the situation. In 1307,
| he pressured Pope Clement to have many of the order's members in
| France arrested, tortured into giving false confessions, and then
| burned at the stake. Under further pressure, Pope Clement V
| disbanded the order in 1312.
|
| --------------------
|
| Perhaps if they were not so scrooge-like, their order would still
| be around today.
|
| The financial stress of our debt-laden culture has led to deep
| mistrust, cospiracism, disfunction, environmental harm, and the
| stunting of growth for developing nations around the world.
|
| We should learn from these stories of the past.
| FredPret wrote:
| International banks have spearheaded an absolute explosion in
| global economic growth. Looking at your story above, Philip was
| the bad actor and the Templars should've played politics better
| (maybe lending money to the pope as well?)
| coliveira wrote:
| > lending money to the pope
|
| The Pope was the owner of everything. It was, after all, a
| catholic order. The game here was very much the King of
| France attacking the money power of the Church, instead of an
| isolated problem with the Templars.
| WeylandYutani wrote:
| The pope and the Catholic church lost its power a few
| centuries later. Eventually in Europe everything was subsumed
| by the government creating all powerful nation states.
| Eleison23 wrote:
| dgb23 wrote:
| > International banks have spearheaded an absolute explosion
| in global economic growth.
|
| I assumed it's the other way around. Economic growth comes
| from technical and cultural advancements. Banks are a symptom
| of that growth.
| ace32229 wrote:
| I disagree it is that clear-cut (including GP's inversion).
| Access to credit is essential to businesses and governments
| (and individuals).
| dgb23 wrote:
| Wasn't credit invented before banks were?
| acchow wrote:
| > Economic growth comes from technical and cultural
| advancements.
|
| At the frontier (fully developed economies operating at the
| current max GDP per capita).
|
| For developing economies, it is just expanding our existing
| technological advancements into their systems
| FredPret wrote:
| Banks are a massively significant cultural innovation. I
| can pay someone in a different country by pressing a button
| and it's a reliable, robust system.
|
| In those days, it was a huge deal to be able to pay a
| merchant in France by giving gold, or even a paper
| representing ownership of gold, to a bank in England.
| Before, you had to send the money on a ship and hope for
| the best.
|
| International banks led to a massive explosion in trade and
| global prosperity.
| dgb23 wrote:
| Or is it advancements in communication technology that
| enables what you describe? What makes a bank an
| international bank?
| FredPret wrote:
| Not really. An international bank is one legal entity in
| two places. If you deposit 1 kg of gold in place A, your
| business partner can withdraw it in place B, minus fees
| of course. The bank still has to transfer the gold to
| make up the difference at a later date. The benefit is
| the merchants don't have to do this themselves anymore.
|
| Think of it as shipping-gold-as-a-service.
| motohagiography wrote:
| Too bad so few popular and reliable records exist, as I would be
| really interested in what their leverage ratio was for loans to
| deposits, what calendar they used to synchronize everywhere in
| the world (presumably astronomical), whether the Templars picked
| it up by learning and adapting Islamic Hawala during the
| crusades, what the Medicis did differently (covered a bit in
| Fergusson's The Ascent of Money). The necessary conditions for
| their early portfolio risk management practices would be
| fascinating, and probably even available in surviving Islamic
| texts.
|
| The vow of poverty seemed to be the lynchpin of templar banking,
| where the way to solve the basic principal/agent problem and
| ensure the alignment of interests to make the templars
| disinterested in the transactions themselves other than ensuring
| their integrity. Relating to money with a vow of poverty doesn't
| mean suffering, it's just a vow to eschew the trappings and
| symbols of wealth, as the whole system relied on Templars
| recognizing that they did not need money when instead they had
| power. They could afford to be humble. This problem of how to
| find and prove people who can be trusted to uphold higher values
| that create stability continues to today I'm sure.
|
| If you are ever in Portugal, I recommend seeing the last Templar
| castle in Tomar. I found its scale and engineering quite
| spectacular, as well as how well it appears to have been
| preserved.
| yucky wrote:
| > whether the Templars picked it up by learning and adapting
| Islamic Hawala during the crusades
|
| Doubtful. Money lenders/changers existed long before Islam
| (something about Jesus flipping their tables over in the
| Temple), and Hawala from my understanding is a flat commission
| based service (not interest based), since usury is forbidden.
| motohagiography wrote:
| Christianity forbids usury as well, hence why hawala seemed
| like a plausible candidate system for how the Templar banking
| system may have scaled. Interest calculations are
| complicated, where something simple like a commission scales
| easily. Given what we know now about economics and how
| systems scale, it seems like there is a systems view of the
| necessary conditions that might shed some new light on some
| history that has a lot of woo around it.
| yucky wrote:
| > Christianity forbids usury as well
|
| I don't believe this is correct. Admittedly I'm agnostic
| though, so I may be mistaken. But I've studied the subject
| quite a bit as an outsider.
| labster wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usury#Christianity
|
| It sure looks like direct words from Jesus to me, not to
| expect anything in return for a loan. It's just that
| Christian culture chose to ignore this rule in exchange
| for capitalism and colonialism.
| yucky wrote:
| That doesn't at all read as being forbidden. It reads
| like Jesus giving advice to people to give freely and not
| expect anything return. Not seeing any Thou Shalt Not's
| or other sternly worded proclamations. Which is probably
| why all of their early church councils were split on the
| subject. As opposed to stealing, killing, adultery etc.
| which everyone was in agreement on based on the
| scripture.
|
| Contrast that with the usury wordings in Islamic
| scripture where it is treated essentially the same as
| stealing, and it's not worded as a friendly suggestion
| but rather a strict proclamation. Those differences in
| scripture make it clear why the different religions see
| it so differently.
| Retric wrote:
| This doesn't seem to ban interest instead denouncing
| expectation of any payments including principal
| repayments. Though the nuance is clearly lost when
| converting from the original text to English. It's
| interesting framing because the question becomes if X is
| a good thing is not X automatically a bad thing or could
| it be neutral?
|
| "And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment,
| what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners,
| expecting to be repaid in full. But love your enemies, do
| good to them, and _lend to them, expecting nothing in
| return._ Then your reward will be great, and you will be
| sons of the Most High; for He is kind to the ungrateful
| and wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is
| merciful." - Luke 6:34-36 NIV
|
| The Old Testament's anti interest framing is quoted as
| "making a profit off a loan from a poor person is
| exploiting that person (Exodus 22:25-27)" alternative
| translations: https://www.biblehub.com/exodus/22-25.htm
| but poor person is an interesting exception. Loaning
| money to a rich person is hardly exploiting them so a
| Bentley dealership offering car loans on 250,000 car
| seems perfectly acceptable.
| pessimizer wrote:
| The temptation to make a theological argument is a
| distraction here. The fact is that Catholicism thought
| that interest was a sin for a very long time, so
| Christians weren't allowed to do it. It's the only reason
| that Jews are slandered with accusations of usury,
| because they were the only Europeans allowed to openly
| make a living lending money.
| Retric wrote:
| The theological argument is simply context to understand
| why the Church changed it's mind between 325 and 1311. It
| then changed again between 1311 and now. And of course
| why the Eastern Christian perspective on usury is yet
| again different.
|
| This stuff is really caught up on more fundamental
| philosophical changes over huge stretches of time.
| Someone outside of western culture reading the text as
| written would presumably miss the argument around
| interest and instead view it as a setup for the final
| line _Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful._
| While someone within the culture sees echoes of arguments
| going back thousands of years.
|
| PS: No offense meant if your belief system is based on
| the assumption that this stuff is unchanged through time.
| geye1234 wrote:
| Catholicism teaches that usury is morally evil and
| therefore always wrong. 'Usury' means taking any amount
| of interest on a full-recourse loan (ie a loan where the
| collateral is not limited to a particular asset or set of
| assets -- so yes, it includes credit cards, student loans
| and most mortgages).
|
| [O]ur Lord, according to Luke the evangelist, has bound
| us by a clear command that we ought not to expect any
| addition to the capital sum when we grant a loan. For,
| that is the real meaning of usury: when, from its use, a
| thing which produces nothing is applied to the acquiring
| of gain and profit without any work, any expense or any
| risk.
|
| - Lateran V
|
| [The following proposition is condemned as erroneous:]
| Since ready cash is more valuable than that to be paid,
| and since there is no one who does not consider ready
| cash of greater worth than future cash, a creditor can
| demand something beyond the principal from the borrower,
| and for this reason be excused from usury. - Various
| Errors on Moral Subjects (II), Pope Innocent XI by decree
| of the Holy Office, March 4, 1679 (Denzinger)
|
| One cannot condone the sin of usury by arguing that the
| gain is not great or excessive, but rather moderate or
| small; neither can it be condoned by arguing that the
| borrower is rich; nor even by arguing that the money
| borrowed is not left idle, but is spent usefully, either
| to increase one's fortune, to purchase new estates, or to
| engage in business transactions. - Vix Pervenit,
| encyclical of Benedict XIV
|
| More here if anyone's interested:
| https://tinyurl.com/2f6dkh5p
| yucky wrote:
| It looks like the Catholics don't consider _any_ interest
| to be usurious, only _excessive_ interest (which leaves a
| lot of wiggle room).
| zdragnar wrote:
| That's directly contradicting the Pope:
|
| > One cannot condone the sin of usury by arguing that the
| gain is not great or excessive
|
| from the parent comment
| yucky wrote:
| Well not quite. On page 32 of their Annual Report you can
| see in the income statement where they are earning
| millions in interest[0].
|
| [0] http://www.ior.va/content/ior/en/media/annual-
| report/annual-...
| waihtis wrote:
| > If you are ever in Portugal, I recommend seeing the last
| Templar castle in Tomar. I found its scale and engineering
| quite spectacular, as well as how well it appears to have been
| preserved.
|
| Thank you for the tip. Absolutely stunning in the pictures
| alone, made a note to visit this place.
| tasuki wrote:
| > If you are ever in Portugal, I recommend seeing the last
| Templar castle in Tomar. I found its scale and engineering
| quite spectacular, as well as how well it appears to have been
| preserved.
|
| The Templar castle in Tomar was probably my best sightseeing
| experience, maybe because I wasn't expecting anything (her:
| "there's a templar castle let's go", me: "ok"). It was quite
| large and there were surprisingly few tourists: I think there
| were two other pairs visiting at the same time. Yes there's the
| window and the architecture is quite varied, but the general
| atmosphere, the vastness and the quitness is something I'll
| never forget.
| ww520 wrote:
| Didn't the Templar lend to the kings? The kings conspired to
| not return the money by banning and killing them.
| dav_Oz wrote:
| > _They can use their international reach to try to sidestep
| taxes and regulations. And, since their debts to each other are a
| very real kind of private money, when the banks are fragile, the
| entire monetary system of the world also becomes vulnerable. We
| are still trying to figure out what to do with these banks. We
| cannot live without them, it seems, and yet we are not sure we
| want to live with them. Governments have long sought ways to hold
| them in check. Sometimes the approach has been laissez-faire,
| sometimes not. Few regulators have been quite as ardent as King
| Philip IV of France._
|
| Very interesting leaps taken to come to the conclusion that
| Philip IV ("government") was trying to "regulate" the private
| money sector, back then.
|
| First of all he waged very costly wars (against Aragon, England
| and Flanders) and found himself - no surprise - with unmanageable
| debt i.e. not enough silver (also a very important difference
| between today's "banking") in 1295. By that time even the
| Templars hadn't enough money to help him out so he began to loan
| from the much richer Florentine bankers and to devalue his own
| royal currency (tied to silver) with the high price of social
| unrest/domestic instability.
|
| The crackdown on Templars preceded a power struggle with the
| clergy (a common theme in the centuries before and afterwards)
| represented by the pope Boniface VIII. Long story short: Philip
| IV won and consequently established the nearly 70 years long so
| called "Avignon Papacy". The next pope Clement V was basically
| under his thumb. Only in this greater context could he go on and
| "restructure" the "Templar Banks", technically the property of
| the Church.
|
| Of course in this cascade of perpetual debt and wars he utilized
| all his domestic "regulatory" powers[0]: constantly raising taxes
| (1289), seizing assets of Lombard merchants (1292), heavily
| debasing currency (1295), unheard/provocative taxation (50%) of
| the French clergy (1296), expelling Jews and seizing all their
| assets (1306).
|
| [0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_IV_of_France#Finance_..
| .
| coliveira wrote:
| > he waged very costly wars
|
| Kings of the time didn't think of the modern trick: (1) making
| gold useless to make tax payments and (2) creating your own
| fiat money, with no backing on anything but the power to make
| more wars.
| dalbasal wrote:
| We're in a time when histories of money attract a bit more
| interest. We are exiting a period where theoretical/rhetorical
| histories^ are a little less dominant.
|
| In any case, it's interesting how often religion is deeply
| involved in what we would now call the financial services sector.
| In many ancient civilisations, temples minted coins and performed
| other banking-esque functions. Many ancient law codes dedicate a
| lot of ink to debt, and debt-related things.
|
| I wonder how much of the Templars' methods were picked up in the
| Mediterranean and Levant, where civilisation was deep rooted and
| continuous.
|
| ^I want to use the term "pseudohistory," but without the
| accusatory implications. What I mean is models with thought
| experiment at their core. EG historical materialism, Smith, etc
| verisimi wrote:
| Those wonderful knights templar! Brave Christian crusaders!
| Warrior monks!
|
| > Our financial system today has a lot in common with this model.
|
| This bit might be true, but what was the real story?
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| > what was the real story?
|
| Some of the grittier truth may be about political expediency of
| taming "knights". Monty Python caricatures aside, until (and
| beyond) the Templars, many were marauding bands of privateers
| looting their way around Europe. Sending them off to do God's
| work while letting them play at "banking" the spoils was
| probably a neat solution to not having a standing army, but
| still keeping a cadre of loyal battle-hardened dudes on a
| string.
|
| When their use expired, as maturing nation states found them
| less convenient, King Philip IV ordered them rounded up
| (apocryphally on Friday 13th) in a betrayal I think George
| Lucas adapted as the fate of The "Jedi".
| tgv wrote:
| The Templars were not set up to send off bandits and do God's
| work. They started as protection for pilgrimage, set up an
| system to move funds from Europe into the Holy Land to
| support their work (which included hiring quite a few
| mercenaries), which turned into banking, and were half-
| coerced into some of the Crusades (notably not the first),
| because they were indeed the experienced, hardened and loyal
| soldiers that were needed. But they did not "bank" the
| spoils, and regular Crusaders weren't roaming thieves either.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Fun fact, everytime to see a stone sculpture of a knight on
| a tomb with his feet crossed, it means he was involved in
| pillaging and whatnot in the holly lands. So yes, they
| deffinietly were pillaging thieves. Just look up hoe the
| Doge of Venice got them to divert to nowaday Istanbul and
| pillaged it to repay their debt to Venice.
| tgv wrote:
| Yes, they did. But their banking operations did not
| consist of pillage.
|
| > Just look up hoe the Doge of Venice got them to divert
| to nowaday Istanbul
|
| You're not talking about the Templars, are you?
| hef19898 wrote:
| No, not the knight templars. Rather crusaders in general,
| excluding the children's crusade of course.
|
| The templars were incredibly well organized.
| atchoo wrote:
| Nah, that's a popular myth. I too was told it as a child
| but I understand the real reason is much more mundane...
| it's easier to sculpt. Creating realistic looking legs
| out straight requires under-cutting and they still look
| kinda "off" so crossing the legs was a bit of hack to
| improve realism without delicate work.
|
| http://the-history-girls.blogspot.com/2016/02/cross-your-
| leg...
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| > regular Crusaders weren't roaming thieves either
|
| Absolutely not. From what I've read they were
| extraordinarily disciplined. My point was that "knights"
| more generally until then, are mischaracterised as "good
| and noble" but were really freelancers [1]. The Templars
| obtained a better defined security role.
|
| [1] just occurred to me there may be some etymology there.
|
| EDIT: Aha! https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-
| play/freelance-orig...
| bazoom42 wrote:
| > regular Crusaders weren't roaming thieves either
|
| They certainly plundered and murdered. But I guess it could
| be questioned if they "roamed"?
| tgv wrote:
| By profession. The parent comment implied that the
| Templars and/or Crusaders were bandits sent off to do
| God's work. That was not the case.
| docdeek wrote:
| > If you had been at the great fair of Lyon in 1555, you could
| have seen the answer. Lyon's fair was the greatest market for
| international trade in all Europe.
|
| This is interesting to me as I live in the city and it's long
| been a center for trade, geographically positioned on two major
| rivers and with access to Paris, Switzerland, and Italy. Try as I
| might, though, I can't Google up anything about that fair in 1555
| - does anyone have a link to a Wikipedia-style/level article
| about it?
| noja wrote:
| This? https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foires_de_Lyon
| blowski wrote:
| Interestingly, the English equivalent of that page describes
| an event that's been happening only since 1985.
| rozenmd wrote:
| There's a fairly significant amount of information locked
| away in language-specific Wikipedia - many French things
| have a stub article in English, and an absolute essay in
| French
| halfbrite wrote:
| The Foires de Lyon are likely being referenced, but that
| specific year is more than likely a reference to the Grand
| Parti de Lyon -- which was neither a party or a faire.
| docdeek wrote:
| Thanks - the Grand Parti de Lyon was what I was finding when
| I was searching and it didn't align with the idea of the
| Foires I was expecting to find.
| teleforce wrote:
| I'm pretty sure they got this 'original' idea from the practice
| of their Muslim contemporaries. This is a very similar concept to
| the origin of cheque where it's too dangerous to carry gold and
| cash along the silk road from Middle East countries to China and
| beyond.
| herodoturtle wrote:
| > This is a very similar concept to the origin of cheque where
| it's too dangerous to carry gold and cash along the silk road
| from Middle East countries to China and beyond.
|
| Spot on.
|
| It's actually mentioned in the article:
|
| "The Templars were not the first organisation in the world to
| provide such a service. Several centuries earlier, Tang dynasty
| China used "feiquan" - flying money - a two-part document
| allowing merchants to deposit profits in a regional office, and
| reclaim their cash back in the capital."
| alimw wrote:
| The word "original" does not appear so I don't know why you've
| put it in quotes. Indeed you don't have to read very far down
| the article to find acknowledgement that something similar had
| been done centuries earlier in China.
|
| Edit: I see the headline (probably written by someone other
| than the author) says they "invented banking". There are of
| course many claims to that dubious honour!
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Would you know if the Templars charged interest? On the other
| hand, I believe I've read somewhere The Koran forbids charging
| interest. But perhaps I am mistaken?
| notakio wrote:
| They are also historically credited with inventing usury, so
| presumably yes. This describes the situation fairly
| accurately: https://thetemplarknight.com/2010/12/22/templar-
| usury/
|
| Essentially, the Roman Catholic Church turned a blind eye to
| the Templars usury, largely because of the value provided by
| the Templars in enabling an endless stream of warriors for
| Christendom. They did set some arbitrary limits on the
| amounts that were permissible, but didn't have much in the
| way of methods of auditing or enforcement.
| bazoom42 wrote:
| Surely they didn't _invent_ ursury if it was already
| forbidden by mosaic law?
| goodcanadian wrote:
| Note that the article does not discuss loans, _per se_
| (although, the Templars also got involved in that). It is
| more an international money transfer and currency exchange
| service. No doubt, the Templars charged hefty fees for their
| services, but they did not class any of it as interest as
| usury was definitely considered a sin for Christians at the
| time (as it still is in Islam).
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Stupid question, but wouldn't stealing a cheque work back then?
| I mean I can imagine only known people would be allowed to cash
| it. Plus there's more benefits to carrying a cheque, large
| quantities get difficult to move around (same with cash money,
| which is one reason that higher denominations are discouraged)
| wahern wrote:
| I'm not sure if the rules were the same as far back as then,
| but the modern rule (or rules, plural, as they're a
| consequence of several rules) that a bank (either the drawee
| bank or an intermediate paying/depository bank, depending on
| the circumstances) is liable for a fraudulently cashed check
| has existed for centuries, IIRC. And just like today, it
| doesn't much matter if an impersonator forged a payee's or
| endorsee's signature, amount, etc; a bank is still on the
| hook. (And IIRC a bank is liable only upon a prima facie
| showing of forgery, as opposed to whatever stronger burden of
| proof would normally adhere.) Of course, the defrauding party
| is liable to which ever bank was on the hook, but the rules
| operate to rather clearly make a bank strictly liable in the
| first instance so there's minimal confusion in the banking
| system regarding settlements or settlement disputes, and the
| drawer (person who wrote the check) is the most protected of
| all.
|
| This incentivizes banks to "know your customer" (long before
| modern regulatory regimes), as well as for banks to only deal
| with other reputable banks. In legal jurisdictions that do a
| lot of international commercial transactions, rules such as
| these are typically held paramount unless specifically and
| clearly overridden by local law. Relatedly, jurisdictions
| that don't abide the so-called Lex mercatoria tend not to
| become centers of international commerce.
|
| If the drawer weren't strongly protected, the utility of
| checks would severely diminished.
| atchoo wrote:
| Interesting question. I've read books about the Templars and
| it didn't come up. Some speculation:
|
| Worth bearing in mind the type of people using this service
| were landed gentry. A Turkish bandit wouldn't do well turning
| up at a Templar fortress trying to redeem some French
| Lordlings's gold but you still have to expect unscrupulous
| Europeans would be stealing from each other.
|
| I'd expect the KYC was pretty strong at the issuers that
| handled gold/property. Your family would be known, not just
| the individual. I think they were redeeming
| food/lodgings/services while on route so defrauding a remote
| fortresses might not be at all rewarding. To score big I
| think you'd need to present as landed gentry at places like
| London which sounds hard... your target would need to have no
| friends/relations... but it's the premise of 1000s of
| historical fiction novels so eh?!
|
| Wax seals and such were the authentication tools at the time.
| It might hobble attempted fakes but I would assume thieves
| would steal the cygnet rings and such too. I've seen claims
| the Templars used cyphers but that type of history gets
| blurred with the romantic stories. Encoding a password onto
| the cheque seems painfully obvious to us today.
|
| I imagine there was a chain of custody of the person
| themselves. Templars were protecting the pilgrims not just
| their gold so they accompanied them from location to location
| so the chance of someone unknown turning up at a gate with
| cheques to cash is less likely. I also imagine they were in
| groups with others of similar stature with similar
| arrangements so the difference between an authentic wealthy
| traveller and a chancer might be quite vast. I imagine there
| was a network of letters between Templar sites tracking the
| notable Lords so faking your way into someone else's identity
| would be quite tricky.
|
| From what I gather, it foremost may simply have been a risk
| based business where the vast profit covered the losses.
| hef19898 wrote:
| It sure worked. One of the reasons the value of those cheques
| dropped with distance to the issuer. Basically, it was a
| trust based system. And one that worked extremely well. With
| added benefits for those that figured out proper accounting
| around assets, liabilities and so on. The Italian bankers
| did, the Hanse (North German economic and trade super power
| made of individual merchants) did not, for example.
| kqr wrote:
| A cheque would be both easier to travel with (thus exposing
| yourself to less harm) but also comparatively illquid (can
| perhaps only be redeemed in a few locations which may not be
| realistically accessible to highwaymen).
| seanhunter wrote:
| If you ever come to London I would highly recommend a visit to
| that area[1]. take the district line to "Temple" and walk into
| temple court. This is a set of interconnecting pretty courtyards
| surrounded by buildings used as offices for lawyers working at
| the nearby high court. These courtyards have a feel similar to an
| Oxford/Cambridge college and have been used as settings for
| "Harry Potter" and other films (to give you a flavour). As you
| wander through, eventually you will come across a statue of two
| knights on the back of a single horse, symbol of the templars[2].
| Next to this is the Temple Church[3], with its distinctive round
| medieval tower where the templars themselves are buried. This is
| a lovely place to listen to concerts etc. I used to deliberately
| get the tube to temple every day so I could walk through this
| area to work because it's really lovely.
|
| [1] https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=18/51.51245/-0.11150
|
| [2] This is the scene in the main photo in TFA
|
| [3] https://www.templechurch.com/
| twic wrote:
| Just as the City of London is a weird little legal fossil
| within London, the Inns are even weirder legal fossils within
| the City:
|
| https://www.middletemple.org.uk/about-us/freedom-information...
|
| The practical consequences are extremely minor - but the Inner
| and Middle temples can give themselves planning permission, and
| issue themselves alcohol licenses!
| traceroute66 wrote:
| > This is a set of interconnecting pretty courtyards surrounded
| by building
|
| Yes, London is quite unique amongst global cities for having
| these sorts of treasures hidden right in the centre. Another
| good example in that area is Linconln's Inn Fields[1] which is
| a quiet sanctuary just off the horrors of Holborn. Venture up
| the road to the City of London and there are maybe dozens more.
|
| It is, sadly, an art form that has been lost in the "relaxed
| planning" era of the New-Build garbage.
|
| Fortunately the older areas are protected from the grubby hands
| of the greedy property developers due to various legal
| constraints in place ranging from Listed Building status to
| more obscure ones.
|
| [1]https://goo.gl/maps/YxAnXeDBsiv9dkRH7
| mathnmusic wrote:
| Streetview link:
| https://www.google.com/maps/@51.5130263,-0.1102586,3a,75y,98...
| dools wrote:
| Not so much the first bank, but the first PayPal.
| hef19898 wrote:
| The term "bank" comes from literal banks that served as a bank
| to sit on and a box to keep money in. PayPal is just a
| glorified cheque processor.
| dools wrote:
| The term "bank" comes from the Italian word "il banco" which
| is a bench or counter top. It is a reference to the original
| money changers who sat on benches and provided financial
| services to merchants. Those services, which were the origins
| of banking, were mostly about issuing loans and changing
| money.
|
| The services rendered as described in the original article
| are of a payment system which allows you to deposit cash in
| one location and withdraw it in another. This is far more
| similar to the service provided by PayPal, than it is to the
| primary service provided by a bank which is to issue loans,
| and to be sanctioned by the state in order to do so.
| twic wrote:
| Of course back then it was just Papal.
| onion2k wrote:
| I can't wait for "Assassin's Creed: Excel" to really capture the
| spirit of this.
| louthy wrote:
| Is that part of 'Assassin's Creed: Office 365'?
| 867-5309 wrote:
| for now, you can play _Broken Sword: The Shadow of the
| Templars_
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_Sword:_The_Shadow_of_th...
| Cognitron wrote:
| This game happens to be free on gog.com today:
|
| https://www.gog.com/#giveaway
|
| scroll down a little
| antihero wrote:
| Make it "Assassin's Creed: ExCeL" so we can have a DLR level.
| robot9000 wrote:
| ValentineC wrote:
| You could name them, because I have no idea if you're referring
| to modern-day bankers, the lawyers who took over their
| premises, or some other organisation.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| Almost certainly an anti-Semitic trope.
|
| But perhaps they are referencing Huguenots:
| https://www.huguenotsociety.org.uk/blog/huguenots-and-the-
| wo...
| twic wrote:
| He can only mean the Templi Resurgentes Equites Synarchici.
| The less said of whom, the better.
| mherdeg wrote:
| A distant predecessor of Tristero, no doubt.
| barbecue_sauce wrote:
| The Order of Christ?
| dang wrote:
| Sorry, but you can't do this here. Since your account has
| posted unsubstantive and flamebait comments in quite a few
| other contexts too, I've banned it.
|
| If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email
| hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll
| follow the rules in the future. They're here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Nice article. Wish they had gone on to cover Cosimo Medici! He
| was the best. Inventing banking and then using the profits to
| fund the renaissance? Need people like that today.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| > Need people like that today.
|
| Florentine maecenas were no different from billionaires today
| chasing each other in space races.
|
| They didn't sponsor artists for the sake of art but rather as a
| display of wealth and power.
|
| Edit: I am clarifying intention here, it does not mean that the
| side effects don't have a net positive, but they are unlikely
| to come from a purely altruistic place.
| bazoom42 wrote:
| > They didn't sponsor artists for the sake of art but rather
| as a display of wealth and power.
|
| Perhaps, but we still got the art.
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| Although many so-called "nobles" certainly funded the arts
| for such vain purposes, I guarantee that many other nobles
| were funding art for its own noble sake.
| recuter wrote:
| Pardon me, so? Back to the dark ages?
| HeckFeck wrote:
| We can never know the exact intention of anyone, especially
| figures long in the past.
|
| I find it hard to believe that wealthy eccentrics didn't (or
| don't) enjoy things for their own sake. If you have a pile of
| money and the chance to create something great, that'd fill
| you with wild excitement I can only imagine.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Cynicism aside, the renaissance was a real phenomenon. Among
| many other things, Cosimo Medici restarted the Academy,
| hiring the philosopher Marsilio Ficino to translate Plato
| (which had been lost to the west for nearly 1000 years),
| Plotinus, Hermes Trismegistus, etc. The reintroduction of
| classical ideas and modes of thought had a profound impact on
| the development of Europe over the next 200 years.
|
| Meanwhile, many of Ficino's own philosophical books remain
| untranslated today...
|
| (Btw, if this is anyone else's interest, I've helped to
| translate Ficino's philosophy of pleasure: https://docs.googl
| e.com/document/d/1RZYHWmptuPbpZcUbDdqNvBJD...)
| fooker wrote:
| >Inventing banking and then using the profits to fund the
| renaissance?
|
| How about productizing electric cars and satellite internet to
| fund space exploration?
| s3000 wrote:
| >Inventing banking and then using the profits to fund the
| renaissance? Need people like that today.
|
| When it comes to culture, do we still need funding? The
| internet offers connection and replication.
|
| What is preventing the people with the right skills from coming
| together and creating the next level of civilization?
| dragonelite wrote:
| In 2022 its influencers and fake news peddler which the
| oligarchs sponsor.
| sofixa wrote:
| Well those people still need to eat, have a roof over their
| head, etc. so that they live comfortable enough lives to be
| able to create whatever it is they're creating.
| s3000 wrote:
| When somebody offers food and shelter, people will fill the
| space and they will create whatever that person asks them
| to do. They will create Netflix productions and Google chat
| apps and Meta VR spaces.
|
| The internet allows people to connect without the initial
| need for funding. If funding is needed, the internet makes
| it possible for a team to discover investors and
| foundations that would add financial support.
|
| The limiting factor are not resources but teams.
| imtringued wrote:
| We need money not for funding, but rather to organize the
| division of labor. The strange thing is that money does
| not come with obligations to those holding it, only
| privileges, so it can be withheld from the market,
| leading to the appearance that there is a lack of
| funding.
| Neil44 wrote:
| I did a walking tour of Bruges the other week and heard an
| interesting story about salt. Salt was a valuable commodity and
| could function as currency, carrying it around was risky and
| impractical. So there was a guild house that became a place where
| you could store your salt and get given a little note about how
| much salt they owed you. Later on if you wanted to exchange the
| value of your salt with someone else it became more practical to
| swap the little notes directly rather than trek down to the salt
| house and swap physical salt so people started doing that. Boom,
| paper money. I find all these kind of stories fascinating.
| luxpir wrote:
| It's where the term "salary" came from, if I'm not mistaken.
| Roman thing?
| eyko wrote:
| You're correct. Funny enough, this is also obscure knowledge
| even in e.g Spanish. We use the word salario (from latin
| salarium) which has the same meaning as in latin: words
| ending in -ario (lat: -arium) is used to denote association,
| like in templario (templar) or revolucionario
| (revolutionary). For some reason, however, nobody thinks of
| "salario" as something associated with salt (sal). I guess
| it's so strange in today's world that money would be used for
| the specific purpose of buying salt, that it simply doesn't
| click.
| mudita wrote:
| This blog by a classicist claims that the word salary is
| indeed coming from the latin words salarium and sal, but
| that it is not clear what the connection is, that there is
| neither evidence for the explanation that Roman soldiers
| were paid in salt nor that it was an allowance for the
| specific purpose of buying salt:
|
| http://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/2017/01/salt-and-
| salary.ht...
|
| Regarding the latter he writes:
|
| "As I said above, 'salt allowance' isn't a terrible guess.
| But I strongly suspect it's much more metaphorical than
| that. Compare how the Greek word for a salary was opsonion,
| literally '(money) for buying opson', where opson means
| 'fish, relish, sauce'. That doesn't mean Greek workers were
| given a 'fish allowance': it means that there was a
| generalised idea that wages went on traded goods like fish,
| and not on things like barley which land-owners would grow
| for themselves. Similarly, in Rome, grain allowances were a
| common thing; it could easily make sense to interpret
| salarium as 'everything-else-money'."
| prox wrote:
| In the book on the history of Rome, Livy states : "Again,
| the monopoly of salt, the price of which was very high,
| was taken out of the hands of individuals and wholly
| assumed by the government. Imposts and taxes were removed
| from the plebs that they might be borne by the well-to-
| do, who were equal to the burden: the poor paid dues
| enough if they reared children."
| [deleted]
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| Also, the phrase "worth their salt".
|
| It's funny how sometimes these things are hidden in plain
| sight. I bet the average person would expect a more complex
| etymology for that phrase.
| didericis wrote:
| I wonder how difficult it would be to extract this kind of
| evolutionary history from LLMs.
| Eleison23 wrote:
| [deleted]
| photochemsyn wrote:
| The actual title of this article is "The warrior monks who
| invented banking", but there is a fairly extensive literature on
| Roman banking dating back at least 1000 years previously:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_finance
|
| In particular, the Sulpicii of Puteoli left some records of what
| look like modern banking practices:
|
| https://www.world-archaeology.com/books/bankers-of-puteoli-t...
|
| > "Much of the business of the Sulpicii consisted of short term
| loans, of amounts ranging from PS1,000 to PS20,000 and for
| periods of up to a month - for the sake of simplicity, I am
| reckoning a sesterce as being the equivalent of PS1. A number of
| loans took place at auction sales - for these were a large part
| of the activity of a Roman forum - a Roman forum must have been
| very much like e-Bay. A banking house would manage the auction
| and supply immediate payment to the vendor, but would allow the
| purchaser several days to pay; if more time was needed, this
| could be provided at a cost."
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