Bloodlines and banks

Dan Brown has a new book.  His previous book
"The Da Vinci Code" was a huge best-seller.
Brown's books are written using semi-historical
backdrops for his cliffhanger stories.

His "holy bloodline" plot-line has a FVN-related
real banking story --

The Bible has a passage that discourages lending
money with usury or interest to "your brother".
http://www.tentmaker.org/lists/UsuryScriptureList.html

But, people still want to borrow money occasionally.
So, of course, there was hair-splitting on the
definition of "your brother".  Somebody in your
family? In your community?  Hard to draw a line.
Eventually, it was settled as "in your religion".
So Christians couldn't lend to another Christian.

But ... that pushed the question to 'what is a loan?'.

As a result, pawn shops and lombard banks thrived.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lombard_banking

Lombards were a German tribe that conquered Italy

about 600AD and, being non-Christian, could lend.

In France, about the time of the First Crusade in 1099,
the Jews were thrown out. After losing the Jewish-run

pawn shops, the Catholic Church set up Templar Houses
which were run by the Knights Templar.

Templar Houses expanded beyond loans to individuals

and made big loans to governments.

Governments of that era are like current ones and

quickly over-spent themselves into huge debt levels.

This is where the Dan Brown holy bloodline comes in.

The French King was deeply in debt to the Knights

Templar and was pushing for control over it. In response

the Templars claimed it found a blood line connection

from Jesus to a rival family of the French King. That

seemed to trump the "divine rite" claim of the king.

Game over, right?

In response the French king killed all the Templars...