“A priest refused to bury the body of a usurer, one of his parishioners, who had died without making restitution. Since the dead usurer’s friends were very insistent, the priest yielded to their pressure and said, ‘Let us put his body on a donkey and see God’s will, and what He will do with the body. Wherever the donkey takes it, be it a church, a cemetery, or elsewhere, there will I bury it.’ The body was placed upon the donkey which without deviating either to the right or left, took it straight out of town to the place where thieves are hanged from the gibbet, and with a hearty buck, sent the cadaver flying into the dung beneath the gallows.” - Jacques de Vitry, Exempla 177, ca. 1215.

An anecdote from David Graeber’s new book “Debt: The First 5,000 Years”