Thank God this doesn't apply to the Catholic Church!

[Sethomas]

I made a thread about the Crusades special, but they didn't talk about the Templar banking system. At any rate, the Templar attribution of "inventing" banking is largely exaggerated, since they didn't do anything the Jews weren't doing already. Jews were the de facto bankers since charging interest on loans was condemned by the Church, but it was popular from the consumer side through the Middle Ages regardless. As I understand the Templars just charged interest on currency exchange, which was legal for Christians. As far as their raking in the cash from protection money, that was legitimate so far as it wasn't abused. I don't know of any abuse that occurred until the time of Baldwin IV, and that was all targeted against the infidel anyways.