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September 13. Nicosia. Regulation against usurers of Archbishop Hugo (Ugo da Fagiano) of Cyprus, which he read to the populace in the church of Sancta Sophia after the sermon. Despite general efforts against usury, usurious contracts are made in public under the guise of simulated sales, when the person needing to borrow buys cloths, wax, silk, or other things for a price much greater than the value and then is forced to sell them to the original seller or someone else for a price much less than the value, thus being doubly deceived, receiving barely half of what is pretended to be sold or bought, the rest amounting to interest above the limit, fictitiously called a “penalty”. This deception has grown to the point where nothing is bought or sold, but a mere verbal contract is made with the names of goods unseen, untraded, or not even possessed. Sometimes a person borrowing 80 is forced to profess that he received 100, to be paid on a certain date on pain of a penalty. Generally the entire sum [of 100] is handed over before a public official, but the debtor repays part of the money [immediately] as part of the agreement. As a result, only time is sold. The archbishop sees this as a spreading cancer in Cyprus and especially in Nicosia. He has long forbidden public contracts of this sort on pain of excommunication, along with the participation of notaries and scribes in drawing them up, the serving as guarantors or debtors of knights and others, and he has forbidden the mediators, called sensales in the vernacular, from handling or promoting such contracts, called barrattas in the vulgar tongue. His efforts have had no effect, so he will deal with this with a heavier hand, not only forbidding all above participants on pain of excommunication these or similar contracts in the city and diocese of Nicosia, but also declaring them null and void, such that no one can have recourse to an ecclesiastical or even secular judge for complaints or exceptions involving these contracts, even if those making the contracts are under ecclesiastical jurisdiction or swear an oath.