One of the most dramatic moments in the gospels is when Jesus drove the money changers out of the temple in Jerusalem. In the Gospel of John, Jesus even made a “whip of cords,” as he chased the merchants out of the temple and overturned their tables (John 2:15). Here Jesus criticized the religious economy that had developed around temple sacrifices. Money changing, for instance, was a way of keeping Roman coinage—with its idolatrous images of the deified emperor—separate from the buying and selling of animals used for temple sacrifices to the God of Israel.

Even before the Reformation, people criticized the religious economy that had developed around late medieval Christian piety and practice. Luther’s challenges of indulgences in the 95 Theses tapped into a larger sense of socio-economic skepticism about the church and its financial practices. Where Jesus is shown casting the money changers out of the temple, the pope himself is pictured as money changer in chief, writing letters of indulgence and selling them for money to the lay people at the table below. All this, of course, happens with the nodding approval of the cardinal, bishops, and monk surrounding the pope. Once again, this pair of images had made not only biblical or theological critiques of the papal church but connected it to the lived experience of the common people.