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The silver coins given by to the poor and needy by the English monarch defender of the faith under the Established Anglican Church only serve to prove the rule that there's something inherently bad about money, at least in Christian theology.

Unless it's delivered on a silver platter with great pomp and ceremony, that is.

Radix malorum cupiditas est, as Paul the Apostle wrote to Timothy the love of money is the root of all evil . Across the Mediterranean where Christianity had already taken shape in late Greek philosophy Longinus also blamed he gar philochrematia, the love of money , for the collapse of refined civilization.

Coined money was in fact an invention of the devil himself according to Jacob of Saroug, a bishop of the Eastern Church during the sixth century A.D.

I do not mind if the priests use their rebitha [the Syriac word for interest payments] to buy axes and smash the temple of my idols, the devil told Jacob in a vision.

The love of gold is a greater idol than any image of a [false] god...It is worth as much to me as all those idols put together! They have cast down my idols, smiled the devil, but they will never cast down the coins that we shall put in their place.

Neither of the other Abramic faiths Judaism or Islam have any such problem with cold, hard cash. The Jews of medieval Europe were even encouraged by their Christian tormentors to become money lenders. Cast out into that damnable (if lucrative) business of making money from money, they breached the teachings of Augustine and Aquinas against usury. But even the Pope needed bankers, and still does.

As for Islam, the 12th century theologian Ghazali argued by quoting the Koran that honest trade is morally preferable to self denial. Sincere merchants, agreed Ibn Jazi Al Nahai, were doing God's work (literally fighting the Holy war of jihad) in the very weights and measures they used to do business.

Death can come upon me nowhere more pleasantly, said the Caliph Umar quoted by John Buchan in his treatise on money, Frozen Desire than where I am engaged in business in the market, buying and selling for profit on behalf of my family.

How alien to that poor, broken god sold for thirty pieces of silver! And how soon forgotten and abused was his poverty by Christ's followers themselves!