Censi, livelli and rents: the instruments of rural credit

The censo in the valleys

In the parishes of the bailiwicks and the Ambrosian valleys, the censo was the ordinary form of long-term credit from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. A peasant who needed money to buy land, to pay a dowry, to settle an inheritance, to buy cattle or to survive a bad harvest sold to the lender an annual rent charged on one of his fields, meadows or vineyards. The lender paid the capital in cash. The peasant kept the land and paid the agreed rent every year. He could redeem the rent at any time by repaying the capital. The lender, by contrast, could not demand the capital back as long as the rent was paid. On default he could sue for the arrears and have the land seized and sold, but under Cum onus he could not stipulate that the land would pass to him automatically.¹

The deed was drawn up by a notary. It identified the parties, the land with its boundaries, the capital, the rent and the date of payment. It stated that the rent was a censo in conformity with the bull of Pius V, a formula that appears in thousands of notarial deeds across Lombardy after 1569 and that served to protect the lender against the charge of usury. The rate of the rent was usually expressed as a percentage of the capital. In the Confederation the rates of redeemable annuities had fallen from about seven to five per cent in the late Middle Ages, five per cent became the fixed rate for money interest and land rents in the early modern period, and in the seventeenth century rates temporarily fell to three or four per cent or even less, despite the prohibitions. In Romagna, the best-studied Italian case, the rate of the censi oscillated around four to six per cent in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Everywhere the rate varied with the quality of the security and the standing of the debtor.² Since the censo was secured on land and recorded by a notary, it could be sold, inherited, given as dowry and bequeathed to a church. A portfolio of censi was a portfolio of secured fixedincome claims. The wealthier families, convents, confraternities and benefices of the valleys held such portfolios.

The censo had economic consequences that can still be traced. Because it was redeemable only by the debtor, the lender bore the risk of early repayment when rates fell and the risk of being locked in when rates rose. Because the rent was charged on land, the economic value of the security determined the volume of credit a peasant could obtain. Because the creditor could not demand repayment, peasant indebtedness tended to become permanent and to pass from generation to generation with the land. Studies of Italian regions show the proliferation of censi amid widespread peasant indebtedness in the sixteenth century and their role as the main credit instrument of the countryside in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.³

Notes

1. Bolognesi, "Attività di prestito e congiuntura" (above), 284–285, on the requirements of Cum onus. ↩
2. Gilomen and Dubler, "Usura" (above): "tassi delle rendite redimibili" falling from about 7 to 5 %, 5 % as fixed maximum in the early modern period, a temporary fall "al 3-4% o anche meno" in the seventeenth century; Bolognesi (as above), on Ravenna: "il saggio di interesse generalmente adottato, oscillante attorno al 4-6 per cento". ↩
3. Bolognesi (as above), 284–285. ↩

For general information only. This article does not constitute legal or tax advice, does not replace advice on an individual case and creates no lawyer-client relationship. It reflects the legal position as of August 2025.