Monti di Pietà in Lombardy and their absence in the bailiwicks

A Lombard institution

The Monte di Pietà was an Italian invention and remained, for most of its history, a characteristic institution of the Italian city. The first Monte was founded at Perugia in 1461–1462, where the papal governor Ermolao Barbaro is credited with its invention. Paul II approved the institution in 1467, and Franciscan preachers carried it within half a century to most cities of central and northern Italy.¹ The model was simple. A capital fund (monte, a heap or mass of money) was collected from gifts and donations, from patricians, guilds and corporate bodies and from resources assigned by the commune. From it the Monte lent small sums for terms of about a year, usually for some twothirds of the value of the pledge, against clothing, linen, tools or jewellery, which its assessors valued and which it kept in custody until redemption. A massaro directed the business, while clerks (scrivani) received the pledges and each loan was recorded on numbered receipts that identified the owner, the object, its condition, its value and the amount lent. The charge on loans, approved by the Fifth Lateran Council in 1515, was meant to cover the salaries of the officials and the costs of storage.²

In the Duchy of Milan the Monti multiplied in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The Monte of Milan was established in 1483 at the wish of Ludovico il Moro to deal with the old problem of usury and received its administrative statutes in 1496. Its first seat was in Via Santa Maria Segreta, and Bartolomeo Calco was appointed its secretary. In 1783–1786 it received a new palace by Giuseppe Piermarini on the site of the suppressed convent of Santa Chiara, which from 1808 also housed the first Milanese stock exchange (Borsa di Commercio).³ Como, Pavia, Lodi, Cremona and the smaller towns of Lombardy had their own Monti. Borromeo supported them as instruments of Christian charity and of the fight against usury, while his provincial councils regulated their administration. In 1938 Italian law reclassified the Monti as pawn-credit institutions (monti di credito su pegno), and since 1990 they have been able to merge with other credit institutions into joint-stock companies. The history of Italian banking includes many institutions that descend from a Monte di Pietà, the best known being the Monte dei Paschi di Siena, which traces its history to a Monte founded by order of the magistrates of the Republic of Siena on 4 March 1472 and is often regarded as the oldest bank in the world in continuous operation.⁴

The Monti also had a less benign side. Their foundation was regularly preceded by sermons directed against Jewish moneylenders, and in many cities the opening of a Monte was followed by restrictions on Jewish lending or by the expulsion of the Jewish community. The Franciscan Bernardino da Feltre, who founded Monti from 1484, combined their promotion with calls for the expulsion of the Jews from Italy and the Tyrol. In the Duchy of Milan, Philip II expelled the Jews in the spring of 1597, and about a thousand exiles found refuge in Mantua, Modena, Reggio, Verona and Padua. The history of the Monti is thus also part of the history of Christian anti-Judaism in Italy, a point that modern historiography has documented in detail.⁵

Notes

1. Jones, "Usury" (above), for 1461, Barbaro, the approval by Paul II in 1467 and the spread by the Franciscans; "Monte di pietà", Enciclopedia Treccani (above), for Perugia 1462 and the definition of the Monte as an institution lending "a miti condizioni, con garanzia di pegno su cose mobili". ↩
2. Fifth Lateran Council, Session 10 (above). Wikipedia (consulted as a last resort), "Mount of piety", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_of_piety, after Carol Bresnahan Menning, Charity and State in Late Renaissance Italy: The Monte di Pietà of Florence (Ithaca 1993), 58–60 (funding of the monte; loans for a year at about two-thirds of the value of the pledge; assessors, scrivani and massaro; numbered receipts). ↩
3. Regione Lombardia, Lombardia Beni Culturali, "Palazzo del Monte di Pietà", record LMD80-00288, https://lombardiabeniculturali.it/architetture/schede-complete/LMD80-00288. Monti of Como, Pavia, Lodi and Cremona. ↩
4. "Monte di pietà", Enciclopedia Treccani (above), on the designation as "monti di credito su pegno" in 1938 and the possibility of mergers into joint-stock companies since 1990; Wikipedia (consulted as a last resort), "Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banca_Monte_dei_Paschi_di_Siena ("a mount of piety (monte di pietà) founded by order of the Magistrature of the Republic of Siena on 4 March 1472"; "often regarded as being the oldest bank in the world in continuous operation"). ↩
5. Wikipedia (consulted as a last resort), "Bernardino of Feltre", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernardino_of_Feltre ("With the practical notion of establishing monts-de-piété, he called for the expulsion of Jews all over Italy and Tyrol"), and "History of the Jews in Italy", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Italy ("The king, persuaded by his confessor, expelled the Jews from Milanese territory in the spring of 1597. The exiles, numbering about 1,000, were received at Mantua, Modena, Reggio, Verona, and Padua"). For the scholarly literature see Muzzarelli (as above) and Shlomo Simonsohn, The Jews in the Duchy of Milan, 4 vols (Jerusalem 1982–1986). ↩

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 October 2026.