Faith, Exile and Credit: Reformation and Counter-Reformation — a part of the book Lugano as an International Financial Centre by Dr Alexander Ressos.
Part B is the counterpart to the Geneva volume's part on Calvin. Ticino did not become Protestant. Its Reformed community was expelled from Locarno in 1555 and helped to found the silk industry and the banking culture of Zurich, while the Catholic reform of Carlo Borromeo shaped a different moral economy of money in the Italian-speaking south.
This part belongs to Lugano as an International Financial Centre by Dr Alexander Ressos, published here in full, section by section.
The Reformed Community of Locarno and the Exile of 1555 — overview and summary
On 3 March 1555 a little over a hundred men, women and children left Locarno on foot and on horseback. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditLocarno around 1530: a subject town on Lake Maggiore
The Reformed community of Locarno grew in a town that had been under Confederate rule for less than a generation. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditTrade on the lake and the road to the passes
The economic position of Locarno rested on the lake. Since the twelfth century the town had held market privileges: Frederick Barbarossa granted a market in 1164, and in 1186 the inhabitants received… Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditHumanism, Italian evangelism and the first Protestants, 1525–1549
The Reformation reached Locarno through books, teachers and officials. It did not arrive as a popular movement with preachers in the market square, as it had in some towns of the German-speaking… Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditA community of families
Reformed sympathies spread after 1535 among several of the leading families. The Muralto family, one of the noble houses of the capitanei, joined with other Locarnese families and with exiles from… Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditThe disputation of 1549 and the confession of 1554
For about fifteen years the Reformed of Locarno lived in a grey zone. They met privately, read Scripture and Reformed writings, corresponded with Zurich and were tolerated or ignored according to the… Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditA church without a pastor, 1549–1554
After Beccaria's departure the community was led by laymen. Taddeo Duno and Martino Muralto assumed its spiritual direction. Duno himself was not continuously present. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditTwelve sovereigns and two faiths: the federal law of religion
The fate of the Locarnese was decided in Baden, the small town on the Limmat where the Federal Diet ( Tagsatzung, Italian Dieta) normally met, by delegates who carried instructions from their… Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditThe Diet, instructions and the recesses
The Diet was a congress of envoys without the powers of a parliament. Each canton sent one or two delegates who voted according to written instructions, and decisions recorded in the recess (… Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditWhy the federal frame mattered
Three features of this federal frame shaped the outcome. The first was that no single sovereign could decide. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditThe award of 1554 and the law of departure
The arbitral decision of November 1554 is known mainly through the accounts of Ferdinand Meyer and the later literature that rests on him, together with the recesses of the Diet. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditProperty: sale, administration and claims
The Locarnese were allowed to sell their immovable property. The speed with which leading families re-established themselves in Zurich shows that they took substantial capital with them. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditSpouses, children and those who stayed
The award required decisions about households. A married man who left took his wife and minor children with him, unless his wife refused to follow him or the authorities claimed the children for the… Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditOver the Alps: the departure of March 1555 and the arrival in Zurich
The emigration of the Locarnese was a journey of about two months across two jurisdictions and one of the highest passes of the central Alps. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditReception in Zurich
Zurich had reasons to welcome the Locarnese and reasons to hesitate. The city had championed their cause at the Diet, its church regarded them as brethren, and Heinrich Bullinger had corresponded… Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditBernardino Ochino and the Italian congregation of Zurich
The Locarnese did not dissolve into the German-speaking Reformed church of Zurich. They formed their own congregation with worship in Italian, which the Zurich authorities allowed them to do so. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditVermigli, Sozzini and the Italian circle in Zurich
Zurich became, in the second half of the 1550s, the main Swiss centre of Italian Protestant learning outside Geneva and Basel. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditThe Italian Reformation and its Swiss network
The Locarnese community was one node in a network of Italian Protestants that stretched, in the middle decades of the sixteenth century, from Naples, Lucca and Venice to Geneva, Basel, Zurich,… Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditBasel: Curione, Castellio and the printers
Basel offered something that neither Zurich nor Geneva could match: a university and a printing industry with a European market. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditA network of persons, print and correspondence
The Italian Protestant network functioned through three channels. The first was the movement of persons: preachers, teachers, physicians and merchants who moved between refuges as opportunities… Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditLocarno after 1555: loss, memory and the return of the Reformed
The departure of 1555 solved the confessional problem of the ruling cantons in Locarno. It did so at a cost that fell on the town. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditFrom 1555 to the present: minorities, legal certainty, freedom of establishment and capital flight
The exile of 1555 is a historical episode with a legal structure. A minority was given a choice between conformity and departure, a deadline, permission to sell its property and a procedure for its… Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditThe right to leave and the right to settle
The Locarnese were given a right to leave that was, in substance, an obligation to leave. Modern law separates the two. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditProperty on departure
The award of 1554 allowed the Locarnese to sell their property, but it did not protect them against forced sales below value, against fines imposed after their departure or against the confiscation… Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditCapital flight, legal certainty and the Swiss position
The movement of the Locarnese and their capital from Locarno to Zurich is an early case of what modern economists call capital flight: the transfer of wealth from a jurisdiction where its owners fear… Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditThe Locarnese in Zurich: Muralt, Orelli and the Making of a Financial Dynasty — overview and summary
When the Reformed families of Locarno crossed the Alps in the spring of 1555, they left behind houses, land, offices and a town in which several of them had belonged to the ruling nobility for four… Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditZurich in 1555: the city that received the exiles
The Zurich that the Locarnese reached in May 1555 was a small city-state with a large territory. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditHospitality and its limits
Hospitality had economic limits from the start. The guilds feared competition from the newcomers, who brought commercial experience and links with the markets of Lombardy. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditThe congregation after Ochino
The Italian church of Zurich survived the departure of its first minister. It continued to hold services in Italian with ministers drawn from the Italian Reformed diaspora and later increasingly from… Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditCitizenship by degrees: the legal status of the Locarnese
For a refugee in sixteenth-century Zurich, the decisive legal question was citizenship. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditGuild membership and the political career
Political rights in Zurich were exercised through the guilds. A citizen who wished to sit in the Grand Council had to be elected by his guild, whose representatives also formed the core of the Small… Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditMerchants of the first generation: trade, satin and velvet
The first Locarnese in Zurich lived from trade. Their capital consisted of what they had managed to take with them across the Alps, of debts owed to them in Locarno and Lombardy, and above all of… Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditEvangelista Zanino and the first manufactory
The most ambitious of the Locarnese entrepreneurs was Evangelista Zanino. Born around 1530 in Locarno, he became a citizen of Zurich in 1567 and died in the city in 1603. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditThe Muralt: from surgeons to silk manufacturers
The Muralt entered trade later than the Orelli. Martino Muralto, doctor of law and former ducal podestà, had led the Reformed community of Locarno and emigrated in 1555 with his family. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditNative capital and foreign skill: Werdmüller, Turrettini and the silk houses
The Locarnese did not build the Zurich silk industry alone. In its early phase the largest investors came from other groups. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditThe Pestalozzi from Chiavenna
A third group of immigrants came from the Italian-speaking valleys under the rule of the Three Leagues (Grisons), in particular from Chiavenna and the Valtellina, where Protestant communities lived… Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditThe putting-out system: how the Zurich silk economy worked
The economic form in which the Locarnese and the native silk merchants accumulated their capital was the putting-out system, known in German as Verlagssystem or Verlagswesen. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditThe commercial directorate of 1662
As the trade grew, the merchants organized themselves. In 1662 Zurich established a commercial directorate ( Kaufmännisches Direktorium ), followed by Basel in 1680 and Schaffhausen in 1701. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditThe Huguenots in Zurich and the protectionist reaction
The second great wave of Protestant refugees reached Zurich after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditFrom merchant capital to banking: Leu & Co. and the Zurich merchant-bankers
The step from trade to banking was short in early modern Zurich. A silk merchant who bought raw silk in Bergamo, paid for it with bills of exchange drawn on Milan or Genoa, advanced material to… Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditZurich capital abroad
The purpose of the Zinskommission was to channel the savings of Zurich citizens into interest-bearing investments outside the city, where returns were higher than in the small domestic market. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditHans Conrad von Muralt and the institutions of the nineteenth century
The career of Hans Conrad von Muralt (1779–1869) shows how the descendants of the Locarnese helped to build the institutions of the nineteenth-century economy. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditOrell Füssli, scholarship and public life
The best-known trace of the Locarnese in modern Zurich is a company name. Orell Füssli, today a listed company that prints banknotes and security documents and holds an interest in one of the largest… Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditThe Orelli as scholars
From the eighteenth century onwards the Orelli produced a remarkable sequence of scholars. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditSusanna Orelli and social enterprise
One of the most original contributions of the family came from a woman who had married into it. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditRefugee capital compared: Zurich, Geneva and the Huguenot diaspora
Swiss historiography distinguishes two great waves of Protestant refugees in the early modern period. The first followed the Reformation and culminated after the massacre of St Bartholomew in 1572. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditThe Lucchese network and the Grande Boutique
The career of Francesco Turrettini links the two cities. After his years with the Werdmüller in Zurich he founded in Geneva the Grande Boutique, a consortium of silk merchants and financiers whose… Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditBrandenburg: the policy of attraction
The contrast with Brandenburg is instructive. On 29 October 1685, eleven days after the revocation, the Elector Frederick William issued the Edict of Potsdam, which invited the Huguenots to settle in… Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditRelocating families and wealth to Switzerland today
The Locarnese of 1555 moved to Zurich because they had no choice. Wealthy families who move to Switzerland today usually do so by choice, for reasons of security, tax, education, quality of life or… Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditTaxation according to expenditure
The best-known Swiss instrument for wealthy immigrants is taxation according to expenditure ( Besteuerung nach dem Aufwand, imposizione secondo il dispendio ), commonly called lump-sum taxation. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditCitizenship by degrees: modern naturalization
Modern Swiss citizenship retains the three levels that the Locarnese encountered in the sixteenth century: a person is a citizen of a commune, of a canton and of the Confederation. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditSuccession, transparency and exit
Families moving to Switzerland must also plan for succession and for the reporting obligations that accompany modern wealth. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditCarlo Borromeo, the Counter-Reformation and the Catholic Economy of Credit — overview and summary
Chapters B.I and B.II followed the minority that left. The Reformed families of Locarno crossed the Alps in March 1555, settled in Zurich and contributed to the silk trade and to the banking culture… Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditThe Church south of the Alps before Trent
When Carlo Borromeo arrived in Milan in 1565, the parishes of the later Canton of Ticino belonged to two dioceses whose cathedrals lay outside the Confederation. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditThe state of the clergy
The visitation records of the 1560s and 1570s describe a clergy that the Tridentine reformers regarded as deficient in almost every respect. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditCarlo Borromeo: the making of a reforming archbishop
Carlo Borromeo was born on 2 October 1538 in the castle of Arona on Lake Maggiore, the son of Count Gilberto Borromeo and of Margherita de' Medici. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditThe Milanese model: councils, synods and the Acta
Borromeo's main instrument was legislation. Between 1564, when the first diocesan synod opened on 29 August, and 1582 he convened six provincial councils for the province of Milan, as the Council of… Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditThe visitations of the Swiss Italian parishes
The canonical visitation was an old institution. Bishops had always had the duty to inspect the churches of their diocese. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditThe Comasque parishes
In the four common bailiwicks and in the Bellinzonese, the ordinary was the bishop of Como. Since Como belonged to the province of Aquileia, Borromeo had no metropolitan authority there. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditColleges, orders and alliances: the institutions of reform
The decisive weakness of the Church in the Catholic Confederation, in Borromeo's analysis, was the lack of educated priests. The Catholic cantons had no university and no seminary. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditThe Collegio Papio in Ascona
The second college was located in the territory of Ticino itself. In 1580 Bartolomeo Papio, a native of Ascona who had grown rich in Rome, where he had served the Orsini family, left 25,000 scudi to… Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditThe nunciature and the Borromean League
In 1579 Borromeo asked the Pope to establish a permanent nunciature with the Confederates. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditClergy, confraternities and the finance of the parish
The Tridentine reform demanded a new type of parish priest. He was to reside in his parish, to preach on Sundays and feast days, to teach the catechism to children, to keep the registers of baptisms,… Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditThe fabbrica, the beneficio and the legati
Parish finance rested on several separate funds, which canon law and local practice kept apart. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditThe Catholic doctrine on usury and its sixteenth- century codification
The Catholic Church's position on interest is often summarized as a prohibition that was gradually abandoned. The history is more precise than that. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditLateran V and the Monti di Pietà (1515)
The first of the three sixteenth-century codifications concerned the Monti di Pietà, the public pawnbanks that appeared in the Italian cities from the 1460s, after the papal governor of Perugia,… Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditIn eam (1571): the exchange contract regulated
The third codification concerned exchange. On 28 January 1571 Pius V issued the bull In eam, which condemned all forms of "dry" and fictitious exchange. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditMonti di Pietà in Lombardy and their absence in the bailiwicks
The Monte di Pietà was an Italian invention and remained, for most of its history, a characteristic institution of the Italian city. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditWhy the bailiwicks had no Monte
The Italian bailiwicks of the Confederation did not, as far as the literature examined for this chapter shows, establish Monti di Pietà under the old regime. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditCensi, livelli and rents: the instruments of rural credit
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. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditLivelli and emphyteusis
The livello was a different contract with a similar effect. In its Lombard form it was a long-term or perpetual lease of land ( emphyteusis) under which the tenant enjoyed the fruits of the land as… Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditFrom censo to mortgage: the modern law
The nineteenth century dissolved the old system. The canton allowed the redemption of tithes and perpetual rents, the suppression of convents in 1848 and 1852 transferred much ecclesiastical property… Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditMercenaries, pensions and the Spanish alliance as capital flows
For three centuries the most valuable export of the Catholic cantons was military service. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditThe Spanish alliance and the Milanese connection
The alliance of 1587 between the Catholic cantons and Philip II of Spain, concluded in his capacity as Duke of Milan, gave the Spanish crown the right to recruit in the Catholic cantons and to pass… Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditConscience, confession and discretion: a Catholic financial culture
The Catholic reform made confession the centre of religious discipline. The Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 had already obliged every Christian to confess at least once a year to his own parish priest… Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditDiscretion as a habit
It is tempting to trace a direct line from the confessional to the numbered account. The temptation should be resisted. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditOeconomicae et pecuniariae quaestiones and the ethics of the bank
The 2018 document is the most detailed statement of the Catholic Church on financial markets to date. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditLugano and Geneva: two confessional economies of credit
The Geneva volume describes how Calvin's Geneva became a centre of Protestant finance. The contrast with the Catholic south is instructive, provided that it is drawn with precision. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditMax Weber and the Catholic south
Max Weber's thesis on the Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism, first published in 1904–1905, made the contrast between Protestant and Catholic economic cultures a classic theme of the… Read more