• DOI:10.1086/468290
• Corpus ID: 144862965

Loans and Favors, Kin and Clients: Cosimo de' Medici and the Monte di Pieta

@article{Menning1989LoansAF,
  title={Loans and Favors, Kin and Clients: Cosimo de' Medici and the Monte di Pieta},
  author={Carol Bresnahan Menning},
  journal={The Journal of Modern History},
  year={1989},
  volume={61},
  pages={487 - 511}
}

• C. B. Menning
• Published 1 September 1989
• History
• The Journal of Modern History

Most of the scholarly work on monti di pieta in Italy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries has emphasized the themes of usury, anti-Semitism, and aggressive Franciscan advocacy of these charitable institutions. In late fifteenth-century Florence, the Franciscan Marco di Matteo Strozzi, whose avid preaching urged his fellow citizens to establish a monte di piet'a in their city, left a set of memoirs which made clear the connection between ridding the city of the Jews ("those enemies of the cross of Christ") and the creation of a Christian pawn shop which would make cheap credit available to poor persons with no other recourse.' For many years, the limits established by Strozzi continued to circumscribe much of the work on monti di pieta.2 In an article assessing the historiography of monti di piet'a from 1956 through 1976, Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli distinguished several directions taken by recent scholarship.3 Some historians have insisted on the bank-like nature of the monte di pieta, emphasizing its importance as a bridge between the medieval banco and the modem sportello.4 Others have approached the