L’émergence des Monti di Pietà dans les villes italiennes des débuts de la modernité a joué un rôle important en permettant une grande circulation des liquidités dans les portions moins nanties du marché. À travers le prêt sur gage, le Monte offrait la possibilité de transformer temporairement en argent liquide les petites richesses non-monétaires, à divers degrés de l’échelle sociale. Le Monte a ainsi contribué à l’expansion du crédit, et exercé une importante fonction anticyclique dans les économies locales. En puisant dans les archives d’une de ces institutions les plus prospères — le Monte de Bologne —, cet article explore l’étendue de ce phénomène, l’importance des montants en jeu, la variété des biens mis en gage, ainsi que l’impressionnante variété des clients. Au sommet des activités du Monte, ses clients n’appartenaient plus seulement à la classe des travailleurs pauvres. Toutefois, ce changement n’a pas nuit à l’accessibilité du crédit aux classes pauvres, mais a plutôt contribué à ce que ces services soit offerts pour moins cher à ceux véritablement dans le besoin.

Recent literature has clearly charted the growth of pawn credit in nineteenth-century developing countries in Europe. Such expansion has frequently been associated with governments’ concerns to prevent malpractice and promote the establishment of public agencies that mirrored the Italian Monti di pietà. Precisely at the time modernizing European societies adopted the model of Italian public pawn banks, Monti were being dismissed as a relic of a bygone age in their home country. Assembling and comparing data from an 1896 national survey, we conclude that, contrary to traditional assumptions, Italian pawn banks were not obsolete or out of place in the European context of nineteenth-century pawn credit. However, ideology and hostile legislation did hamper the access to credit of those most in need, and the choice hardly assisted the modernizing spurt of Italian society.

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State building and state competition during the 16 th century triggered a creative moment in the history of public finance. Recent scholarship has clearly identified the Papal States and their communities as active participants both in the state building process and the reorganization of public finance. Banking on a wealth of fiscal records, it is argued that Papal authority succeeded in forging a new fiscal pact-which lasted over two centuries-between central and local authorities. Blending conservatism and innovation the papacy promoted a contractual approach: local powers were granted a large degree of autonomy in selecting fiscal instruments, the types of wealth to be taxed and the means of collecting resources, while the Apostolic Chamber secured both the control of a growing portion of the provinces' fiscal income as well as access to a pool of financial resources at a rapidly declining cost.