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BEATO MARCO FROM MONTEGALLO The Fund of Piety is created following the expulsion of the Jews “12th June, 1486. All the male and female Jews were expelled from Vicenza and Vicentino so that they would no longer practise usury, nor could they buy the pawns of poor men, nor could they continue to steal the blood of poor Christians because plague was in Vicenza. And a bank was immediately set up for the Town that was called the Fund of Piety, whose bank was kept in the church of S. Vincenzo, in which more than two thousand ducats were immediately lodged by the many citizens and artisans that lent them….” 19th March 1425 Montegallo (Ascoli Piceno) – Vicenza, 19th March 1496 History This great Franciscan lived in the years that saw the great navigations of Christopher Columbus and the discovery of America. The son of a baron called Chiaro di Marchio, Marco was born in 1425 at Fonditore, a hamlet of Montegallo near Ascoli Piceno, where his family had gone to escape the fierce fighting of the opposing factions that ruled in Ascoli. His father wanted at any cost to return to the town so as to give Marco the opportunity to study. Later on he went to the Universities of Perugia and Bologna where he gained doctorates in law and in medicine. He returned to Ascoli where he worked as a doctor for a certain period of time. In 1451 he married Chiara de’ Tibaldeschi, a girl of noble family, to satisfy his father’s wishes, but with whom he lived chastely. The following year his father died and the couple jointly decided on a religious life, with Chiara entering the Clarissan convent of “S. Maria delle donne” in Ascoli and Marco entering the Observant Franciscans. This phenomenon of suspending the bond of marriage and choosing a consecrated life for both or only one of the spouses was not so rare in those centuries and many figures of eminent holiness were the fruit of such a choice. As the Franciscan Marco de Marchio, he did his novitiate at Fabriano and then he was superior at San Severino, guided by his fellow brother S. Giacomo of Monteprandone (known as “della Marca”) who was also from the region. S. Giacomo, S. Bernardino of Siena and S. Giovanni of Capestrano were the standard-bearers of evangelisation in the XV century and the first advocates of the social apostolate. Brother Marco started to work against the two main scourges of the century: civil conflicts and usury which was practised mainly by the Jews; he carried out his intense activity between 1458 and 1496, pleading for peace and the public good in Ascoli, Camerino, Fabriano and fighting against usury which heavily conditioned family lives, setting up the Funds of Piety (Monti di Pietà). Together with the blessed Domenico of Leonessa he instituted the Fund of Ascoli in 1458; following that he instituted by himself those of Fabriano (1470), Fano (1471), Arcevia (1483), Vicenza (1486) and probably those of Ancona, Camerino, Ripatransone, although these latter ones are not certain. He reintroduced that of Fermo. During the XV century, as in other Italian cities, the Fund of Piety was established in Vicenza too, following the preaching of the blessed Marco of Montegallo. The civic initiative took form with a ducal document of 12th June 1486, in which both the expulsion of Jews from Vicenza and the founding of a Fund of Piety to be managed at the city’s expense were established. The connection between the two measures was not by chance: it reflected an anti-Semitic feeling and culture that was common in western Europe during the late Middle Ages, in which different reasons of a historical background converged. Above all, what influenced the decree of expulsion was the prominent role that the Jews played in credit activities, determined by their progressive exclusion from other professional activities. However, the Jews were not the only lenders: notwithstanding that the faithful were severely banned by the Church from lending money at interest, the trade in money had been, for at least two centuries by then, one of the favourite occupations of the people of Vicenza. What could have been only a normal aspiration to get the better of the embarrassing Jewish competition in the money trade or other economic sectors became, in the context of a common anti-Jewish mentality, a move towards their expulsion. The Fund of Piety in Vicenza at first had the imprint of its founder, Marco of Montegallo, a proud opponent of any economic relationship that foresaw the possibility of making money from money. For this reason the loan of up to three denari for six months was completely free, available to who swore to be in need himself and for his own family. Built up only from sums that were lent – and that therefore had to be returned at the end of the same loan – or as a donation or a legacy, it was proposed to lend, without asking for any interest, on the deposit of pawns that guaranteed the chance of recovery at least of the capital loaned. On the right the Monte di Pietà of Vicenza. The long prospect of the building is embellished by the façade of the church of San Vincenzo that is centrally inserted. Beneath the loggia of the church, the drawing of the official dimensions of the Magnificent Community of Vicenza is still visible on a red marble pillar of 1583: perch, arm, foot, imbrex and square tile. The outside of the building was decorated by Giovan Battista Zelotti between 1556 and 1563; the religious-themed frescoes, now barely visible, were restored by Domenico Bruschi at the end of 1800. The structure of the building is the result of the various adaptations and restructuring of pre-existing buildings. The façade facing Contrà del Monte was carried out by Francesco Muttoni in 1703 when the Biblioteca Civica Bertoliana (Civic Library) was housed in this wing of the building before being moved to its present location in Contrà Riale, in the ex-convent of Saints Filippo and Giacomo. It did not foresee any recompense for the registrars and the treasurer who were “notable” citizens, but only for the massaro (a kind of bailiff, a public official charged with administrating the town’s goods) and the notary. The running of the Fund of Piety was in the hands of the city nobles, unlike the case elsewhere, where the bishop and a representative of the lower (popular) classes also had a say. It saw to making donations to the poor, above all in times of famine, pestilence and other public calamities, with payouts to hospices, foundling hospitals, hospitals and the payment of dowries for poor girls to be married. In 1494 Bernardino of Feltre, in compliance with the decisions of the order, emended the statutes of the Fund of Piety, introducing the payment of interest on loans over 20 soldi, in the form of one denaro per lira a month, equivalent to 5% per annum, a rate of interest in any case lower than that asked by other Funds, which allowed the capital to grow and to begin the construction of the Palazzo del Monte in 1499. The Fund of Piety had by now gone from being a pious institution to becoming an early form of credit bank. In one of his visits to Venice, Marco realised that the new technique of printing was a powerful means to spread the Gospel and he himself gave the press his first treatise, “Libro intitulato” and other volumes later on. In 1494 he printed “La tabula della Salute” at Florence, in 1495 when he was in Siena to preach during Lent, he decided to re-edit “Libro intitulato”. Four chapters of “La tabula della Salute” concerned the usury that Marco condemned as a means of perversion; he associated however in his condemnation both those who asked for loans at interest as well as those who conceded them, because in his opinion both violated God’s commandment to love thy neighbour and which forbids provoking material or spiritual ruin. He was not the only one among the Franciscans of the time to support the case for free loans, because charity is the mother of all the Christian values and in the perspective of charity there is no place for usury, nor for a loan at interest. However, such a view was not shared by the other Franciscans, above all by S. Bernardino of Feltre and at the General Chapter held at Florence on 28th May 1493, it was decided that the “Funds of Piety” should offer their loans at a minimum rate of interest; it was also the time in which the Credit Institutes started to spring up and which depended on charges for their operation. Whilst at Vicenza to preach, he was taken ill and died on 19th March 1496; he was buried in the church of S. Biagio Vecchio. The cult that grew up following his death received definite confirmation from Pope Gregorio XVI, who gave him “equal status of blessedness” on 20th September, 1839. His feast day is celebrated on different dates, but the “Martyrologium Romanum” lists it as the 19th March. Author: Antonio Borrelli The Poor People’s Bank 1st December 2005 The Vicenza Newspaper Microcredit, often defined as “the bank of the poor” is becoming one of the most important forms of economic growth for populations in developing countries. It is an instrument that allows people who live in poverty and who are generally excluded from the traditional system of credit because of their lack of security and profitability, access to banking financing. The idea of microcredit is spreading thanks to the work of Muhammad Yunus who founded a rural bank in Bangladesh in 1976 to grant loans and organisational support to the poorest peasants. From this initiative it has spread above all to countries in the southern hemisphere, were millions of families live on the income of their small rural and urban economic businesses, following the model of that which has been defined as “informal economics”. The difficulty of getting a bank loan due to the inadequacy or absence of real securities and to the size of the businesses, often held to be too small by traditional banks, would not allow these micro businesses to develop or to free themselves from the strong bonds of usury. Those who benefit from the services of microcredit are farmers, graziers, traders, street traders and craftsmen who, with small loans for a limited period of time, manage to carry on and develop their economic business with the primary aim of guaranteeing a livelihood for the family unit. It is estimated that the recipients of microcredit projects and micro-financing (which as well as loan expenditure also includes the offer of a whole series of financial services) stand at about 67 million, with an annual growth of 30%. Women play a determining role, often being the main recipients of projects of this type in the southern hemisphere. For them, access to credit is not only a concrete means to get out of poverty, but also an opportunity to reappropriate rights denied and to see their role within the family and society recognised, thus giving rise to very effective processes of emancipation and social promotion. The potential contribution of microcredit to the struggle against poverty is now recognised by world institutions, so much so that the United Nations (UN) declared 2005 The International Year of microcredit, creating further interest in a form of financing that is often wrongly considered as being far from the reality of the West. Today microcredit, and in particular micro-financing, are more and more at the centre of the economic-financial debate of the so-called rich countries. Italy is no exception and in Vicenza in the last few weeks a microcredit project has been presented, supported by Caritas and by some banking institutes, destined to help those people in our territory who are in economic difficulty. |