of the twelfth century,[1] the Italian States had recourse to forced loans in order to raise reserves for extraordinary necessities, and, in order to prevent the growth of disaffection among the citizens, an annual percentage on such loans was paid.  A fund raised by such means was generally called a mons or heap.  The propriety of the payment of this percentage was warmly contested during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries—­the Dominicans and Franciscans defending it, and the Augustinians attacking it.  But its justification was not difficult.  In the first place, the loans were generally, if not universally, forced, and therefore the payment of interest on them was purely voluntary.  As we have seen, Aquinas was quite clear as to the lawfulness of such a voluntary payment.  In the second place, the lenders were almost invariably members of the trading community, who were the very people in whose favour a recompense for lucrum cessans would be allowed.[2] Laurentius de Rodulphis argued in favour of the justice of these State loans, and contended that the bondholders were entitled to sell their rights, but advised good Christians to abstain from the practice of a right about the justice of which theologians were in such disagreement[3]; and Antoninus of Florence, who was in general so strict on the subject of usury, took the same view.[4]

[Footnote 1:  Endemann, Studien, vol. i. p. 433.]

[Footnote 2:  Ashley, op. cit., vol. i. pt. i. p. 448.]

[Footnote 3:  De Usuris.]

[Footnote 4:  Ashley, op. cit., p. 449.]

It was probably the example of these State loans, or montes profani, that suggested to the Franciscans the possibility of creating an organisation to provide credit facilities for poor borrowers, which was in many ways analogous to the modern co-operative credit banks.  Prior to the middle of the fifteenth century, when this experiment was initiated, there had been various attempts by the State to provide credit facilities for the poor, but these need not detain us here, as they did not come to anything.[1] The first of the montes pietatis was founded at Orvieto by the Franciscans in 1462, and after that year they spread rapidly.[2] The montes, although their aim was exclusively philanthropic, found themselves obliged to make a small charge to defray their working expenses, and, although one would think that this could be amply justified by the title of damnum emergens, it provoked a violent attack by the Dominicans.  The principal antagonist of the montes pietatis was Thomas da Vio, who wrote a special treatise on the subject, in which he made the point that the montes charged interest from the very beginning of the loan, which was a contradiction of all the previous teaching on interest.[3]

[Footnote 1:  Cleary, op. cit., p. 108; Brants, op. cit., p. 159.]

[Footnote 2:  Perugia, 1467; Viterbo, 1472; Sevona, 1472; Assisi, 1485; Mantua, 1486; Cesana and Parma, 1488; Interamna and Lucca, 1489; Verona, 1490; Padua, 1491, etc. (Endemann, Studien, vol. i. p. 463).]