Consumer and production credit in the Kingdom of Naples. The Monti di Pietà (pawnshops) and Monti frumentari (wheat brokers) between assistance and credit (16th - 19th centuries)

Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli, in defining the characteristics of the origins and evolution of the Monte di Pietà, "invention" of the late Middle Ages, stressed that this institution was to be considered "more things together": a minorite ideation, a charity institution, an economic and credit initiative. In light of the many studies that have been made on this institution, both from the theoretical point of view and from the practical point of view, these views do not exclude each other. And all these aspects characterized the Monti di Pietà which, in the form of Monti di Pegni (pawnshops) and Monti Frumentari (weath brokers), made their appearance in the Kingdom of Naples much later compared to central Italy, when the theoretical issues, especially those related to the legality of the request of interest, had been overcome. But how were they considered? Charitable institutions or credit institutions? Once refuted the relationship between the expulsion of the Jews and the birth of the Monte di Pietà in Naples, what, instead, pushed a group of individuals to offer pawnbroking at no interest in a city that in the mid-sixteenth century was third in population after London and Paris? And starting in the early seventeenth century, what then motivated brotherhoods, local authorities, individuals to open Monti di Pietà in urban areas and Monti Frumentari in rural areas in all provinces of the Kingdom? What role did they play in the economy of the South over two and a half centuries, until the Kingdom became a part of the national state? What is the relationship between the concepts of charity, for which these institutions were regarded as charitable institutions, and of credit as they essentially did not practice acts of liberality lending money or wheat at interest?