Not Only Land: Mortgage Credit in Central-Northern Italy in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

The purpose of this chapter is to investigate the role of mortgages in the credit markets of central-northern Italy during the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries. The intense economic change that was affecting Italian states by the middle of the sixteenth century—a change stimulated by the growth of the population and crop prices—received a powerful stimulus from the rural world. A land rush conducted by urban elites and the affluent ruling class produced a dramatic and profound transformation in the structure of ownership and tenure in the countryside. Traditional land loans came under significant pressure mainly in an effort to protect small proprietors and to avert radical shocks to the social equilibrium. These credit instruments backed by land—named census, pensio, and livellum—became frequently used and spread to almost all areas of the Peninsula’s countryside. However, new financial tools were being devised to counteract the troubles and the uncertainty that the stratified credit system represented for rural classes.