mail: Bill Thayer

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Mons Pietatis: The Origins of the Lowly Pawn-Shop

If those three round things under the cross look to you like the three globes over a pawn-shop, you're very wrong and sort of right: read on.

The freestanding Chapel of St. Mary Magdalen, a few steps from the main complex, was built in the 15c. It shelters the tomb of the Blessed Barnaba Massei of Terni (d. 1477), who in 1462 devised the first modern pawnshop as a means for the poor to escape the clutches of usurers, naming it Mons Pietatis, literally "Mount of Piety". This odd nomenclature actually derives from a medieval commercial term, mons, a sum (or heap) of money, with "piety" added to indicate that it was not just another commercial operation. (See this very good article in the Catholic Encyclopedia for the full details.)

As for the three more or less round objects, their resemblance to the pawnbroker's globes is coincidental. These latter derive from the bezants on the Medici coat of arms — a much less nice group of people, and hardly given to charitable works — whereas what you see here is a common representation, usually found supporting an escutcheon, of mountains. Normally, they'd represent a hilltop town; here, the Mount of Piety.

The interior of the Chapel. The painting appears to be of St. Mary Magdalen and St. John with the dead Christ still on the Cross, and probably dates to around 1450: these being just guesses on my part.

I do find the choice of titular saint here rather peculiar, though. As you probably know, when Mary Magdalen at a dinner party started to anoint Jesus's feet with some very expensive perfume, dissonant murmurs were heard wondering why she couldn't sell the stuff and donate the money to the poor; Jesus' reaction had little to do with charity to the poor, and a lot with the exaltation of the human spirit, or at least with that of Mary Magdalen, who seems to have been the depressed type with low self-esteem and always worrying, poor thing.