Ark and Laura in Florence 2005 (126 of 172)

St. Antonino

St. Antonino of Florence lived in the Florence of the Medicis. A moral theologian (who wrote a work called Summa Moralis), he had to deal with the rise of Florentine banking and trade, and with finding an adequate moral-economic analysis of it.

He was strongly opposed to usury; to counteract the effects of usury on the poor, he advocated what were called montes pietatis, which were (in essence) municipal pawnshops where, for a small security or occasionally even no security, the poor could get small, short-term no-interest loans to help tide them over in a tight spot, with just a small flat fee to help support the operating costs.

He also battled against exorbitant prices, but in an interesting way. Antonino was focused on the importance of finding a just price for items; the just price was always a factor of the utility, cost of production, and desirability of an item. Antonino held that the socially recognized market price would, as a rule, approximate the just price in any given case, if three conditions were met: (1) The socially recognized market price only approximates the just price if we are not considering an emergency situation (2) The socially recognized market price only approximates the just price if we are in a healthy economy. (3) The people involved in market negotiations (i.e., buyers and sellers) are not acting out of greed.