1 THE ROMANIAN VERSION OF THE MOUNT OF PIETY. SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC REALITIES AT THE BEGINNING OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY MIOARA ANTON* This paper reflects the results of preliminary research into a little known institution, entirely overlooked by the older and newer scholarship: the Mount of Piety in the modern Romanian state. I will discuss the political and economic context of its creation, followed by an overview of the legislation dealing with pawn-brokering. To date, I could not locate the archives produced by the Mount of Piety in Bucharest, thus my research relies on different sources: laws and decrees, as well as the special review of the Mount of Piety. At the beginning of the twentieth century in Romania there was no tradition of the Mount of Piety. While in the western world (especially in Italy and France) such institutions have been operating for centuries, in the Romanian area historical legacies – Byzantine, Ottoman, Russian – have led to a different relationship between charity and poverty 1 . In Romanian historiography, there are relatively few studies dealing with the poor/poverty, charity/philanthropy due to both the absence of documents and the predominance of politics over the social as the main field of research. For pre-modern Romanian world the political events were more important in their development than the evolutions within the society. Until the making of the modern Romanian state, charity and philanthropy focused on three pillars: the church, the Lord/Prince and individual generosity. It was mainly the monasteries and churches that were concerned with helping certain disadvantaged groups (invalids, wounded veterans, old people, orphaned children, sick people) 2 . Charity work was fuelled by religious motivations, both in the case of the institution of the kingdom and individuals and was justified by the belief in salvation and the desire to secure a „passport to the world beyond”, to use Jacques Le Goff’s formula. At the beginning of modernity, various forms of aid for the poor were put into practice such as breslele de calici and a monastic hospital for the beggars, sick people and foreigners. The most known were the Alms Box and the institutions for orphans and empoverished: Orfanotropia and Epitropia Sărmanilor Evgheniți. During the Russian administration of the Romanian Principalities, the social assistance and philanthropy were radically changed through the establishing of the Department of Social Care for the Poor (Caselor făcătoare de bine și de folos obștesc). These institutions were designated to take care of all kind of poor people both * Senior researcher, “Nicolae Iorga” Institute of History, Bucharest; mioaraanton@yahoo.com 1 For a comparison with Western developments see Laurence Fontaine, L'économie morale. Pauvreté, credit et confiance dans l’Europe préindustrielle, Paris, Gallimard, 2008; Thierry Halay, La Mont-de-Piété. Des origines à nous jours, Paris, L’Harmattan, 1994; an analysis of charity and philanthropy in the Romani an area in Ligia Livadă- Cadeschi, Financing Social Care in the Romanian Principalities in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries , in „Annals of University of Bucharest/Political Sciences Series“, 15(1)/2013, pp. 37-50. 2 See Lidia Cotovanu’s contribution in this issue.