Acceso usuarios
This paper deals with the relationship between the Church and the Italian financial system during the period between the nineteenth and twentieth century. It also takes advantage of the national historiography published in the last fifteen years. After noting why this is a topic worthy of interest for economic history, it offers a detailed analysis of the most recent studies focusing on different areas. First, it considers the development of the cooperative credit at the national level, as well as the difficulties of the Banco Ambrosiano in Milan.
Second, it analyzes the complex functioning of charities and religious orders distributed over the entire peninsula, including canteens bishop. Third, it offers a research perspective on asset management and then financial administration of the Church, as has also been made for Italian dioceses. The role of territories is also highlighted, along with that of relational networks that nurture them, as well as that of the local development that is generated in such a way, of the care services guaranteed in each community from different ecclesiastical bodies as financial actors. In short, it proposes an increasingly complex and varied way to describe the role of the Church dealing with economic and social modernity.
