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873). The idea has been revived by economists in recent years for countries that seem to experience difficulty in borrowing abroad in terms of their own currencies; see Bordo 2006; Bordo, Meissner, and Redish 2003; Eichengreen and Hausmann 2004; Eichengreen, Hausmann, and Panizza 2003. Debt is thus not only financial; it also concerns time and relationships, both of which are morally charged in an imperfect world acknowledged as imperfect. Cultural and ethical assumptions about reciprocity and dependence thus affect social and economic relations while also becoming in some sense their product.

to. For an important study of contingency and the management of tempo in the social life of gamblers, see Malaby 2003.

i i. Aho 2005, 45; Haney 1922, 94. On Vatican anti-Semitism, see Kertzer 1997, 2001.

12. See Caffiero 2004 for the period from medieval times to Unification and Kertzer 2001 for the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

13. The phrase cittadini romani di religione ebraica appears on the monument in Via Portico d'Ottavia, at the entrance to what used to be the Ghetto and next to the Church of St. Gregory where Jews were once forced to listen to Christian sermons threatening them with eternal perdition (and using Old Testament texts to do so). On the shared elements of the discourse of original sin, see Lifschitz 1993.

14. The relationship between Fascism and the Jewish community is complex. The Fascists were reluctant to aid the Nazis in their policies of extermination, and a Jewish Monti resident defended one active Fascist in a postwar trial on the grounds that this man had saved his life by hiding him from the German troops. It is also true that some Jewish merchants supported Mussolini before German pressure to persecute the Italian Jews overwhelmed his professed-if perhaps strategic-rejection of Nazi racial theories. But to absolve Mussolini of racism seems dangerously ingenuous at best. For an overview of racial concepts in Italy, see Burgio 1999.

15. Some of the betrayals may have had more to do with economic resentment than hatred of the Jews as such. For several accounts of the Jews' wartime experiences, see Im- pagliazzo 1997.

16. Mussolini's racism was highly instrumental (see Sarfatti 1999, 332); the introduction of explicit legislation against the Jewish population nevertheless probably had nothing to do with German pressure-as he himself angrily insisted (see Gillette 2002, 94).

17. Aho 2005, 47; Haney 1922, 95.

18. See Todeschini 1989, 168-72.

19. Ago 1998, 118.

20. See Kaye 2001; Todeschini 1994; Vismara 2004, 37-85.

21. Pardo (1996, 202n i6) found some evidence that this was still happening in Naples during his fieldwork.

22. In one of the many ironies of the church's accommodation with materiality, the Cassa di Risparmio-direct predecessor of the Banca di Roma, central player in the major eviction case to be discussed later-was created as a bulwark against usury through the provision of an alternative, regulated source of loans to small merchants and artisans. (http://www. istess.it/Cassadirisparmio.htm. Accessed 11 July 2007.) On the increasing "invisibility" of the Jews in the years between the baroque era and Unification, see Caffiero (2004, 16).

23. Much of this discussion draws on the illuminating account by historian Sylvain Piron (2001, 74-76).

24. See Piton's discussion of this in terms of theories of reciprocity (2001, 84).

25. See especially CalabrO 1991; Cornwell 1984; Guarino 1998, and Ledl 1997.

26. On this, see Putnam 1993, 109; see also Kertzer 1980, 208-9.

27. According to Haney (1922, 94), the scholastics argued that to pay for money is to pay for time. Hence the offense against divine law; time belongs to all and therefore ultimately to God. See also Piron 2001, 78.

28. See the remarks of Tano Grasso, national anti-racketeering commissioner, reported in "Per Tano Grasso, it pericolo della capitale: 'Roma e la citta dell'usura,"' La Re- pubblicn, Rome section, 18 July 2001, p. VIII.

29. This is the central argument of Aho 2005. See also the related argument of Todeschini