hurdles behind which archers might find protection, or of a similar defensive screen formed by linking together “pavises,” especially on board a ship of war extending along the bulwarks, and hence in later times of a canvas screen similarly placed to conceal the rowers in a galley or the sailors on other types of ships.
PAVLOVO, a town of Russia, in the government of Nizhniy-Novgorod,
42 m. S.W. of the town of Nizhniy-Novgorod, on
the Oka river. Pop. (1897), 12,200. It is the centre of a considerable
cutlery, hardware and locksmith trade, which, carried
on since the 17th century in cottages and small workshops,
engages, besides Pavlovo itself, no less than 120 villages. There
are also steel works and cotton, silk, soap and match factories.
Pavlovo has a museum of cutlery models and a library.
PAVLOVO POSAD, or Vokhna, a town of Russia, in the
government of Moscow, 41 m. by rail E. of the city of Moscow,
on the Klyazma river. Pop. (1897), 10,020. It is the centre
of a manufacturing district, with silk, cotton and woollen mills,
and dyeing and printing works.
PAVLOVSK, a town of Russia, in the government of St
Petersburg 17 m. by rail S. of the city of St Petersburg. Pop.
(1897), 4949. It has an imperial castle (1782–1803) standing in
a beautiful park and containing a small fine art museum and
gallery. In the vicinity are smaller imperial palaces and summer
residences of St Petersburg families.
PAWN, (1) A pledge, an object left in the charge of another,
as security for the repayment of money lent, for a debt or
for the performance of some obligation (see Pawnbroking).
The word is an adaptation of O. Fr. pan, pledge, plunder, spoil.
This has usually been identified with pan, from Lat. pannus,
piece of cloth. The Teutonic words for pledge—such as Du.
pand, Ger. Pfand have been also traced to the same source;
on the other hand these Teutonic forms have been connected
with the word which appears in O. Eng. as pending, a penny,
Ger. Pfennig, but this too has been referred to pannus. (2) The
smallest piece on the chessboard. This, in its early forms,
poun, pown, &c., is taken from Fr. poon or paon, variants of
peon, Med. Lat. pedo, pedonis, a foot soldier, from pes, foot.
PAWNBROKING (O. Fr. pan, pledge, piece, from Lat. pannus;
for “broking” see Broker), the business of lending money on
the security of goods taken in pledge. If we desire to trace
with minuteness the history of pawnbroking, we must go back
to the earliest ages of the world, since the business of lending
money on portable security (see Money-lending, and Usury)
is one of the most ancient of human occupations. The Mosaic
Law struck at the root of pawnbroking as a profitable business,
since it forbade the taking of interest from a poor borrower,
while no Jew was to pay another for timely accommodation.
And it is curious to reflect that, although the Jew was the almost
universal usurer and money-lender upon security of the middle
ages, it is now very rare in Great Britain to find a Hebrew
pawnbroker.
In China the pawnshop was probably as familiar two or three thousand years ago as it is to-day, and its conduct is still regulated quite as strictly as in England. The Chinese conditions, too, are decidedly favourable to the borrower. He may, as a rule, take three years to redeem his property, and he cannot be charged a higher rate than 3% per annum—a regulation which would close every pawnshop in England in a month. Both Rome and Greece were as familiar with the operation of pawning as the modern poor all the world over; indeed, from the Roman jurisprudence most of the contemporary law on the subject is derived. The chief difference between Roman and English law is that under the former certain things, such as wearing apparel, furniture, and instruments of tillage, could not be pledged, whereas there is no such restriction in English legislation. The emperor Augustus converted the surplus arising to the state from the confiscated property of criminals into a fund from which sums of money were lent, without The Pledge System. interest, to those who could pledge valuables equal to double the amount borrowed. It was, indeed, in Italy, and in more modern times, that the pledge system which is now almost universal on the continent of Europe arose. In its origin that system was purely benevolent, the early monts de piété established by the authority of the popes lending money to the poor only, without interest, on the sole condition of the advances being covered by the value of the pledges. This was virtually the Augustan system, but it is obvious that an institution which costs money to manage and derives no income from its operations must either limit its usefulness to the extent of the voluntary support it can command, or must come to a speedy end. Thus as early as 1198 something of the kind was started at Freising in Bavaria; while in 1350 a similar endeavour was made at Sahns in Franche Comté, where interest at the rate of 713% was charged. Nor was England backward, for in 1361 Michael Northbury, or de Northborough, bishop of London, bequeathed 1000 silver marks for the establishment of a free pawnshop. These primitive efforts, like the later Italian ones, all failed. The Vatican was therefore constrained to allow the Sacri monti di pietà—no satisfactory derivation of the phrase has yet been suggested—to charge sufficient interest to their customers to enable them to defray expenses. Thereupon a learned and tedious controversy arose upon the lawfulness of charging interest, which was only finally set at rest by Pope Leo X., who, in the tenth sitting of the Council of the Lateran, declared that the pawnshop was a lawful and valuable institution, and threatened with excommunication those who should presume to express doubts on the subject. The Council of Trent inferentially confirmed this decision, and at a somewhat later date we find St Charles Borromeo counselling the establishment of state or municipal pawnshops.
Long before this, however, monti di pietà charging interest for their loans had become common in Italy. The date of their establishment was not later than 1464, when the earliest of which there appears to be any record in that country—it was at Orvieto—was confirmed byItalian Monti di Pietà. Pius II. Three years later another was opened at Perugia by the efforts of two Franciscans, Barnabus Interamnensis and Fortunatus de Copolis. They collected the necessary capital by preaching, and the Perugian pawnshop was opened with such success that there was a substantial balance of profit at the end of the first year. The Dominicans endeavoured to preach down the “lending-house,” but without avail. Viterbo obtained one of 1469, and Sixtus IV. confirmed another to his native town in Savona in 1479. After the death of Brother Barnabus in 1474, a strong impulse was given to the creation of these establishments by the preaching of another Franciscan, Father Bernandino di Feltre, who was in due course canonized. By his efforts monti di pietà were opened at Assisi, Mantua, Parma, Lucca, Piaccnza, Padua, Vicenza, Pavia and a number of places of less importance. At Florence the veiled opposition of the municipality and the open hostility of the Jews prevailed against him, and it was reserved to Savonarola, who was a Dominican, to create the first Florentine pawnshop, after the local theologians had declared that there was “no sin, even venial,” in charging interest. The readiness of the popes to give permission for pawnshops all over Italy, makes it the more remarkable that the papal capital possessed nothing of the kind until 1539, and even then owed the convenience to a Franciscan. From Italy the pawnshop spread gradually all over Europe. Augsburg adopted the system in 1591, Nuremberg copied the Augsburg regulations in 1618, and by 1622 it was established at Amsterdam, Brussels, Antwerp and Ghent. Madrid followed suit in 1705, when a priest opened a charitable pawnshop with a capital of fivepence taken from an alms-box.
The institution was, however, very slow in obtaining a footing in France. It was adopted at Avignon in 1577, and at Arras in 1624. The doctors of the once powerful Sorbonne, could not reconcile themselves to the lawfulness, France. of interest, and when a pawnshop was opened in Introduction in France.Paris in 1626, it had to be closed within a year. Then it was that Jean Boucher published his Défense des monts de piété. Marseilles obtained one in 1695; but it was not until 1777 that the first mont de piété was founded in Paris by
