Worth, merit, honour, virtue, innocence."
I quote this passage chiefly with reference to the "porphyry chair," and with the view of ascertaining whether the allusion has been explained in any edition of Oldham's Poems. Does the expression refer to any established use of such chairs by the wearers of "red hats?" or is it intended merely to convey a general idea of the sumptuousness and splendour of their style of living?
Henry H. Breen.
St. Lucia, March, 1851.
Mont-de-Piété.-Can any of your readers furnish information as to the connexion between these words and the thing which they are used to denote? Mrs. Jameson says, in her Legends of the Monastic Orders, p. 307.:
"Another attribute of St. Bernardin's of Siena, is the Monte-di-Pietà, a little green hill composed of three mounds, and on the top either a cross or a standard, on which is the figure of the dead Saviour, usually called in Italy a Pietà. St. B. is said to have been the founder of the charitable institutions still called in France Monts-de-Piété, originally for the purpose of lending to the poor small sums on trifling pledges—what we should now call a loan society,—and which, in their commencement, were purely disinterested and beneficial. In every city which he visited as a preacher, he founded a Monte-di-Pietà; and before his death, these institutions had spread all over Italy and through a great part of France."
It is added in a note:
"Although the figures holding the M. di P. are, in Italian prints and pictures, styled 'San Bernardino da Siena,' there is reason to presume that the honour is at least shared by another worthy of the same order, 'Il Beato Bernardino da Feltri,' a celebrated preacher at the end of the fifteenth century. Mention is made of his preaching against the Jews and usurers, on the miseries of the poor, and on the necessity of having a Monte-di-Pietà at Florence, in a sermon delivered in the church of Santa Croce in the year 1488."
On p. 308. is a representation of the Monte-di-Pietà, borne in the saint's hand. I need not specify the points on which the foregoing extract still leaves information to be desired.
W. B. H.