He employed, however, more reasonable means of rescuing his countrymen from the clutches of the Hebrew usurer than these. He set up banks, at which a lower rate of interest was required than that demanded by the Jews, but at the same time sufficiently remunerative, provided the debts contracted were faithfully discharged. These he called Monte della Pieta. They met at first with very decided success in the chief Italian cities, and particularly in Mantua, Brescia, and Padua. In the last-named place they so engrossed the money-lending business that the Jews were obliged to close their own bank. There can be no doubt that the scheme was both commercially and philanthropically wise. Yet, after all, it did not prosper. Possibly the publicity of the dealings with Bernardino’s banks was not acceptable to borrowers, who might wish the fact of their having been obliged to borrow to be kept secret. Possibly those who would fain have been customers were too deeply involved in debt to the Jews to be able to break loose from them. Possibly it was the effect of long habit, which men are ever unwilling to depart from. But, whatever may have been the cause, the scheme, after a brief period of success, began to languish, and in some places altogether failed. It was revived later still in the century by the celebrated Girolamo Savonarola, who professed his object to be the same as that of Bernardino—rescuing his countrymen, and especially the poor, from the ruinous exactions of the Jew money-lenders, whom he denounces in the most unmeasured terms, as that ‘most wicked set, the enemies of God.’ Not contented with this harsh language, he obtained a decree of the State, ordering them to quit Florence within the year.