than from Byzantium. Previous to the minting of the gold florin of Florence there is no trace of any independent minting of gold coins on a commercial scale by any state of mediæval central Europe. The currency system of England, for instance, from the time of the Saxons to the days of Henry III. was based entirely on silver. In endless variety and under a diversity of names the silver penny was the unit coin current of the realm. Its equivalent in the Frankish Empire was the silver denarius, which Charlemagne had made the unit of his system, and which so con Page 3 tinued for both the kingdom of France and the Holy Roman Empire till the fourteenth century. Finally, among the numerous states of Italy, with each their little independent Mint, there is no trace of the coinage of gold until the days of the commercial greatness of Florence and Venice. For eight centuries or more those races of Europe, which were to turn the course of the modern world and build its civilisation anew, were ignorant of the commercial use of what has been through all history the most potent factor in civilisation—gold.
The explanation of the reintroduction and recoinage of gold is to be found in the history of the Crusades and of the commercial growth of the petty independent states which sprang from the political confusion of Italy. No sooner had they achieved each their little autonomous existence than they threw themselves with feverish energy into the development of the trade with the East. Florence and Venice, Pisa and Genoa, led the way and reaped the fruits; and it was in her most flourishing time, when she had conquered her rivals, Pisa and Siena, and was enjoying a prosperous peace and active trade, that Florence, at the instance of the chief of her merchants, resolved on the coining of the gold florin (1252).1
The mere idea of such a gold coinage could only Page 4 be derived from the East—from Byzantium. But it is a curious fact that the importation of it should be due in the first place to the Crusades. Frederick II. of Sicily was elected Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in 1212. Sixteen