At one and the same moment, therefore, Venice acquired possession of a huge treasure of gold wrested from the conquered city, and of the then only gold-yielding districts—the Crimea—and of an intercolonial trade, demanding a more enhanced currency medium. The result of such a combination of circumstances was irresistible. During the continuance of the "Latin Empire" at Byzantium, Venice and her sister state were practically the only merchants of Europe.
The institution of a gold coinage among the Italian republics, therefore, marks for us an era of commercial expansion which is only fitly to be Page 6 compared with that of Holland in the seventeenth century, or of our own country in modern times.
We are not concerned with tracing the effects of this extraordinary movement further than as they bore in their train the dower of a currency of gold.
In the European system, Venice was the intermediary between the spice-laden east and the wool-bearing north. England, the wool-growing country of fourteenth-century Europe; Flanders, the home of the weaving industry; the Hanse Towns of Germany and the gradually forming kingdom of France were successively brought face to face with the new medium of currency; and if the story of the gradual adoption of that new medium could be written, it would form one of the most instructive of all chapters of currency and commercial history.
As it is, we have only uncertain and scattered data.
In the case of Germany—of chief importance in the process by reason of her geographical position midway between the Mediterranean and the north—the first minting of gold in imitation of the Italian states fell in the second quarter of the fourteenth century. Of the two types of gold monies issued by the Emperor Louis IV., surnamed "Bavarian," the first, struck some short time before 1328, was in direct imitation of the florin