The Republic of Florence, a merchant state whose gold coin ruled European trade
In 1252 Florence minted a gold coin with a fixed, trustworthy weight. Within decades the florin had become the standard money for big deals across Western Europe, displacing bars of silver. The city that issued it governed itself as a republic for four centuries, and the Renaissance was born inside its walls.
Julius Caesar founded Florence in 59 BC, and from 846 it belonged to the Marquisate of Tuscany. When Margravine Matilda died in 1115, the townspeople refused to accept her successor Rabodo, who was killed in a quarrel with the city in 1119. Florence then ran its own affairs, though the republic's first official mention came only in 1138, when Tuscan towns allied against Duke Henry X of Bavaria. Frederick Barbarossa's invasion in 1185 briefly returned it to the margraves, but independence was reclaimed in 1197.
Trade drove the city's rise to around 30,000 people in the 13th century. Guelph and Ghibelline factions fought for control from 1216, and after the Guelphs took power in 1250 they launched the florin, whose reliable gold made it a common currency as far as the Near East. The cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore was begun in 1294, and the Ordinances of Justice of 1293 served as a constitution through the Renaissance. Banking houses such as the Bardi and Peruzzi dominated Europe until they collapsed in 1340, brought down by recession rather than by Edward III's unpaid debt of just £13,000.
Literature thrived as the banks failed. Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio wrote in Tuscan instead of Latin, and their dialect became standard Italian. The city then suffered the Black Death and, in 1378, a revolt by wool workers known as the Ciompi. Giovanni di Bicci de' Medici opened the Medici bank in October 1397, and wars against Milan cost over a million florins before plague killed Duke Gian Galeazzo Visconti on 3 September 1402.
Cosimo de' Medici took charge in 1434. The family was expelled in 1494 and again in 1527, returning in 1531 after an 11-month siege backed by Charles V. Alessandro de' Medici then became duke, ending the republic, and in 1569 Cosimo I was made the first grand duke of Tuscany.
Source: Republic of Florence
