Among modern monographs that of Alfred von Reumont on _Lorenzo de' Medici_ (Eng. tr. 1876, 2 vols.) in nearly every way supersedes the old work of Roscoe, whose _Leo X_, again, is practically superseded by later works on the Renaissance, in particular those of Burckhardt (Eng. tr. of Geiger's ed. in 1 vol. 1892) and the late J.A. Symonds. Miss Duffy has a good chapter on Florentine trade and finance in her _Story of the Tuscan Republics_, 1892; and the short work of F.T. Perrens, _La civilisation florentine du 13e au 16e siècle_ (1892--in the _Bibliothèque d'histoire illustrée_) is luminous throughout; but Ranke's _History of the Latin and Teutonic Nations_ (Eng. tr. 1887), which deals with the Italy of 1494-1514, is little more than a sand-heap of incident. On the economic side there is a good research in Pignotti's essay on Tuscan Commerce in his _History of Tuscany_ (Eng. tr. 1823, vol. iii). Much interesting detail is given, with much needless rhetoric, in _The Guilds of Florence_, by Edgcumbe Staley, 1906. Of great general value is the elaborate work of Gregorovius, _Geschichte der Stadt Rom im Mittelalter_ (4te Aufl. 8 Bde. 1886-96; Eng. tr. by Mrs. Hamilton, 8 vols. 1895-1902), which, however, suffers from the disparity of its purposes, combining as it does, a topographical history of the city of Rome with a full history of its politics. It remains a valuable mass of materials rather than a history proper. The same criticism applies to the very meritorious _Geschichte der Stadt Rom_ of A. von Reumont (3 Bde. 1867-70), which begins with the very origin of the city, and comes down to our own time. But there has risen in contemporary Italy a school of historical students who are rewriting the history of the great period in the light of the voluminous archives which have been preserved by municipalities. One outcome of this line of investigation is Prof. Villari's _The Two First Centuries of Florentine History_ (Eng. tr. of first 2 vols. 1894). New light, further, has been thrown on the commercial history of Italy in the Dark Ages and early Middle Ages by the admirable research of Prof. W. von Heyd, of which the French translation by Furcy Raynaud, _Histoire du commerce du Levant an moyen age_ (1886, 2 tom.) is recast and considerably enlarged by the author, while the Renascence period is illuminated by R. Pöhlmann's treatise, _Die Wirthschafts Politik der Florentiner Renaissance und das Princip der Verkehrsfreiheit_ (Leipzig, 1878). CHAPTER I THE BEGINNINGS § 1