Conference of 1892, 285; India, 293; her historic function, 293; movements and mintings of the metals, 299. APPENDICES PAGE APPENDIX I. The Monetary System of Florence, 1272-1530 301 " II. " " Venice, 1284-1790 310 " III. " " Spain, 1250-1894 319 " IV. " " the Netherlands, 1250-1894 345 " V. " " Germany, Austria, and Prussia, 1250-1894 360 " VI. " " France, 1140-1894 396 THE HISTORY OF CURRENCY CHAPTER I From the Commencement of Gold Coinages to the Discovery of America, 1252-1492 The monetary history of Europe begins in the thirteenth century, and in the Italian peninsula. Its starting-point is the era of the reintroduction of gold into the coinages of the Western nations, and is definitely marked for us by the minting of the gold florin of Florence in 1252. For all practical purposes gold had gone out of use since the seventh century, and after the submersion of the Roman Empire; and the currencies of the nations of mediæval Europe rested on a silver basis entirely. There are limitations to the truth of this statement, but they are of such a nature as not materially to affect it. In Spain, for instance, the Moors kept up a tradition of gold coinage similar to that of Rome, from the eighth to the middle of the thirteenth century. But its influence on the monetary system of Christian Spain is not even a matter of question. At the other extremity of the Mediterranean, at Byzantium, seat of the Eastern Empire, the best traditions of the coinage system of Rome were preserved for centuries after the imperial city had fallen before the invasions of the northern barbarians. Indeed, the monetary system of the Eastern empire, by becoming, as it did, the model which Charlemagne copied in his currency enactments, became the basis of all the modern European systems. Further than this, the presence of gold _Byzants_ can be traced here and there, at isolated points and dates, all over the darkness of those early centuries of the Middle Ages, when all coining art seemed forgotten among the races of Central Europe.