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Even as late as 1100, the major users of coin were lay and ecclesiastical rulers, but the expansion of the coin supply in the late twelfth century made the use of money normal also in towns. Virtually all large-scale transactions in Europe by 1300 used money. Urban artisans could now produce smaller quantities and goods of less value for export, where previously the cheaper items were feasible only for barter on the local market. Most services were now paid with a cash wage. The use of money then became generalized in the agrarian sector in the thirteenth century. In England, the best-documented case, mint output was less than one million pennies in the 1170s but rose to four million annually between 1180 and 1204, ten million between 1234 and 1247, and fifteen million in the 1250s. The total volume of coin in circulation was less than £125,000 in 1180, rising to £300,000 by 1218, £400,000 by 1247, and more than doubling again to £1,100,000 in 1311. This rate of increase meant the amount of coin per person more than trebled.

Most cities of Europe reached their greatest population before the modern period at some point in the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century. The suburbs around the primitive Roman walls and princely fortifications were being walled, even before 1180, but thereafter the rate of territorial growth increased. The population of the largest cities at least tripled in the thirteenth century, against an overall doubling of the population. Pisa more than tripled, to about 38,000 in 1293, but it still lost position in Tuscany to Florence, which was smaller than Pisa in 1200 but more than twice its size by 1300, due to its control of the grain trade from southern Italy and its rapid development of industry and banking. Northern Italy had the largest cities of Europe except for Paris, which quintupled in size after 1180 to a population of 250,000 by 1328. Milan, Genoa, Venice, Naples, Florence, and Palermo probably had populations of over 100,000 by 1300, declining thereafter. The other major pole of urban development was in northwestern France and Flanders. In England, London had a population of about 80,000 by 1300, double its late-eleventh-century size, but it completely dominated its region, with York, the second-largest English city, having only 10,000 inhabitants in the late thirteenth century.

00:00 The commercial changes of the thirteenth century
19:48 The situation of Italy
25:29 Credit and banking
34:18 The fairs
39:42 The ‘commercial revolution’ of the late thirteenth century?

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