While it is widely recognized that the rise of the city‐states dragged Europe out of the Dark Ages and into the Renaissance, the role of sound money in this rise is less recognized. It was in the city‐states that humans could live with the freedom to work, produce, trade, and flourish, and that was to a large extent the result of these city‐states adopting a sound monetary standard. It all began in Florence in 1252, when the city minted the florin, the first major European sound coinage since Julius Caesar's aureus. Florence's rise made it the commercial center of Europe, with its florin
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