The fortunes made in Florence by trade and by banking were colossal for those days.

Villani tells us that the great houses of the Bardi and Peruzzi lent to our King Edward III.

more than 1,365,000 golden florins.[3] 'And mark this,' he continues, 'that these moneys were chiefly the property of persons who had given it to them on deposit.' This debt was to have been recovered out of the wool revenues and other income of the English; in fact, the Bardi and Peruzzi had negotiated a national loan, by which they hoped to gain a superb percentage on their capital.

The speculation, however, proved unfortunate; and the two houses would have failed, but for their enormous possessions in Tuscany.

We hear, for example, of the Bardi buying the villages of Vernia and Mangona in 1337.[4] As it was, their credit received a shock from which it never thoroughly recovered; and a little later on, in 1342, after the ruinous wars with the La Scala family and Pisa, and after the loss of Lucca, they finally stopped payment and declared themselves bankrupt.[5] The shock communicated by this failure to the whole commerce of Christendom is well described by Villani.[6] The enormous wealth amassed by Florentine citizens in commerce may be still better imagined when we remember that the Medici, between the years 1434 and 1471, spent some 663,755 golden florins upon alms and public works, of which 400,000 were supplied by Cosimo alone.
But to return to Villani; not content with the statistics which I have already extracted, he proceeds to calculate how many bushels of wheat, hogsheads of wine, and head of cattle were consumed in Florence by the year and the week.[7] We are even told that in the month of July 1280, 40,000 loads of melons entered the gate of San Friano and were sold in the city.