Guis, the Vane Guis, at that of
the kings of France, not to name the numberless Italians entrusted by
the popes with the various operations of pontifical finance, those
_mercatores Romanam curiam sequentes_ among whom are found the ancestors
of the great Medici of the fifteenth century.[27]

In the course of the fifteenth century this second class of capitalists,
courtiers, merchants, and financiers, successors to the capitalists of
the hanses and the gilds, is in its turn drawn along toward the downward
grade. The progress of navigation, the discoveries made by the
Portuguese, then by the Spaniards, the formation of great monarchical
states struggling for supremacy, begin to destroy the economic situation
in the midst of which that class had grown to greatness, and to which
it had adapted itself. The direction of the currents of commerce is
altered. In the north, the English and Dutch marine gradually take the
place of the hanses. In the Mediterranean, commerce centres itself at
Venice and at Genoa. On the shores of the Atlantic, Lisbon becomes the
great market for spices, and Antwerp, supplanting Bruges, becomes the
rendezvous of European commerce. The sixteenth century sees this
movement grow more rapid. It is favored at once by moral, political, and
economic causes; the intellectual progress of the Renaissance, the
expansion of individualism, great wars exciting speculation, the
disturbance of monetary circulation caused by the influx of precious
metals from the New World. As the science of the Middle Ages disappears
and the humanist takes the place of the scholastic, so a new economy
rises in the place of the old urban economy. The state subjects the
towns to its superior power. It restrains their political autonomy at
the same time that is sets commerce and industry free from the
guardianship which the towns have hitherto imposed upon them. The
protectionism and the exclusiveness of the bourgeoisies are brought to
an end. If the craft-guilds continue to exist, yet they no longer
control the organization of labor. New industries appear, which, to
escape the meddling surveillance of the municipal authorities, establish
themselves in the country. Side by side with the old privileged towns,
which merely vegetate, younger manufacturing centres, full of strength
and exuberance, arise; in England, Sheffield, and Birmingham, in
Flanders, Hondschoote and Armentieres.[28]

The spirit in which is now manifested in the worl