Europe. These fairs became educational forces of a high order.

THE REVIVAL OF INDUSTRY AND BANKING. The trading of articles at seaports
and at the interior city fairs came first, and this soon worked a
revolution in industry. Instead of agriculture being almost the only
occupation, and the feeding of the local population the only purpose, with
only such arts and industries practiced as were needed to supply the wants
of the townsmen, it now became possible to create a surplus to barter at
the fairs for luxuries from the outside. Local industries, heretofore of
but little importance, now developed into trades, and the manufacture of
articles for outside sale was begun. At first manufacturing was very
limited in scope, and confined largely to local handicrafts or the
imitation of imported articles, but later new and important industries
arose--the glass industry in Venice, the gold and silver industry of
Florence, the weaving industry at Mainz and Erfurt, and the wool industry
of Flanders. The craftsman and artisan, as well as the merchant and
trader, were now developed in the towns, and soon became important members
of the new social order. As serfs and villeins [32] were set free from the
land [33] they came to the towns, adding more members to the new
industrial classes (R. 96). From 1200 on there was a great revival of
industry in western Europe, and by 1500 merchants and craftsmen had won
back the place once held by merchants and craftsmen in Roman life and
trade.

At Florence a banking class arose, and instead of barter, banks and the
use of money and credit were developed. From Florence this system
gradually extended to the other commercial cities. Gradually the mediaeval
objection to the taking of interest for the use of money, which the Church
had forbidden in the early Middle Ages as "usury" and wicked, was
overcome, and Italian bankers and merchants led the world in the