Popes, kings, bankers, noblemen, knights, priests, cardinals, but also ordinary men and women: the story of those who in one hundred incredible years discovered how to generate wealth through wealth.

Starting in 1240 (in a period of history spanning one hundred years), there was a violent upheaval involving the first money changers and lenders in Northern Italy, which later spread to the highly articulated system of Florentine banks and the nascent apparatuses of the national states. The upheaval would prove rapid, tumultuous, and complex, transforming profit into a new and beguiling notion, the mirage of a new world founded on an axiom – not just the predictable one of the attainment of wealth but the creation of something going beyond riches, rendering our very possessions dynamic. All of a sudden, money became a life force.
In this vivacious and meticulously documented account, Amedeo Feniello describes the exemplary tales of those who were among the first to savour the euphoria of financial risk (but also the depression of debt and bankruptcy.)