ABSTRACT
The population of Italy and her larger cities during the later Middle Ages can only be approximated. In the later Middle Ages, the majority of cities in Italy were primarily market centres for locally produced commodities. On a scale unprecedented elsewhere in Europe, the economic development of Florence throughout the later Middle ages generated the construction of a vast number of secular and ecclesiastical buildings, initially in the Romanesque style and later Gothic in design. Apart from directly fuelling the development of private palazzi, the profits derived from long-distance trade and the development of industry and banking were often injected indirectly into the construction of ecclesiastical buildings by means of donations to the mendicant orders. Italy and much of the rest of Europe suffered a succession of severe epidemics throughout the fourteenth century, of which the Black Death was one of a series that recurred from time to time across the continent.
