The Knights Templar started London's first bank (2017)
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Re: The Knights Templar started London's first bank (2017)
#2I can't wait for "Assassin's Creed: Excel" to really capture the spirit of this.
Re: The Knights Templar started London's first bank (2017)
#3Nice article. Wish they had gone on to cover Cosimo Medici! He was the best. Inventing banking and then using the profits to fund the renaissance? Need people like that today.
Re: The Knights Templar started London's first bank (2017)
#4Nice article. Wish they had gone on to cover Cosimo Medici! He was the best. Inventing banking and then using the profits to fund the renaissance? Need people like that today.
> Need people like that today.
Florentine maecenas were no different from billionaires today chasing each other in space races.
They didn't sponsor artists for the sake of art but rather as a display of wealth and power.
Edit: I am clarifying intention here, it does not mean that the side effects don't have a net positive, but they are unlikely to come from a purely altruistic place.
Re: The Knights Templar started London's first bank (2017)
#5> If you had been at the great fair of Lyon in 1555, you could have seen the answer. Lyon's fair was the greatest market for international trade in all Europe.
This is interesting to me as I live in the city and it's long been a center for trade, geographically positioned on two major rivers and with access to Paris, Switzerland, and Italy. Try as I might, though, I can't Google up anything about that fair in 1555 - does anyone have a link to a Wikipedia-style/level article about it?
Re: The Knights Templar started London's first bank (2017)
#6I'm pretty sure they got this 'original' idea from the practice of their Muslim contemporaries. This is a very similar concept to the origin of cheque where it's too dangerous to carry gold and cash along the silk road from Middle East countries to China and beyond.
Re: The Knights Templar started London's first bank (2017)
#7> If you had been at the great fair of Lyon in 1555, you could have seen the answer. Lyon's fair was the greatest market for international trade in all Europe. This is interesting to me as I live in the city and it's long been a center for trade, geographically positioned on two major rivers and with access to Paris, Switzerland, and Italy. Try as I might, though, I can't Google up anything about that fair in 1555 -…
Re: The Knights Templar started London's first bank (2017)
#8If you ever come to London I would highly recommend a visit to that area[1]. take the district line to "Temple" and walk into temple court. This is a set of interconnecting pretty courtyards surrounded by buildings used as offices for lawyers working at the nearby high court. These courtyards have a feel similar to an Oxford/Cambridge college and have been used as settings for "Harry Potter" and other films (to give you a flavour). As you wander through, eventually you will come across a statue of two knights on the back of a single horse, symbol of the templars[2]. Next to this is the Temple Church[3], with its distinctive round medieval tower where the templars themselves are buried. This is a lovely place to listen to concerts etc. I used to deliberately get the tube to temple every day so I could walk through this area to work because it's really lovely.
[1] https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=18/51.51245/-0.11150
[2] This is the scene in the main photo in TFA
Re: The Knights Templar started London's first bank (2017)
#9Nice article. Wish they had gone on to cover Cosimo Medici! He was the best. Inventing banking and then using the profits to fund the renaissance? Need people like that today.
> Need people like that today. Florentine maecenas were no different from billionaires today chasing each other in space races. They didn't sponsor artists for the sake of art but rather as a display of wealth and power. Edit: I am clarifying intention here, it does not mean that the side effects don't have a net positive, but they are unlikely to come from a purely altruistic place.
Cynicism aside, the renaissance was a real phenomenon. Among many other things, Cosimo Medici restarted the Academy, hiring the philosopher Marsilio Ficino to translate Plato (which had been lost to the west for nearly 1000 years), Plotinus, Hermes Trismegistus, etc. The reintroduction of classical ideas and modes of thought had a profound impact on the development of Europe over the next 200 years.
Meanwhile, many of Ficino’s own philosophical books remain untranslated today…
(Btw, if this is anyone else’s interest, I’ve helped to translate Ficino’s philosophy of pleasure: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RZYHWmptuPbpZcUbDdqNvBJD...)
Re: The Knights Templar started London's first bank (2017)
#10> If you had been at the great fair of Lyon in 1555, you could have seen the answer. Lyon's fair was the greatest market for international trade in all Europe. This is interesting to me as I live in the city and it's long been a center for trade, geographically positioned on two major rivers and with access to Paris, Switzerland, and Italy. Try as I might, though, I can't Google up anything about that fair in 1555 -…
This? https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foires_de_Lyon
Interestingly, the English equivalent of that page describes an event that's been happening only since 1985.