The Florentine super-companies of the Peruzzi (1343) and Bardi (1346) collapse after heavy lending to rulers, including Edward III of England, and a wider credit crunch.
Contested history
Consensus: The Peruzzi and Bardi companies failed in the 1340s during a wider Florentine banking crisis.
Edward III's repudiation of his war loans ruined themDebated
Chroniclers such as Giovanni Villani blamed Edward's default, and the debts were real and large.
They were already weakened by trade losses and Florence's own crisisDebated
Edwin Hunt's study of Peruzzi accounts argues the firms' grain-trade and political troubles mattered more than the English loans.