The Age of Exploration, 1450, a return to gold and silver as currency, and along with it professional armies, massive predatory warefare, usury and debt peonage, and materialism, science, and arts.
Also the time of the black death.
Most of the gold went to temples in India, and the silver to China. The Chinese demand for European silver made it all possible. In the early 17th century, China was importing 116 tons of silver per year. They paid for it in silk and porcelin.
Yet in this Tudor England, coin was in very short supply. Yet taxes HAD to be paid in metal.
The mines in the Americas were pits of hell, with dead bodies for miles around. The savage, insatiable hunger of the conquistidors for treasure -- was it because no matter how much they got, they could not pay off their debts? Cortez conquered a continent, yet could not pay his bills.
This was reminiscent of the 4th crusade, during which indebted knights would strip whole cities of their wealth, only to find themselves one small step ahead of their creditors. And the creditors were the same, the bankers of Northern Italy.
Debt leading to a psychology of cold, calculating greed, complicated by shame and righteous indignation, frantic urgency of debts which only grow, and outrage that they should be held to owe anything at all.
But this age saw the logic of money gain autonomy from the state, until political and military power were reorganized around it. Now the state became involved in debt enforcement.
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