Status Updates From Малка история на икономиката

I know little of economics or its history and would like to learn, but so far the author seems bent on self-contradictory oversimplification. It claims that in Venice and Florence there emerged "new kinds of people: the merchants who bought and sold goods for profit and the bankers who dealt in money. No longer was society just made up of those who prayed, those who farmed and those who fought.". Blegh.