After a large collapse you have rapid expansion. The rapid expansion in the 15th century allowed people to shed their moral hungups about usury. After all, in a rapidly growing economy there's less risk in taking a loan on interest. Then in the 16th century a huge influx of precious metals and spices provided a further monetary boost. Then in the 17th century came the reformation and the Protestants left behind the very Catholic idea that money is somehow dirty, with the extreme example of Calvin for whom wealth was a sign of divine grace and thus of moral virtue (his causal chain did run backwards). And in the mid-18th century we get the beginnings of the indusrial revolution, modern economic liberalism, etc. This is a period of continued growth in Europe, though the baton does get passed in succession from the Mediterranean (Genoa, Venice) to Iberia (Spain and Portugal) to France, to the Netherlands, to England.

I just don't see the significance of the little ice age, in the mediterranean basin it didn't have a crippling economic effect. If you're thinking about the Maunder Minimum, it coincided with the reign of Le Roi Soleil, so France was obviously unaffected. And "the end of the little ice age" seems to have happened around 1850?

The Little Ice Age (LIA) was a period of cooling occurring after a warmer era known as the Medieval climate optimum. Climatologists and historians find it difficult to agree on either the start or end dates of this period. Some confine the Little Ice Age to 1550-1850, lasting approximately from the 14th to the mid-19th centuries while others prefer a span from the 13th to 17th centuries. It is generally agreed that there were three minima, beginning about 1650, about 1770, and 1850, each separated by slight warming intervals.

Those whom the Gods wish to destroy They first make mad. -- Euripides