Forrest Capie identified two core purposes in the history of central banking: price and financial stability. The focus in the nineteenth century was financial stability and in the twentieth century the focus changed to price stability. For most central banks, price stability has become the primary objective.
It is well accepted nowadays that inflation is ultimately a monetary phenomenon and that there is no long-run trade-off between output and inflation. Thus, central bank independence became something of a “great mantra” in the twentieth century.