Why was there such severe inflation in Europe during the 16th century?

Exploration,colonization, and exploitation of the New World (which turned out to be much larger in size than anybody initially realized) meant that there was a massive influx of precious metals

• gold and silver - into Europe.

In an age before paper money, precious metals were used for coinage, the currency of the day.Much of the gold and silver that arrived from the New World was minted into coins, which meant there was much more cash in circulation, the amount increasing as the century progressed.

The steady and large increase in coinage as the century went on led to inflation, which was more severe because it was ongoing throughout the century for the reasons mentioned above.