posted 01-10-2001 10:44 PM           

• People did a lot of bartering and many things were paid for by farm produce or by some work. Even at the top end of society a lord rented his land from the king not for money but for providing a certain amount of men for military service. Most peasant rented their land by providing a number of days work on the lords farm.
  
• The currency that was used was based on precious metals (gold and silver). This means that, although people might perfer the coins they were used to and which had the head of their king on they would general accept any coin from anywhere if it was made of gold or silver (ie There was a common european currency.)
  
• In England, through most of the medieval period, there was only one coin which was the silver penny. There were several units of accounting. 12 pennies made a Shilling. 20 shillings made a Pound. 13 shillillings and 4 pence made a Mark. There was no such thing as a shilling or pound coin (and no bills of anysort). If you had to pay 10/6 (10 shillings and six pence) it was paid out as 126 silver penny coins.

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And the astronomyours beheldyne the constellacions of hys bryth by thare castle, and foundyn that he sholde bene wyse and curteyse, good of consaill
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posted 01-12-2001 10:09 AM            

• In the early and high MA, coinage was the exclusive right of the kings. They could give that right to persons or institutions but always stayed the formal owners of that right.

• In early medieval France, the money system of the late roman empire, based on the constantinian money-system, was transferred to the coinage of the Merovingian Kings. They tried to uphold gold coinage, but the coins soon began to loose weight (causing inflation) and people began to pay in naturalia instead of money.

• Charlemagne closed many of the older coinage places in the 780s and began to establish new silver money. This currency soon was known all over europe as more secure than the older coins, and for the King there was much more silver available for coinage than gold.

• In the following centuries, coinage still was one of the most important 'regalia' (= rights of the king). This, in almost every case combined with the right to hold a weekly market and the right to take a certain amount of maoney from every tradesman, was given to a Duke, Earl, Bishop or an Abbey, if the King wanted them to establish a new town at any point in his Kingdom.

• During the 11th and 12th centuries, first the Bishops and then all the other holders of the 'regalia' in Germany, Burgundy and Italy began to place not the kings, but their own name or the name of the town in question on the coins.

• Result: In the late MA, almost every important city and every earldom had its own curreny, making trade very complicated and prices hardly comparable. In Switzerland it took as long as 1848 to establish again a common curreny. Germany had its Mark not before 1872. Difficulties were much the same as the Euro is causing today...

Merlin

posted 01-12-2001 03:44 PM           

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And the astronomyours beheldyne the constellacions of hys bryth by thare castle, and foundyn that he sholde bene wyse and curteyse, good of consaill
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posted 01-15-2001 07:24 AM            

After Emperor Diocletianus had tried in vain to reform the imperial prize- and money-system in the late 3rd century AD, his successor Constantinus could establish new coins after 310 AD. They were all based on the SOLIDUS, a heavy gold coin, and on the MILIARENSE, smaller silver coins. 12 miliarense made a solidus.

In the late 4th century was introduced the TRIENS, a gold coin worth 4 miliarense (or 1/3 of a solidus). There have also been minor coins made of copper, sometimes covered with silver. These were produced in large numbers and soon lost weight and worth. Because the rich tended to keep their savings in gold coins, the other coins were soon exposed to hyperinflation.

In the last years before the fall of the west half of the roman empire, the city of Trier began to produce leaden coins; these were some of the last signs of a centralized gouvernment in that area for a long time.

The Merowingian kings of the Francs introduced their own coins not befor the death of Clovis I. (511 AD). Their system was based on the late roman TRIENS until Pippin I., first of the Carolingian Kings, prohibited gold coinage in the frankish kingdom in the second half of the 8th century. For the next 500 years, almost no gold coins appeard in the european kingdoms.

Charlemagne even prohibited to use langobardian gold coins on any frankish market in 781 AD (source: Capitulare de Mantua). In 794 AD, he finally established his new currency, the silver DENAR (source: Capitulare de Frankfurt). 12 denars made 1 SHILLING, 20 shilling made 1 POUND (names for these bigger unities changed in every region). The new system soon was established all over europe - even beyond the borders of the frankish empire, as you can see by the similarities of what Philip told us about England...