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4 - Sovereign concerns: weights, measures, and coinage

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Diana Wood
Diana Wood
Affiliation:
University of East Anglia
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Summary

INTRODUCTION: THE CONNECTION

The connection between weights, measures, and coinage was a close one in the medieval period, for control of all of them was part of the exercise of sovereignty. As the Dominican Ptolemy of Lucca (d. c. 1328), pupil of Aquinas, appreciated:

weights and measures … are as necessary as the coinage for preserving the government of any lordship, since they are used in the payment of tributes, since their use decreases quarrels and protects fidelity in purchases and sales, and, finally, since they, like coins, are instruments of human life and, even more than coinage, imitate natural action … it seems that weights and measures take their origin from nature more than coinage does, and therefore they are even more necessary in a republic or kingdom.

Our aim is to pinpoint the origins of weights, measures, and coinage, before exploring the development of sovereign rights to control their standards.

Control of the standards enabled a ruler, or his deputy, to regulate the most vital aspects of people's existence. The standard controlled the boundaries of the all-important land on which they lived, and which provided sustenance for them and their dependants and a surplus for the market. Within the market the standard controlled the amount or size of essential commodities – food and drink, and the cloth which covered human nakedness. Weights and measures regulated exchange just as much as money did.

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Chapter
Information
Medieval Economic Thought , pp. 89 - 109
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2002

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