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Appendix I - The Coins Most Commonly in Use in the Middle Ages

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 November 2009

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Summary

Weight in medieval documents was normally expressed in terms of the number of coins that were struck from a standard weight, usually a pound or a mark, but sometimes from a smaller unit, such as an ounce or lot. These weights naturally varied from time to time and from place to place, although there were some, such as the marks of Cologne or Troyes, that had a long and widespread use. Alternatively weights were expressed in terms of carats or grains. The carat or siliqua (the seed of the carob, Ceratonia siliqua) was the standard basic weight in antiquity in the Mediterranean world, and continued in use in the Byzantine Empire in the Middle Ages. In the Germanic west, however, it fell out of use in the sixth and seventh centuries in favour of systems in which cereal grains were the basic units. Both barley grains, later called Troy grains, and wheat grains, later called Paris grains, were used. The former weighed 0.065 grams and the latter 0.053 grams. The last Merovingian gold trientes and the first Merovingian silver deniers could therefore be described either as weighing 20 grains of barley or as weighing 24 grains of wheat. In this table all weights are reduced to grams.

Fineness in medieval documents was normally expressed in terms derived from systems of weight used at an earlier time. For silver, the system used right through the Middle Ages was derived from weighing in grains, as it had been used in the first centuries of the circulation of the denier.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1988

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