The Social Significance of Monetization in the Early Middle Ages

Bibliographic Data

ID4161799
AuthorsRory Naismith (0000-0002-2962-5691, corresponding author)
Year2014
Volume223
Issue1
Pages3-39
Publication date2014-05-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenuePast & Present (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0031-2746 • E-ISSN: 1477-464X
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/pastj/gtu004
OpenAlexW2096069278
LanguageEN
Citations received7

In 1057, the ecclesiastical reformer Peter Damian (d. 1072/3) explained in a letter to his fellow cardinal bishops how a lump of debased silver might be remade into different coins but still remain a dangerous forgery, in the same way as a corrupt priest would always be tainted by his abuses.1 The image was presumably effective, for the same author used similar monetary metaphors on several other occasions. By doing so he tapped into a long Christian tradition developed in the Bible and subsequently in the writings of Ambrose, Augustine, Gregory the Great and others.2 But in the five centuries between the age of Gregory and that of Peter Damian, monetary metaphors were very rarely called on.3 A revealing exception comes in Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum. The saintly princess Eorcengota at one point dreams of angelic men in white scouring her monastery in search of a ‘gold coin’ (aureum ... nomisma) brought there from Kent, by which Bede meant Eorcengota herself.4 In this case the coin was gold, and clearly signified something of rare interest and value. Daily familiarity with low-value coin, that is to say, was not expected among audiences in the same way as in late antiquity or as was slowly beginning to be the case once again in the time of Peter Damian. On some level this change speaks to certain basic limitations of early medieval currency; above all the lack of a large, low-value coinage that could be used for small payments, in the manner of the copper-alloy issues of the Roman empire. From the later twelfth century the money supply expanded dramatically, eventually resulting in the production of fractional coins and debased ‘black money’ for low-value transactions. But early medieval coinage was essentially monometallic — first in gold, later in silver — and monodenominational. Attestations of prices are rare, but there is little doubt that each individual gold tremissis or even silver denarius much exceeded the cost of most day-to-day necessities. Denizens of Merovingian, Carolingian and Ottonian Europe simply could not easily buy a single pint of beer or loaf of bread with the coin available to them. Nor was the quantity of currency in circulation anything other than paltry by Roman or thirteenth-century standards.5 Early medieval Europe was never a ‘money economy’ as defined by later medievalists, with a currency large enough to factor into most acts of exchange — a currency which affected prices with its expansion and contraction, and which was supported by elaborate systems of credit and accounting.6 For all these reasons, money did not carry quite the same symbolic clout during the centuries after the fall of the western Roman empire.

Ancient history · Art · Art history · Bishops · Currency · Literature · Middle Ages · Monetization · Political science · Value (mathematics) · Byzantine Studies and History · Classics · Historical and Religious Studies of Rome · History · Law · Medieval Literature and History · Philosophy

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