Token and Siege Monies
For brass I will bring gold, and for iron I will bring silver.
—Isaiah 60: 17
Precursors of the standard formula
Medieval jurists’ preference for full-bodied coinage discouraged but did not entirely stop various forms of tokens or redeemable promises from circulating as currency. Occasionally, siege and other token coins were temporarily issued to relieve extraordinary shortages of small change and other coins. These early siege monies contained lessons about how the medieval monetary mechanism would eventually be reformed with the standard formula. Near the close of the Middle Ages, in Catalonia and Castile, these lessons were brought together to inspire early attempts to implement Cipolla’s standard formula, with governments promising to convert token coins. Those attempts were ultimately defeated by the activities of counterfeiters and the governments’ lack of a technology to deter them.
Medieval tokens
The numismatic literature treats medieval tokens as part of the large variety of coin-like objects.1 The reason for segregating them from coins is mainly their content (base metals such as pewter, then lead, and later still brass and copper), but also their functions and the intent of their makers.
Counters were coin-like objects used by accountants on a checkered counting board, the medieval equivalent of the abacus. Largescale production of “counting pennies” (Rechenpfennige) became a specialty of the German town of Nuremberg. Tokens, on the other hand, were given to furnish proof that some action had been performed, such as payment of a toll or entrance fee. In cases where the action was rewarded after its performance, for example attendance at mass by members of an ecclesiastical chapter, the token was a redeemable claim to future payment. Church bodies and lay confraternities found it useful to issue such redeemable tokens to the needy in order to organize their charitable distributions. The token was usually redeemed by the issuer in kind, such as food in the case of charity; but sometimes redemption was made in cash, and sometimes not by the issuer directly, but by an intermediary who provided the food and then returned the token to the issuer for cash.2
Medieval tokens are documented primarily in Flanders and northern France, but also in northern Italy and Catalonia. Their use as substitute for small change is documented early on: in England, a complaint on shortages in 1402 cites the recourse to lead tokens as substitutes. Erasmus, who visited England around 1510, remarked on their use (Ruding 1840, 1:250, 301). By the mid-sixteenth century tokens were used throughout the Low Countries and in neighboring Westphalia (Schrötter 1902). They were subject to counterfeiting: the city of Béthune, in northern France, had to stop its issues in 1531 because of widespread counterfeiting. It redeemed 100,000 outstanding tokens (Rouyer 1862).
The attitude of central authorities varied. In England, where the mint produced very few small denominations, tokens were tolerated and at times officially authorized. In 1582, Elizabeth I allowed Bristol to issue lead tokens to be current within 10 miles of the city. Scarcity of small change led to private issues of substitutes in lead, brass, copper, or paper, against which no action was taken. In London alone it was estimated that 3,000 tradespeople issued tokens in the amount of £5 each (Craig 1953, 128).
By contrast, in France and the Low Countries, private tokens became victims of government action in the sixteenth century. In 1557, officials of the Cour des Monnaies passing through the town of Mâcon shut down the local cathedral’s production of lead tokens. The chapter of the cathedral protested, alleging they had enjoyed the right to make these tokens for several centuries. But the monetary officials were adamant, because the tokens, originally used to pay choristers, had gained circulation throughout the town for 1d., 2d. and 6d. In their eyes, this was money, and they threatened prosecution on grounds of counterfeiting. In a similar case in Autun in 1577, the officials seized the chapter’s piles and trussells, but the chapter recovered them after an appeal before the courts (Rouyer 1849, 362, 367).
In the Low Countries, Charles V prohibited the tokens issued by hospitals in Delft because they were circulating in retail trade; it is notable that, after the rebellion against Spain, William of Orange authorized them (Van Loon 1732–37, 1:178). In 1541, Charles V prohibited the circulation of lead pennies in the province of Hainaut; the reason given was that those made by the city of Maubeuge, although legal, had become too widely counterfeited (Recueil des Anciennes Ordonnances des Pays Bas 1907, 331).
Siege money
A siege interrupted a city’s exchanges with the outside world. The purpose of siege money, also called obsidional currency, was to pay troops lest they stop fighting. A besieged commander, unable to secure funds from outside the city, had to find ways to remunerate his garrison. In some cases, siege money was made of gold or silver, for example when a local ruler or garrison commander had his silver plate cut into pieces and distributed to the soldiers. Numismatists do not class such objects as money because they do not bear the official stamp of a mint. In other cases, the siege money was made with whatever cheap material was at hand, and merely represented a (state-contingent, obviously) promise of payment after the assailants would lift the siege.
The fourteenth-century Florentine chronicler Giovanni Villani (cited in Jesse 1924, 84) told how the German emperor Frederic II ran out of funds while besieging Faenza in 1240. He reportedly paid his troops with leather coins imprinted with the design of his gold augustales coins and a promise of redemption that he kept. Similar issues of leather money have been ascribed to King Jean II of France in the mid-fourteenth century and Doge Michiele of Venice at the siege of Tyre in 1124, but these have been shown to be apocryphal.3 Villani wrote a century after the events. The lack of contemporary evidence suggests that the story of Frederic II may well be an invention too; it was nevertheless believed and frequently cited in sixteenth-century texts on money (Hotman [1573] 1610, 122 [qu. 15]; Grimaudet 1576, 19; Budel 1591, lib. 1, cap. 1 n. 31; Godefroy, to Dig. 18.1.1; [1590] 1688, col. 494).
Aside from this dubious example, siege monies appeared at the end of the fifteenth century.4 By then, as we have seen, canonists had sanctioned the issue of overvalued currency in cases of emergency. One of the earliest examples, uncovered by Hermand (1846), occurred when the town of Saint-Omer in Flanders was besieged by the French in 1477, and its mayor issued lead tokens of 9d. and 12d. that were ultimately redeemed.
Another early example is cited in several places in the early seventeenth-century literature on money.5 It took place between 1483 and 1485, in the town of Alhama de Granada in southern Spain, not far from Granada itself. Granada was still Arab, and Alhama had just been conquered by the Christians in 1482. From 1483 to 1485 its commander was Íñigo López de Mendoza, the second count of Tendilla, who later became the first Spanish governor of Granada in 1492. During that period the Arabs of Granada made several unsuccessful attempts to retake Alhama. The story is told by a well-informed contemporary, Fernando del Pulgar, secretary of the king of Aragon (Pulgar 1943, 2:97–98):
It happened that there was a shortage of money in that city to pay the wages of the soldiers, and for that reason all trade necessary for subsistence had ceased between them. The count saw this, and ordered that a paper money be made, of various denominations high and low, of the quantity he deemed necessary for carrying out trades between people. On each piece of paper he wrote in his own hand the price it was worth; and with this money he paid the wages he owed to soldiers and workers, and ordered it to be valued among the residents of the city, and that no one refuse it. He pledged that when anyone left the city, presenting each piece of money to him, he would give the value inscribed on it in gold or silver coins. And all the people, knowing the trustworthiness of the count, trusted him and his word, and accepted their wages in this paper money, which circulated between them in the purchase of sustenance and other things, and no one refused it, and it was a great remedy to the extreme straits in which they were. And later, at the time that the count relinquished his post in the city, before leaving, he paid to anyone who presented it the paper money that they had received, in gold and silver money equal in value to that inscribed in his hand on the paper.
The idea of siege money may have come from elsewhere in Spain. Botet i Sisó (1911, 2:281) cited issues of pennies by the commander of the besieged town of Gerona in Catalonia in 1462, some of which may have been of pure copper. In the following decades, there were only isolated examples of siege monies that were clearly issued for more than their intrinsic content.6
The war fought by the Spaniards to keep the Low Countries prompted a flurry of siege monies.7 Between 1567 and 1586, token siege money was issued on twenty occasions, in various materials (tin, lead, copper, even paper) and in a range of denominations (up to eight different denominations). The insurgents in Valenciennes issued the first such siege money in 1567. When the war moved to Holland in 1572, siege money was issued by the municipal authorities in Haarlem, Middelburg, and Alkmaar. In Leyden, where a tradition of token money issued by hospitals was well established, the Calvinist municipality issued paper coins made from recycled Roman Catholic prayer books (see fig. 12.1). The siege lasted four months and was lifted on March 21; six days later, the coins were redeemed. The town was besieged again a few months later and another issue of paper coins took place. After these successful precedents, the States of Holland recommended in 1575 that all towns under siege by Spanish armies use siege money, implicitly guaranteeing redemption even if the siege ended with capitulation, as happened at Zierikzee. Sometimes the garrison itself demanded the issue of siege money, as in Deventer in 1578 when the mutinous troops forced the city elders to issue 800 coins of 30s. each to pay their wages.
Van Loon (1732–37, 1:161–62) described an interesting variant of the siege money procedure. In 1573, the existing silver coinage of Holland and Zeeland was subjected to a restamping operation, whereby a small mark was added to coins by government officials. The restamped coins were ordered to circulate temporarily for ⅛ more than their original value, and they were to be ultimately redeemed.8 We will soon see how the Spaniards used the idea of restamping coins a few decades later.
Figure 12.1 Paper money of Leyden, 1574. The stamp in the upper left of the obverse was imprinted at the time of redemption, according to Van Loon.
(Copyright Bibliothèque Royale Albert Ier, Bruxelles, Monnaies et Médailles).
The link between the siege monies of the Netherlands and the earlier tokens issued by ecclesiastical and municipal bodies has already been noted. That tokens had developed in the Low Countries, northern Italy, and Catalonia is perhaps not a surprise, since those areas were the most financially developed at the time.9
Convertible token currency: an early experiment
Catalonia, in the late fifteenth century, had experience both with tokens, such as those issued by the chapter of Saint-Jean of Perpignan (Mitchiner and Skinner 1984, 33), and with siege money, as with the case of Gerona cited above.
The coins issued by Gerona’s commander Dom Pere de Rocaberti in 1462 were issued and circulated for some time after the siege. Still suffering from a scarcity of small change, the city asked and received permission from the king to issue small change. In 1481, he allowed Gerona to issue coins of any metal, but no more than 200 llivres, and on condition that “the city be known to pledge, and effectively pledge to receive said small money from those who might hold it, and to convert it and return for it good money of gold or silver, whenever and however much they be asked.” The king required the city to appoint an individual to make the exchange (Botet i Sisó 1908–11, 2:326–37, 3:11–40, 3:480, cited in Usher 1943, 232).
Initially, Gerona withdrew the remaining siege money and restamped it. The collection fell short of the 200 llivres, and it was decided to mint new coins of copper alloyed with 6.25% silver. The resulting coinage contained 25% of the silver in an equal face value of croats, the main silver coin. A total of 1,300 llivres of such coins was minted between 1482 and 1484. The coins depreciated, in part because of counterfeits, and in 1489 the town was authorized to announce a recall for 15 days, after which it was not obliged to convert them anymore. The coins found to be genuine were countermarked and issued again; the next year, another series was issued, of pure copper. In 1494, an interesting episode occurred: as part of a kingdom-wide monetary reform, the king had placed a legal tender limit of 6d. for small change. As a result, people wanted fewer coins of Gerona. They turned in many coins, at great cost to the city. Gerona applied for relief from the king and was authorized to maintain the currency at its original legal tender value for three months, presumably without convertibility. A restamping operation was also carried out. More restampings followed by new issues were carried out in 1510 and in 1515: the latter occasioned difficulties because the city found more than half of the coins to be counterfeits. The new issues were convertible; that of 1515 contained 4% silver. In 1535, the large number of counterfeits gave rise to a rumor that the city would suspend convertibility, and another restamping operation was carried out to remove counterfeits.
Gerona’s innovation was quickly imitated by several other Catalonian cities: about a dozen are known to have issued convertible coinage in pure copper or billon. Sometimes the city was required to commit in writing to convert into royal coins of gold or silver current throughout Catalonia. The profits were presumably retained by the city, but sometimes it was specified that they be used to maintain its military installations. The coins were often given legal tender value in a limited range around the city. Indeed, Barcelona, the capital and seat of the official mint, disapproved of these local currencies, maintaining that only it was privileged to mint royal coins. Barcelona prohibited the local issues on its own territory. The problem of counterfeiting was widespread, and the usual response was to restamp coins as in Gerona.10 Catalonian cities nonetheless continued to issue convertible coins. The last known issue took place in 1576 in Puigcerdà, and it was legal tender throughout the regions of Rosselló and Cerdanya (in spite of the protests from the city of Perpinyà).
First attempt at standard formula
These experiments in the Catalonian cities were early attempts to issue a convertible token coinage.11 The initial experiments were successful enough to be pursued by several cities for decades. But the medieval hammering technology proved too accessible to counterfeiters. The cities’ coinages were plagued by depreciation and recurrent crises, which they met by occasionally weeding out counterfeits from the money stock and issuing new types of coins. Before the standard formula was to be explicitly proposed and implemented, many more experiments would occur on larger scales, conducted both by states and private parties.
1 See Rouyer (1858), Mitchiner and Skinner (1984), Mitchiner (1988–98).
2 See Courtenay (1972a, 1972b) for references, and for the role played by these partially convertible tokens as a metaphor in theological discussions of sacraments in the thirteenth century.
3 See Grierson (1954) for Michiele’s coins. The story of the leather money of Jean II does not appear until a century after the facts and was rejected as apocryphal by Dumoulin, along with a similar story for Louis IX of France (1584, §799; 1681, 2:322).
4 See Mailliet (1868–73) for a catalog of obsidional currencies.
5 For example Grégoire (Republica lib. 3, cap. 6, n. 26; 1609, 43), Carranza (1629, 260 [lib. 4, cap. 1, §7, p. 3]), and González Téllez (to X 2.24.18; 1715, 554).
6 Mailliet documents examples in the Low Countries (L’Écluse in 1492, Tournai in 1521), northern Italy (Novara in 1495, Verona in 1516). The lead coins issued in Vienna besieged by the Turks in 1529 are cited by Budel (1591, 4).
7 Mailliet (1868–73) catalogs the coinage. Van Loon (1732–37) provides historical details on the sieges.
8 Van Loon was unable to find any orders of the States-General to confirm this restamping and to determine the actual procedures.
9 See de Roover (1948), Lane and Mueller (1985), and Usher (1943), respectively.
10 In 1532, the city of Vic tried to forestall depreciation by agreeing to buy back counterfeits, but this only increased counterfeiting, and it soon had to resort to restamping.
11 Another example can be cited: in 1621, the bishop of Verden in Germany issued copper pennies, ordering that, “for these copper coins to remain a subsidiary coin (Scheidepfennig) and so that no one be burdened to excess, let no one be obligated to accept more than 9 thaler of these coins in any transaction, and we volunteer to establish an exchange bank in Verden as well as in Rotenburg, where the copper money can be exchanged for imperial coins” (Schrötter 1902, 210).