zecca

�ecca

�ecca

Alan M. Stahl

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Stahl, Alan M., –

Zecca : the mint of Venice in the Middle Ages / Alan M. Stahl.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.

--- (alk. paper)

. Zecca di Venezia. . Mints—Italy—Venice—History—To .

. Coins, Italian—Italy—Venice—History—To .

I. American Numismatic Society. II. Title.

.

.—dc -

A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.

Contents

List of Illustrations and Tables ixAcknowledgments xi

Notes and Abbreviations xiii

. The �enetian �int and Coinage to

. The �ge of the Penny, ‒ The Venetian Mint through the Eleventh Century

The Sale of the Mint Land in : A Closing of the Mint?

The Ducal Penny

. The �ge of the Grosso, c. ‒ The Introduction of the Grosso

The Age of the Grosso: The Thirteenth Century up to

The Reintroduction of the Venetian Penny

. The �ge of the �ucat, ‒ The Introduction and Establishment of the Ducat

The Reorganization of Minting

The Early Fourteenth Century: A Period of Uneasy Trimetallism

. The �ge of the Soldino, ‒ The Great Currency Mutation: Reform of the Moneta and

the Institution of the Quinto

The Glut of Gold

Another Try at the Mezzanino

The Plague Years

Further Debasements: The New Soldino and the Tornesello

From Midcentury to the Peace of Turin ()

. The �ge of Crisis and Reform, ‒ The Reintroduction of the Grosso

The Postwar Years

Crises of Clipping and Culling

Prospects for the New Century

New Colonial Coinages

The Reform of the Gold Mint

The Reform of the Silver Mint

. The �ecca in the Life of �edieval �enice

. The Setting of �int Policy The Legislative Bodies of Medieval Venice and Their Records

Medieval Legislation Governing the Mint and Bullion

Politics and Monetary Policy

. Government Control of the Bullion �arket The Sources of Silver and Gold

Silver Speculation within Venice

The Fondaco dei Tedeschi and the Bullion Trade

The Silver Brokers

The Control of the Gold and Silver Markets in the Thirteenth Century

The Early Fourteenth Century

The Creation of the Silver Office at the Rialto

The Gold Estimators and the Market for Gold in the Fourteenth Century

The Silver Market after

Silver Officials versus Moneychangers: The de Bora Affair

The Sale of Silver, –

The Silver Officials and Coinage Circulation

. The Economics of the �ecca The Economics of the Minting of Silver

The Economics of the Minting of Gold

Minting Strategies of Medieval Venice

vi Contents

. The Circulation of �enetian Coinages The Venetian Penny, the Denaro Piccolo

The Grosso

The Ducat

The Soldino and Mezzanino

The Tornesello

. Cullers, Clippers, and Counterfeiters Culling

Clipping

Counterfeiting

. �ithin the �int

. The Mintmasters The Responsibilities of the Mintmasters

The Quindena

The Acquisition of Bullion

The Supervision of Manufacture

The Distribution of Newly Minted Coins

A Case of Innovative Initiative by a Mintmaster

Controls and Checks on the Masters within the Mint

The Accounts of the Mintmasters

The Number and Election of Masters

The Remuneration of the Mintmasters

Ill-gotten Gains

The Social and Economic Background of Mintmasters

The Careers of Mintmasters

. The �int Building and Staff The Mint Building

The Permanent Staff

. Coin �esign and �ie Engraving The Legends on the Coins

The Images and Style of the Coins

The Technology of Die Engraving

The Engravers of the Medieval Zecca

Contents vii

. From Bullion to Coin The Refining of Bullion

From Ingot to Blank

Striking the Coins: The Moneyers

. The Standards of �edieval �enetian Coins The Alloys of Venetian Gold and Silver

Control of Weight Standards

The Standards of the First Soldino and Mezzanino Issues

. The �olume of Production at the �enetian �ecca Quantity of Production: Overview

Documentary Sources for Production Numbers

Numismatic Indices for Production at the Zecca

Inferences from Find Statistics

Excavation Finds

Hoard Finds

The Zecca at the Death of Doge Mocenigo

Appendix A. Offices Relating to Bullion and the Zecca

Appendix B. Finds of Medieval Venetian Coins

Bibliography

Index

viii Contents

Illustrations and Tables

Figures. Early coins of Venice

. Twelfth-century Venetian ducal pennies

. Venetian coins of the reign of Enrico Dandolo (–)

. Venetian coins of the reign of Lorenzo Tiepolo (–)

. A Venetian ducat of the reign of Giovanni Dandolo (–)

. A Serbian coin modeled on the Venetian grosso, c.

. Venetian coins of the reign of Francesco Dandolo (–)

. Venetian coins of the reign of Andrea Dandolo (–)

. Venetian coins of the reign of Antonio Venier (–)

. The Fondaco dei Tedeschi, or German Fondaco

. Touchstone needles

. The Rialto Market

. The Medieval Zecca

. The Zecca

. Various sixteenth-century coin balance scales

. The prototype of the Venetian grosso

. A pattern grosso of advanced style

. The unchanging ducat

. Varieties of the soldino

. The revival of the mezzanino

. The Sesto medal of

. The cupellation process

. A medieval mint

. A medieval upper die

. A medieval lower die

Maps. Piccolo finds

. Grosso hoards

. Ducat hoards

. Soldino finds

. Tornesello finds

. Home parishes of officials

. Home parishes of moneyer

Graphs.. Salaries of mint staff

.. Data for the fineness of Venetian silver

.. Grazie for workers at the silver mint

.. Piccoli in excavations

.. Soldini in Greek excavations

.. Torneselli in Greek excavations

.. The Verona hoard of grossi

.. Grosso hoards

.. Tornesello hoards

Tables.. Mint accounting in medieval Venice

.. The lira of medieval Venice in grams of silver

.. The price of silver in Venice

.. Wages for workers

.. Minting profits and state finances

x Illustrations

Acknowledgments

This book had its origin in the loan in of almost five thousand Vene-tian coins to the American Numismatic Society. In the course of studying thisparcel, which turned out to be from a hoard of torneselli found in Chalkis, Ishowed the coins to Frederic Lane and asked him whether there might be unpub-lished information in the Venetian archives which would help understand thisdenomination. Lane advised me that there was, indeed, much relevant sourcematerial on the tornesello. Moreover, he said that he and Reinhold Mueller hadcome across much documentation on the workings of the mint in general whichwas beyond the scope of the volume they were preparing (Money and Banking inMedieval and Renaissance Venice). Lane was, of course, correct, and it is his originalguidance and Mueller’s constant support and advice that have allowed me to find,interpret, and present this summary of how the zecca operated in the MiddleAges.

This volume draws heavily on the evidence of coins themselves, as well ason archival sources, and for this I have had indispensable assistance from mynumismatic colleagues. Foremost among these is Andrea Saccocci of the Uni-versity of Udine, who has carried out the daunting undertaking of readingthe entire manuscript critically and with good humor and sense. His firsthandknowledge of Italian coin finds has been invaluable in reconstructing the circu-lation of Venetian coinage. It is in the course of many conversations, letters, andE-mails with Saccocci that many of the ideas and much of the substance of thisbook have come together.

I have also received valuable information, photographs, and feedback fromthe curators of many coin cabinets, especially from Mando Oeconomedes andMina Galani-Krikou in Athens, Vujadin Ivanisevic in Belgrade, Bernd Kluge inBerlin, Philip Grierson and Lucia Travaini in Cambridge, Orestes Zervos inCorinth, Robert Kool in Jerusalem, Barrie Cook at the British Museum in Lon-don, Ermanno Arslan in Milan, Peter Ilisch in Münster, Michael Metcalf andNicholas Mayhew in Oxford, Bruno Callegher in Padua, Ulrich Klein in Stutt-gart, and Ivan Mirnik in Zagreb.

Other scholars who have supplied valuable information and advice includeGiorgetta Bonfiglio-Dosio, Patricia Fortini Brown, Giovanni Gorini, DeborahHoward, Katerina Hristovska, Benjamin Kohl, Cécile Morrisson, Marcus Phillips,Debra Pincus, Jasminka de Luigi Pomorishatz, John Porteous, Louise BuengerRobbert, Peter Spufford, and Louis Waldman. Like all work in Venetian stud-ies, this book has relied on the helpful assistance of the staffs of the researchinstitutions of Venice; I have space here to single out only Maria FrancescaTiepolo and Paolo Selmi of the Archivio di Stato, Giandomenico Romanelliand Caterina Marcantoni of the Museo Civico Correr, and Marino Zorzi of theBiblioteca Marciana for their special support of my research. For the scientificanalysis of Venetian coins which has contributed much of the new informationin this book, I am grateful to Giles Carter, formerly of Eastern Michigan Uni-versity, to Peter Gaspar of Washington University, and to Mark Wypyski andAnn Heywood of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Edward Peters, curator ofthe Lea Library at the University of Pennsylvania, has kindly arranged for myuse of its set of the microfilms of the Misti of the Venetian Senate.

The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation has been the mainstay of my re-search, with a series of grants that have allowed the archival research on whichthis book depends. I am indebted to the Heberden Coin Room, AshmoleanMuseum, and to Wolfson College, Oxford, for the Robinson-Kraay Fel-lowship, which allowed me to accomplish much of the secondary work for thisstudy. I am, most of all, grateful to the American Numismatic Society for itssupport of this project, especially to my colleagues who covered for me in myabsences.

My greatest debt of gratitude goes to my partner, William R. Hanauer,whose confidence and patience have gotten me through the research and writingof this book. Though my research trips to Venice allowed him a few visits thatpermitted him to know the sites of the city better than I ever will, mainly theyleft him home alone to shoulder all the responsibilities of our household. It isto him that I dedicate this book.

xii Acknowledgments

Notes and Abbreviations

Unless otherwise stated, all sums appear in this book converted to the com-mon Venetian money of account, that is, lira di piccoli up to , and lira di monetathereafter. Amounts are transformed into decimal portions of a pound, fromthe medieval system of shillings and pennies. The Venetian year began on March; dates in January and February are given in modern form, bracketed to indicatethe correction.

All archival sources cited as ASV are in the Archivio di Stato, Venice. Thefollowing abbreviations refer to subsections of that archive:

AC Avogaria di ComunADC Archivio del Duca di CandiaCDV Codice Diplomatico Veneziano: transcriptions of docu-

ments up to ; typescripts by L. LanfranchiCI Cancelleria InferioreCMI Corpus Membranarum Italicarum: a card file of summaries

of documents, –, compiled by L. LanfranchiCN Collegio NotatorioGP Giudici di PetizionGR GrazieMC Maggior ConsiglioNT Notarile TestamentiPSM Procuratori di San MarcoPZ Provveditori in Zecca

SM Senato, Misti. N.B.: The citations to SM in this book arebased on microfilms of the originals made in the s forKenneth Setton; they are now the property of the HenryCharles Lea Library, University of Pennsylvania, and havebeen used and cited by permission of their curator, Profes-sor Edward Peters. The foliation of these registers may havechanged after the filming. For the most part, only the eight-eenth-century copies are currently available for consultation.

SN Signori di Notte al CriminalSV Segretario alle VociX Consiglio dei DieciXL Quarantia Criminale

The following manuscripts are referred to by abbreviations:

CMA Capitolare dei Massari all’Argento, ASV, PZ, Register bis,an eighteenth-century compilation of regulations concern-ing the mintmasters for silver and the Silver Office.

CMM Capitolare dei Massari di Moneta, ASV, Secreta, LiberPrimus Capitulariorum (formerly Miscellanea Codici ),ff. –v. It has been published in V. Padovan, “Docu-menti per la storia della zecca veneta,” AV (): –

and –; Papadopoli, , –, #; and PMV, –. Adetailed examination of the composition of this documentcan be found in Alan M. Stahl, “The Mint of Venice in theThirteenth Century,” in Later Medieval Mints, ed. N. J. May-hew and P. Spufford (Oxford, ), –.

CMO Capitolare dei Massari all’Oro, ASV, PZ, Register ter, acompilation of regulations concerning the mintmasters forgold and the weighers for gold, compiled – withchronological additions through .

For full titles and facts of publication, see Bibliography.

AV Archivio venetoBG Besta, ed., Bilanci generali

xiv Notes and Abbreviations

Cap. Broche Bonfiglio Dosio, ed., Il “Capitolar dalle Broche”CNI Corpus Nummorum ItalicorumDF R. Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Documenti FinanziariDMC Cessi, ed., Deliberazioni del Maggior ConsiglioDQ Lombardo, ed., Deliberazioni del Consiglio dei XLFSV Comitato per la Pubblicazione delle Fonti Relative alla Sto-

ria di Venezia, Fonti per la storia di VeneziaLCR Predelli et al., eds., I libri commemoriali—regestiMEC Philip Grierson and Mark Blackburn, Medieval European

Coinage, vol. , The Early Middle Ages (Fifth–Tenth Centuries)MRLD Morozzo della Rocca and Lombardo, eds., Documenti del com-

mercio venezianoNMC Nani-Mocenigo, ed., Capitolare dei Signori di NottePapadopoli Papadopoli[-Aldobrandini], Le monete di VeneziaPMV Cessi, ed., Problemi monetari venezianiRIN Rivista italiana di numismaticaVQ Görresgesellschaft, Vatikanische Quellen zur Geschichte der

papstlichen Hof-und Finanzverwaltung, –.

Notes and Abbreviations xv

The �enetian �intand Coinage to

The �ge of the Penny, ‒

Venice’s monetary history started like that of most European minters, witha single coin, the silver penny (Latin: denarius; Venetian: denaro). After what seemsto have been a brief period of widespread circulation in the ninth century, theVenetian penny continued through the central Middle Ages as a coinage of onlyregional importance, secondary in value and recognition to that of nearby Ve-rona. It was only with the introduction of the larger silver grosso around theyear that Venice’s coinage rose in importance in Europe and the easternMediterranean. Venice was late in introducing a gold coinage, but eventually itsducat established itself as one of the leading denominations of Europe and sec-tions of neighboring continents. In addition to these famous trade coins, Venicecame to mint a variety of denominations for use within its island city and forits colonies in the Aegean.

The earliest coins that can be identified with Venice are silver pennies in thename of the Carolingian emperor Louis the Pious (‒), resembling issuesminted throughout his empire from to in appearance and standard butwith the name clearly written across the reverse (fig. ).¹ In this period,Venice was in strong alliance with Byzantium and was in no way part of theFrankish empire.² In the chronicle of John the Deacon, compiled around ,

¹Papadopoli, :‒; MEC, and ‒; Karl F. Morrison and Henry Grunthal, CarolingianCoinage, Numismatic Notes and Monographs, (New York, ), , #‒; Paolo Squa-triti, “The Mints of Treviso and Venice under the Carolingians,” American Numismatic Societysummer seminar , unpublished paper.²Heinrich Kretschmayr, Geschichte von Venedig, (‒; reprint, Aalen, ), :‒; Donald M.Nicol, Byzantium and Venice: A Study in Diplomatic and Cultural Relations (Cambridge, ), ‒.

however, there is notice of two men who participated in a rebellion about .One, named Johannes Tornaricus, is characterized as a monetarius, or minter; hefled to the Carolingian king Lothar (son of the emperor Louis the Pious), andhis house and goods were seized in Venice.³This temporary ascendancy of a pro-Frankish faction associated with a minter appears to have furnished Venice withan opportunity for producing its own coinage, following a Carolingian model.Venetian coins made up more than one-fourth of coins of this issue in oneFrench hoard and percent in another; they appear in six additional hoardsfrom the Netherlands and Germany (see below, Chap. ).

The next issue of the Carolingian empire, about to , was also in thename of Louis the Pious but did not specify the individual mint names on thecoins.⁴ A very similar issue of Venice, however, bears an obverse legend of“Lord, save the Roman emperor [or empire]” and a reverse one of “Christ, saveVenice.”⁵ It is apparent that the Venetians were unwilling to abandon the iden-tification of their mint on their coins and took advantage of this opportunity

The Mint and Coinage to

Fig. . Early coins of Venice.a. Venetian penny in the name of the Carolingian emperor Louis the Pious (‒).b. Anonymous Venetian penny, “Christ save Venice,” ninth century. c. Venetian penny

in the name of the German emperor Henry III, IV, or V (‒).Sources: a. ANS (American Numismatic Society) ... b. MCC (Museo Civico Correr),

Papadopoli . c. ANS ..

³John the Deacon, “Cronaca veneziana,” in Cronache veneziane antichissime, ed. G. Monticolo(Rome, ), .⁴MEC, :‒.⁵Papadopoli, :‒. (Dominus conserva Romanorum imperatorem[imperium?]); (Christe salva Venecias).

Image not available.

to replace the Frankish emperor’s name with one that would be acceptable toeither Carolingian or Byzantine emperors. This issue may be connected withanother episode of factional strife in ‒, in which a Domenicus Monetar-ius was involved.⁶ The coin has been found in a Swiss hoard with examples ofthe standard Carolingian issue (see below, Chap. ).

Under Louis’s son and successor in Italy, Lothar I (‒), mint nameswere put back on all imperial coins, and once again issues of Venice followedexactly those of other mints.⁷ The Venetian coins, however, are known in only afew examples and are not in any known hoard finds. In the second half of theninth century, mint names disappeared from Italian coins again, including thatof Venice. The attribution of certain coins to Venice for this period and thetenth century is based on technical features and has not been the subject ofdetailed study, but if the attributions are accurate, the coinage of Venice appearsto have had a significant role in the circulation of the period.⁸

The only extant mint privilege to Venice is one given in to Doge UrsoII by Rudolf II of Burgundy, whose effective reign in Italy lasted only two years.⁹The document, which in other aspects was a confirmation of privileges of theemperors Berengar in and Guido in , conceded “the minting of coins asdukes of the province had done in earlier times according to custom.” Unfortu-nately, no coins of Venice are known with the name of either Rudolf or Urso,nor even an anonymous one that can be convincingly attributed to the mint atthis time.¹⁰

The first specification of the coinage of Venice is in a document from Friuliof , where an annual payment was to be made in either five pennies of Milanor ten of Venice.¹¹ Up until this time, most sums had been expressed in the com-mon Carolingian formulation as silver pounds (librae), representing shillings(solidi) and pennies (denarii), with no specification of mint.¹² By the end

The Age of the Penny, ‒

⁶John the Deacon, “Cronaca,” .⁷MEC, :‒; Morrison and Grunthal, Carolingian Coinage, , #; Papadopoli, :‒.⁸MEC, :, ; Andrea Saccocci, “La moneta nel Veneto medioevale (secoli X–XIV),” in IlVeneto nel medioevo: Dai comuni cittadini al predominio scaligero nella Marca (Verona, ), ‒.⁹Papadopoli, :‒, extract in #; PMV, , #. Cf. Kretschmayr, Geschichte, :.¹⁰MEC, :.¹¹Ludovico Muratori, “De moneta sive jure condendi nummos dissertatio,” in De monetis Italiae,ed. Filippo Argelati (Milan, ‒), :.¹²E.g., : Will of Fortunatus, Patriarch of Grado: Roberto Cessi, ed., Documenti relativi alla storiadi Venezia anteriori al mille (Padua, ), :‒, #; : Will of Giustiniano Particiaco: ibid.,‒; : Will of Orso, Bishop of Olivolo [Castello]: ibid., ‒, #. The mention of“duodecim libras Veneticorum” in the “Pactum Lotharii” dated to appears to be an anach-ronism resulting from a medieval misdating of the document: Papadopoli, :‒.

of the tenth century, the pennies of the various Italian mints moved apart invalue, and it became necessary to distinguish in documents which currency wasto be used to satisfy an obligation. In this period, references to the money ofVenice appear in documents of Rimini and Treviso.¹³ A single specimen is knownof an issue of Venice in the name of an emperor Otto, probably Otto II (‒)or Otto III (‒).¹⁴ An issue with no ruler’s name and the inscription“Christ rules” on the obverse and the clear identification of Venice on the reverse(the name makes up the columns of the temple depicted there) is generally placedaround the year .¹⁵ A list of citizens paying a ducal tax around this timeincludes a “Martino Barbo Monetario” and a “Gregorius Monetario,” the firstof which, at least, appears to be an identification of occupation rather than afamily name.¹⁶

The next issue of Venice bears the name of the German emperor ConradII (‒), with the mint again identified on the columns of the temple; twominters are known from documents of this period.¹⁷ There followed similarcoins in the name of an emperor Henricus, which are generally attributed to thereign of Henry III (‒).¹⁸ The next issues of coins still bore the name ofan emperor Henricus, but instead of a reverse temple they had a diminutive fac-ing bust with the legend “Saint Mark of Venice.”¹⁹ The new coins were smallerand lighter than the coins of the preceding Henricus issue; they are much morecommon in Italian finds and in collections than earlier issues.²⁰ These coins are


¹³Rimini, : Guid’Antonio Zanetti, “Delle monete Riminesi,” in idem, ed., Nuova raccolta dellemonete e zecche d’Italia (Bologna, ‒), :. Treviso, : Rambaldo degli Azzoni, “Dellazecca e delle monete ch’ebbero corso in Trivigi fin tutto il secolo XIV,” in ibid., :.¹⁴Giuseppe Castellani, “Un denaro imperiale di Venezia,” RIN (): ‒.¹⁵Papadopoli, :‒.¹⁶BG, ‒.¹⁷Papadopoli, :. Michele Monetarius, son of Michele Hostarius, was a plebanus plebe (a layofficial) of the Church of Santa Maria on Murano in : ASV, SS. Maria e Donato diMurano, in Codice del Piovego, Sent. XXXI, ff. v–r: CDV, , , #. The widow ofGiovanni Monetarius, son of Marco Langoba, made a contract in : ASV, Arch. Patriarchale,S. Moisè, Catastico, ff. ‒: CDV, , , #.¹⁸Papadopoli, :.¹⁹Ibid., ‒.²⁰Andrea Saccocci, “La monetazione dell’Itala nord-orientale nel XII secolo,” in Die friesacherMünze im Alpen-Adria-Raum, ed. R. Härtel (Graz, Austria, ), ‒. A group of of themappears in the finds from the Vatican confessional along with a late-thirteenth-century Venetianpiccolo, but it is not clear from the context whether it is a reflection of their commonness orthe result of a single large donation: C. Serafini, “Appendice numismatica,” in Esplorazioni sotto laconfessione di San Pietro in Vaticano, ed. B. M. Apollonj Ghetti et al. (Vatican City, ), :,#‒.

traditionally dated to the reign of Henry IV (‒) and Henry V (‒

), with no clear distinction between the two reigns. The change from the tem-ple to the Saint Mark reverse can be seen as one aspect of the process by whichVenice appropriated the patronage of the evangelist from Aquileia, which cul-minated in the rebuilding of the Basilica of San Marco.²¹

There are some variations in the way Venetian coins are referred to in doc-uments of this period. In they are referred to as parvorum and in as min-utorum.²² They were also referred to as “white coins” (albuli), apparently espe-cially in Padua.²³ Documents drawn up within Venice sometimes referred to“pounds of our money,” while those addressed to Venetians spoke of “poundsof your money.”²⁴ Other coinages appear in Venetian documents, even for trans-actions limited to the island region itself. The chief Italian coin in this contextis that of Verona, which appears occasionally in the eleventh century and earlytwelfth in documents of transactions within Venice.²⁵

Byzantine gold coins, called byzantini and mancosi, appear in Venetian docu-ments of the eleventh century, even in reference to domestic transactions. In theyear Doge Pietro Orseolo II leased tolls from the bishop of Treviso for four“bisantios auri” a year, failing which he was to give “de vestris [i.e., Venetian]denariis libras duas.”²⁶ A quittance in Venice in was for “mancosis octo,”and a piece of property was sold in Chioggia in or for “dinarios exmer-atos mancosos tres.”²⁷ Amounts of bullion also occasionally appear in monetarycontexts in Venetian documents of the period; a loan of ounces of gold in was secured with the same vineyard as pledge as a loan the previous year for£. of Verona.²⁸


²¹Thomas E. A. Dale, “Inventing a Sacred Past: Pictorial Narratives of St. Mark the Evangelistin Aquileia and Venice, ca. ‒,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers, (): ‒; Roberto Cessi,Storia della Repubblica di Venezia, d ed. (; reprint, Florence, ), ‒; Giorgio Cracco, Un“altro mondo”: Venezia nel medioevo dal secolo XI al secolo XIV (Turin, ), ‒.²²: Giuseppe Liruti, “Dissertatio de monetis quae in Forojuliensi provincia cursumhabuerunt,” in Argelati, De monetis Italiae, :; : Guid’Antonio Zanetti, “Delle monete diFaenza,” in idem, Nuova raccolta, :.²³Padua, : Andrea Gloria, ed. Codice diplomatico padovano, vols. (Padua, ‒), :,#; Padua, : ibid., ‒, #.²⁴Torcello, : MRLD, :‒, #; Triest, : Luigi Lanfranchi, ed., San Giorgio Maggiore, vols. (Venice, ‒), :‒, #.²⁵E.g., Venice, : Lanfranchi, San Giorgio Maggiore, :‒, #,; Venice, : MRLD, :‒,#.²⁶Ferdinando Ughelli, ed., Italia sacra (Venice, ‒), : cc. ‒.²⁷: MRLD, :‒, #; or : Luigi Lanfranchi, ed., San Giovanni Evangelista di Torcello(‒), FSV, sec. (Venice, ), ‒, #.²⁸Lanfranchi, San Giorgio Maggiore, :‒, #‒.

:

In , acting on behalf of the commune, the doge of Venice sold to anindividual a piece of “public land which from olden times until now has beenours and where a mint was operated.”²⁹ The land was in the parish of San Bar-tolomeo, apparently along the Canal della Fava between the churches of SanBartolomeo and San Salvatore.³⁰ This area held a concentration of wealth andpower in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; Doges Orio Malipiero (‒)and Pietro Ziani (‒) had homes there, as did the wealthy silver importerknown as Bernardus Teotonicus, and the Fondaco dei Tedeschi would be estab-lished there in the s.³¹ When the Rialto bridge was built in the parish in, it was called the “Pons de la Moneta,” perhaps carrying over the traditionof a mint in the area.³² The proceeds of the sale, £,, were dispensed to thepatriarch of Grado to fund his mission to the Byzantine emperor, to the com-mander of the fleet, and to Domenico Polano, who was apparently still owedalmost £ for the land. The document does not indicate how long the minthad operated in San Bartolomeo or what was to happen to minting once theland was sold. The next documentation for the location of the mint would notbe until the thirteenth century, by which time it was located in the San Marcoarea, the site it would occupy until the end of the republic in the late eighteenthcentury (see below, Chap. ). Until the mid-twelfth century, the San Marco areawas basically a defensive rather than a governmental center, but the mint mayhave been moved there immediately in to offer it security.³³

There is an apparent gap in the Venetian coinage between the issues in thename of the emperor Henry V (died ) and that of the doge Vitale Michiel


²⁹Roberto Boldù, ed. Atto di vendita fatta da Ordelafo Falier, doge di Venezia, dell’edificio ad uso di zecca sito aS. Bartolomeo (l’anno ); commento paleografico storico (Venice, ), ‒; extract in PMV, , #.³⁰Cf. Wolfgang von Stromer, Bernardus Teotonicus e i rapporti commerciali tra la Germania meridionale eVenezia prima della istituzione del Fondaco del Tedeschi, Centro Tedesco di Studi Veneziani, Quaderni, (Venice, ), ‒.³¹Ibid., ‒.³²Andrea Dandolo, Cronicon venetum, ed. Ester Pasorello, Rerum italicarum scriptores XII, , newed. (Bologna, ‒), , bk. , c. , .³³Umberto Franzoi, “Le trasformazioni edilizie e la definizione storico-architettonica di PiazzaSan Marco,” in Piazza San Marco: L’architettura, la storia, le funzioni, ed. Giuseppe Samonà et al.(Padua, ), ‒; Giorgio Scattolin, “La Zecca,” in ibid., ‒. In a view of the mid-thirteenth century, the Piazza San Marco appears surrounded by defensive walls; the mapdetails only ecclesiastical institutions and omits not only the mint but also the Ducal Palace,which was certainly located there in the epoch: Juergen Schulz, “The Printed Plans and Pano-ramic Views of Venice (‒),” Saggi e memorie di storia dell’arte (): and fig. .

II (‒). Although Venetian coins had borne the name of the contemporaryGerman emperor intermittently since the ninth century and regularly since theearly eleventh, there are no Venetian coins in the names of Lothar II (‒),Conrad III ( as anti-king in Italy, ‒ everywhere), or Frederick I Bar-barossa (‒). However, none of the official, imperial mints of northernItaly (Milan, Pavia, Verona, Pisa, and Lucca) put the names of Lothar or Con-rad on their issues either; they maintained the name Henricus on their coins ofthe decades from at least until .³⁴ If Venice had put the names of Lotharor Conrad on its coins rather than maintaining that of Henry, it would haveshown a loyalty to the Germanic emperors unmatched by that of the mints atleast nominally under imperial sovereignty.³⁵

The discovery of a hoard near Padua which contained Venetian penniesfrom the mid-twelfth century and Veronese ones has led to a reexaminationof the chronology of this series. Andrea Saccocci has argued that the evidencepoints to an extension of the issues of the Venetian Henricus coins up to ,an immobilization analogous to that of the other Italian mints.³⁶ In response,Ottorino Murari has proposed a much earlier dating of the hoard, which wouldleave the Venetian issues represented in it in the period before .³⁷The differ-


³⁴Milan: Ottorino Murari, “La moneta milanese nel periodo della dominazione tedesca e delcomune (‒),” Memorie dell’Accademia Italiana di Studi Filatelici e Numismatici , (): ‒;Pavia: Camillo Brambilla, Monete di Pavia raccolte ed ordinatamente dichiarate (Pavia, ), ‒;Verona: Ottorino Murari, “Denari veronesi di un ripostiglio del secolo XII,” Numismatica ‒(‒): ‒; Pisa and Lucca: Michael Matzke, “Vom Ottolinus zum Grossus, Münzprä-gung in der Toskana vom . bis zum . Jahrhundert,” Schweizerische numismatische Rundschau (): ‒. An exception to this was the apparent brief issue in by Verona of coins inthe name of Conrad of Suebia (later to be Conrad III), then seeking support in Italy againstthe election of Lothar II: Ottorino Murari, “Denari veronesi dell’antirè Corrado di Svevia(prima metà del sec. XII),” Memorie dell’Accademia Italiana di Studi Filatelici e Numismatici , ():‒.³⁵That the new emperors recognized the special status of Venice and even acknowledged itsright to independent coinage is evident from the confirmation that Lothar III gave to Venice in of the diplomas of his Salian predecessors: Oct. : Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Diplo-matum regum et imperatorum Germaniae, vol. , Lothar III, ed. Emil von Ottenthal and Hans Hirsch(Berlin, ), ‒, #. Cf. : ibid., vol. , pt. , Heinrich IV, ed. D. von Gladiss (;reprint, Weimar, ), ‒, #. In this he acknowledged that the people of Venice(including Torcello, Chioggia, and Grado) were distinct from those under royal rule, includingthose of Milan, Verona, and Pavia. He also fixed the number of oath takers necessary for an actin terms of libras denariorum Veneticorum.³⁶Filipe Jimenez et al., “Un ripostiglio del XII secolo da Ponte di Brenta (Padova),” RIN (): ‒.³⁷Ottorino Murari, “Sul ripostiglio del XII secolo da Ponte di Brenta di denari veneziani everonesi,” RIN (): ‒.

ence between the two authors rests partly in stylistic analysis of the coins butalso in Saccocci’s use of documentary and metal analysis evidence to justify hislate date.³⁸

The earliest ducal coinage of Venice, in the name of Vitale Michiel II (‒

), follows the format of the Henry ones, except for the substitution of.′ for on the obverse around the cross (fig. ).³⁹ Itdiffers, however, from any of the Henricus coins in many details, most notablyin the double beaded circle that surrounds the obverse and reverse types, com-pared with a single circle on all published Henricus specimens, and the use ofwedges rather than circles in the quadrants of the obverse cross. The letteringdiffers significantly between the two issues, with the letters of the ducal coinmade with short rectangular punches, compared with the long verticals andprominent triangular serifs on those of the most comparable imperial issues. Inall these aspects, the Michiel coin closely resembles the halfpenny of EnricoDandolo (‒), issued a least two decades later.⁴⁰ These technical consid-erations suggest a break between the imperial issues and the ducal ones.

The strongest evidence for a break in Venetian minting in the twelfth cen-tury comes from references to coinage in private documents. After about ,references to Venetian money, be they to amounts of Venetian coinage, of “our”coinage, or of “white” coins, become rare in documents within Venice and inthe region. Among the last appearances of the term Venetian coins within the lagoonis that in a quittance of from Chioggia; the term appears in in a lease


³⁸The metal analysis is far from conclusive. Several methodologies were used to measure the sil-ver content of coins in the hoard. In some cases the discrepancy between gamma ray and neu-tron activation analysis (both measures of the whole coin rather than the surface) were as highas percent: Jimenez et al., “Un ripostiglio,” . Coin of Venice was measured as having percent silver by the gamma ray analysis and percent by neutron activation; coin of Veronahad percent by gamma ray and only percent by neutron activation. On Venice coin andVerona coin the value by gamma ray was significantly lower than by neutron activation. Vari-ations of silver fineness by neutron activation (the measure used for all coins in the final report)were also as high as percent for coins within the same stylistic and chronological group. Ingeneral, the mean measurements for approximately contemporary issues of the two mints showthe Verona coins to have had about twice as much silver as those of Venice.³⁹Papadopoli, :‒, . The Michiel coin is extremely rare, and the only published photo ofit I have found is in Raffaele Paolucci, Le monete dei dogi di Venezia (Padua, ), , apparently aspecimen in a private collection. For my analysis I have used my photo of the Papadopoli speci-men, taken with the kind permission of the Museo Civico Correr, Venice, which differs fromthe one illustrated by the line drawing of Carlo Kunz in Papadopoli’s book.⁴⁰Papadopoli, :; I have found no published photos of this issue and again use my own photoof the Papadopoli specimen taken with permission of the Museo Civico Correr.

from Padua giving equivalents in coins of Venice and Verona.⁴¹ After about

the penny of Verona replaces Venetian coinage in documents relating to affairswithin Venice and to international trade; it appears to have been worth abouttwice that of the Venetian penny.⁴² The specification of Venetian coins in doc-uments would not reappear regularly until the s, when it would usually beexpressed as a sum of equivalent Venetian or Veronese coins.

While the penny of Verona replaced that of Venice in twelfth-century doc-uments concerning domestic transactions, gold coinages of the eastern Medi-terranean had already come to predominate in documents related to maritimetrade. A typical transaction is that of the Venetian ducal representative in Acrein , who acknowledged receipt of an obligation purchased in Constantino-ple in Byzantine money and paid off in Acre in “Saracen bezants, of proper


⁴¹: Antonino Lombardo and Raimondo Morozzo della Rocca, eds., Nuovi documenti del com-mercio veneto dei sec. XI–XIII, R. Deputazione Veneta di Storia Patria, Monumenti storici (here-after cited as “Monumenti storici”), n.s., (Venice, ), , #; : Gloria, Codice, :, #.The last usage of unqualified sums of pounds is a land sale in Venice in for “libras denari-orum sexcentas”: Franco Gaeta, ed., S. Lorenzo (‒), FSV, sec. (Venice, ), ‒, #.References to “our” coinage continue intermittently in Venice in this period, but they may bereferring to the coinage commonly circulating in Venice rather than those minted in Venice: :Luigi Lanfranchi, ed., San Lorenzo di Ammiana (‒) (Venice, ), ‒, #; ‒:MRLD, :‒, #.⁴²E.g., : MRLD, :‒, #. A document of Padua of gives an annual rent of onepenny of Verona or two of Venice: Gloria, Codice, :, #: “denariorum unum Veronensemaut duos albos.” An exception to this two-to-one ratio is a document of the next year, whichgives an equivalence between £ s of Verona and £ of Venice: Merzemenita, : Gloria,Codice, :‒, #: the equivalency appears in an addendum to the document which seems torecord an additional loan secured with immovables rather than the original pledge of land, butin any case the repayment condition of “libras et solidos Veronenses vel sedecim libras Vene-ciarum” appears to be a clear equivalence. The two-to-one relationship reappears two decadeslater, again in the case of a rent, given as shillings of Verona or shillings of Venice: Padua,: Gloria, Codice, :, #.

Fig. . Twelfth-century Venetian ducal pennies.a. penny, Vitale Michiel II (‒). b. Venetian penny, Sebastiano Ziani (‒).

Sources: a. MCC, Papadopoli . b. ANS ..


weight and usable for all commerce.”⁴³ At about this time, the Crusader kingsof Jerusalem began to issue gold coins imitating the Islamic dinars of the region,and some Venetian documents specified payment in “new Saracen gold bezantsminted by the King of Jerusalem.”⁴⁴

It was, however, the gold coinage of Byzantium which predominated inVenetian trade contracts of the twelfth century. Though Venice had maintainedcommercial relationships in the Byzantine realm since its origin, it was withprivileges granted in the golden bull of Alexius I, dating from about , thatit became a true participant in the economy of the Byzantine Empire.⁴⁵ For thefollowing century, not only did Venice have a trading station in Constantinopleas a nexus for the trade between Byzantium and Europe, but it also played astrong role in the internal commerce of the Byzantine Empire and that betweenByzantium and its other trading partners.⁴⁶ At the time of the chrysobul, theByzantine monetary situation was in a state of tumult, which was resolved withthe introduction of the hyperpyron (L: yperperum; V: perpero), a cup-shaped coinjust under carats, that is, seven-eighths fine gold.⁴⁷ After this period, Venetiandocuments regularly referred to Byzantine hyperpyra in trade contracts, thoughthe coin of actual transactions may have often been the aspron trachy, worthone-third of the hyperpyron.⁴⁸

Taken together, the sale of the mint land in , the lack of issues in thename of any emperor after , the discontinuity in mint practice between theHenricus issue and the first ducal one, and the disappearance of Venetian coinagein documents by all suggest a cessation of minting in Venice in the middle


⁴³Acre, Apr. : MRLD, :‒, #.⁴⁴E.g., : ibid., ‒, #; : ibid., ‒, #; : ibid., ‒, #. These coins wereof a fineness lower than that of the prototype, which declined even further in the course of thetwelfth century and into the thirteenth: Michael L. Bates and D. M. Metcalf, “CrusaderCoinage with Arabic Inscriptions,” in A History of the Crusades, ed. Kenneth M. Setton (Madison,Wis., ), :‒.⁴⁵Nicol, Byzantium and Venice, ‒.⁴⁶Silvano Borsari, Venezia e Bisanzio nel XII secolo: I rapporti economici, Deputazione di Storia Patriaper le Venezie, Miscellanea di studi e memorie, (Venice, ), ‒.⁴⁷Michael F. Hendy, Coinage and Money in the Byzantine Empire ‒, Dumbarton Oaks Studies, (Washington, ), ‒; Cécile Morrisson et al., “La monnaie d’or bizantine de Constan-tinople: Purification et modes d’altérations (‒),” in idem, L’or monnayé, vol. , Purification etaltérations de Rome à Byzance, Cahiers Ernest-Babelon, (Paris, ), ‒.⁴⁸: Luigi Lanfranchi, ed., Famiglia Zusto (Venice, ), ‒, #; : MRLD, :‒, #;: MRLD, :‒, #. For further references in this period, see Louise Buenger Robbert,“The Venetian Money Market, to ,” Studi veneziani (): ‒. Various qualifica-tions appear to the term hyperpyron in Venetian documents; see Alan M. Stahl, “The Coinage ofVenice in the Age of Enrico Dandolo,” in Medieval and Renaissance Venice, ed. E. Kittell and T. Mad-

decades of the twelfth century. For transactions close to home, Venetians appearto have used the coinage of Verona, while for long-distance commerce they reliedincreasingly on that of Byzantium.

Coins in the name of Vitale Michiel II were no doubt issued before his assas-sination in ; their absence from hoards of the period and scarcity in mod-ern collections suggest that the issue was not large. This was a reign in which thegovernment of Venice was coming to include voices of men other than the doge;counselors and advisors begin to appear in documents.⁴⁹Venice also joined withother northern Italian communes in opposition to the Western empire of Fred-eric Barbarossa.⁵⁰ Its nominal adherence to the Eastern empire, which had be-come a neutral stance by this period, was totally shattered by the arrest of Vene-tians in Constantinople and seizure of their goods in March .⁵¹ For the nextdecade and a half, relations between Byzantium and Venice would be adversar-ial, and Venetians setting out for the East would be uncertain as to where theywould be able to transact business.⁵² This was certainly an appropriate time forVenice to initiate a fully independent coinage. The issue of Michiel followed theearlier imperial ones in imagery and general appearance and was clearly meantto be a continuation or reintroduction of the Venetian penny.⁵³ As noted above,the few equivalences before the mid-twelfth century suggest that the penny ofVenice had been worth about half of that of Verona. The penny of Michiel wasprobably tariffed at half a penny of Verona, as supported by the fact that afterthe coinage of Venice went on the standard of Verona, halfpenny pieces followedits appearance.

The next issue of Venice was in the name of the succeeding doge, Sebas-tiano Ziani (‒).⁵⁴ Rather than following the format of the coins of Mi-


den, ‒, for an examination of their meaning. In , the “old” hyperpyron seems to havebeen worth shillings of the money of Verona: : Lanfranchi, Famiglia Zusto, ‒, #.⁴⁹Cracco, Un “altro mondo,” .⁵⁰Kretschmayr, Geschichte, :‒.⁵¹Nicol, Byzantium and Venice, ‒.⁵²As when Romano Mairano made an agreement in Venice to pick up alum in Alexandria andpay for it in Constantinople with “old” hyperpyra, or, if the trip could not be completed, torepay it in Venice as pounds of Verona: : MRLD, :‒, #.⁵³Ottorino Murari, “Il cosiddetto mezzo-denaro veneziano o bianco del doge Vitale MichielII,” RIN (): ‒.⁵⁴Papadopoli, :‒.

chiel, this issue closely imitated the coinage of Verona, with simple crosses as theimagery of both sides. It was cup shaped, weighed about one-third of a gram,and was about one-fifth silver and four-fifths copper.⁵⁵ Beginning in , refer-ences to Venetian coins become common again in documents, usually with anoption in payment of either Venetian or Veronese pennies of equal value.⁵⁶ Thenew pennies of Ziani had apparently quickly established themselves as the equiv-alent of those of Verona, which had wide currency in northern Italy and intothe Tyrol and Friuli.⁵⁷This issue had much greater success than that of Michiel;it was continued through the reign of Orio Malipiero (‒) and into thatof Enrico Dandolo (‒). By the profit from the minting of pennieswas enough that Doge Malipiero could use it as collateral on a loan for an ex-pedition against Zara.⁵⁸ The hoard from Kleinvassach in Carinthia, in whichVenetian pennies of these issues constituted about one-third of those present(the rest were of Verona), illustrates the spread of the new coinage (see below,App. B, table B., #). The fact that pennies in the name of Malipiero andDandolo greatly outnumber those of Ziani in this and other finds is suggestive


⁵⁵The only documentation for the standard of this penny of Venice is a provision of ,which says that the pennies minted then were pennies per mark worse than the first ones:DMC, :‒, #; Papadopoli, :. As those of were cut at to the mark (about. gr), the old ones would appear to have been been of a tale of to this mark, or about. grams of alloy. This is consistent with the weights reported for the pennies of this era,whose mode falls between . grams and . for the issues of Ziani, Malipiero, and E. Dan-dolo: CNI, :‒. The document does not compare the fineness of the later pennies withthat of the original ones, and the few tests done on specimens of both periods are ambiguousas to whether there was a debasement between the twelfth-century pennies and the later ones,which were prescribed at a fineness of about percent. Nineteenth-century chemical analysesreported an alloy of . percent silver for a penny of Orio Malipiero (‒) and . per-cent for Enrico Dandolo (‒), compared with . percent for one of Lorenzo Tiepolo(‒): Papadopoli, :, , . Recent X-ray fluorescence analysis carried out by Prof.Giles Carter of Eastern Michigan University gives a fineness of . percent for a penny ofSebastiano Ziani (‒), . percent for one of Enrico Dandolo, . percent for one ofLorenzo Tiepolo, and . percent for one of Giovanni Dandolo (‒). It should be notedthat the differential reactivity of copper and silver in subterranean environments and subsequentcleaning has the potential to produce a higher fineness for specimens of such thin coins whentested today than when they left the mint, regardless of the method used for analysis.⁵⁶, Treviso: Azzoni, “Della zecca,” ; Padua, : Gloria, Codice, :, #; , Venice:ASV, S. Maria della Carità, B., transcribed by Lanfranchi, CDV, , , #. See Robbert,“Venetian Money Market,” ‒, for a survey of the relative frequency of monetary referencesin this period.⁵⁷Saccocci, “Moneta nel Veneto,” ‒.⁵⁸ Nov. : Marin Sanudo, Vite dei dogi, ed. L. Muratori, Rerum italicarum scritores, (),cc. ‒.

of a large growth in minting through the end of the twelfth century (see below,Chap. ).

Shortly thereafter, sometime in the s, the coinage of Verona was de-based.⁵⁹ The penny of Venice remained in an approximate parity with the newpenny of Verona, distinguished by a cross as its principal type, but had no visi-ble change of type. Contemporary sources prescribed settlements in whicheverof the coins would be in popular circulation when payment was due.⁶⁰The Cru-sader gold coinage of Jerusalem underwent a serious debasement following thevictories of Saladin in and rarely appeared in Venetian documents there-after.⁶¹ Byzantine coinage also proved unreliable in this epoch. In Byzantiumundertook payment of reparations to Venetians who had suffered in the riots of, but only a fraction of these were ever sent.⁶² The Byzantine treasury in thisperiod suffered further losses through a pillage of the treasury and the obliga-tion of annual tribute to the German emperor Henry VI.⁶³ At about this timethe hyperpyron appears to have lost some of its fineness; from a standard justover carats up to about , it dropped slightly below this in the succeedingreigns.⁶⁴ Even more dramatic was the debasement of the aspron trachy, whichappears to have gone from its original three to the hyperpyron at its inception,to four to the hyperpyron under Manuel in the mid-twelfth century, to six tothe hyperpyron in the period ‒ under Isaac II.⁶⁵

By the time of the election of Enrico Dandolo as doge in , the mint ofVenice was producing sizable issues of its ducal penny on the Veronese standard,while all the other coinages familiar to Venetian merchants had undergone de-basements. It was time for Venice to take the lead in its own monetary affairsand those of the eastern Mediterranean.


⁵⁹Saccocci, “Monetazione,” ‒.⁶⁰: Aldo Stella, Politica ed economia nel territorio Trentino-Tirolese dal XIII al XVII secolo, Miscellaneaerudita, (Padua, ), n. . The equivocation about which coin might be current at the timeof payment is echoed in : Lanfranchi, San Giovanni, ‒, #; : Lanfranchi, San GiorgioMaggiore, :‒, #; and : MRLD, :‒, #.⁶¹Bates and Metcalf, “Crusader Coinage,” ‒; Robbert, “Venetian Money Market,” .⁶²Nicol, Byzantium and Venice, ‒; Borsari, Venezia e Bisancio, ; G. L. F. Tafel and G. M.Thomas, Urkunden zur älteren Handels- und Staatsgeschichte der Republik Venedig (Vienna, ‒),:‒, #; MRLD, :‒, #‒; for each hyperpyron lost, the Venetians were repayed⁄ carats, or about percent.⁶³Morrisson et al., “La monnaie d’or,” ‒.⁶⁴Ibid., , ‒.⁶⁵Ibid., , ‒; it should be noted that these latest values for the aspron trachy are based onchemical analyses and specific gravity, as no examples in the Paris collection were submitted toneutron activation analysis.

The �ge of the Grosso, c. ‒

The minting of the grosso was Venice’s first monetary act of any signifi-

cance beyond its immediate region.¹ Of fine silver and much heavier weight thanany continental European coin of recent centuries, the grosso was to have a greatinfluence on the coinages of most European issuers and ultimately on Byzan-tium and Islamic minters. Grosso coins are known in the name of Enrico Dan-dolo (‒) and all succeeding doges for the next century and a half; therecan therefore be no doubt that the coin was introduced in his reign. The reignof Enrico Dandolo also saw the continued minting of a penny on the Veronesemodel, a halfpenny, modeled on that of Vitale Michiel II, and a new coin iden-tified as a quarter penny called a quartarolo.² The halfpenny and quarter pennywould continue to be minted in the reigns of succeeding doges, but not the

¹For discussions of the significance of this new coinage, see PMV, xvii–xxi; Roberto SabatinoLopez, “Prima del ritorno all’oro nell’occidente duecentesco: I primi denari grossi d’argento,”Rivista storica italiana (): ‒; Carlo M. Cipolla, Le avventure della lira (Bologna, ),‒; Philip Grierson, “The Origins of the Grosso and of Gold Coinage in Italy,” NumismatickySbornik (‒): ‒, reprinted in his Later Medieval Numismatics (London, ); LouiseBuenger Robbert, “Reorganization of the Venetian Coinage by Doge Enrico Dandolo,” Speculum (): ‒; Donald E. Queller, “A Note on the Reorganization of the Venetian Coinageby Doge Enrico Dandolo,” RIN (): ‒; Frederic C. Lane and Reinhold C. Mueller,Coins and Moneys of Account, vol. of Money and Banking in Medieval and Renaissance Venice (Baltimore,), ‒; Peter Spufford, Money and Its Use in Medieval Europe (Cambridge, ), ‒;Andrea Saccocci, “Tra Bizanzio, Venezia e Friesach: Alcune ipotesi sull’origine della monetagrossa in Italia,” Numismatica e antichità classiche (): ‒; Stahl, “Coinage of Venice in theAge of Enrico Dandolo.”²Papadopoli, :‒.

penny, which would not be minted again until the reign of Lorenzo Tiepolo(‒) (fig. ).

The earliest chronicle to discuss the introduction of the grosso is that ofMartin da Canal, composed around .³ In his description of the building ofships for the participants in the Fourth Crusade in , he says that Dandoloimmediately had silver coins made to give as wages to the masters. He then notesthat it was in the time of Dandolo that Venice began to make the noble silvercoins called “ducats” that circulated throughout the world because of their value.He does not actually say that the introduction of the coinage was in conjunc-tion with the Crusade, only that on that occasion the doge had silver coins madeand that the denomination was introduced in the reign of Dandolo. The otherearly narrative for the introduction of the grosso is in the chronicle compiled bythe future doge Andrea Dandolo in the early fourteenth century. He specificallyplaces the event in the second year of Enrico’s reign (‒), saying that thedoge then decreed for the first time that the silver coins worth piccoli, com-monly called Venetian grossi or matapans, be made with the image of Jesus Christon one side and that of Saint Mark and the doge on the other.⁴ Most otherchronicles copy Dandolo’s account more or less accurately, though the chroni-cle attributed to Pietro Giustinian, also of the fourteenth century, uses com-pletely different wording and puts the inception specifically in .⁵

The earliest contemporary reference to the Venetian grosso is in the arith-metical treatise of Fibonacci (Leonardo Pisano), composed in .⁶ The textdoes not identify the coin as a grosso, but in an arithmetical problem involvingthe calculation of the value of a given weight of coins, the example is given ofa coin of Venice worth twelve times that of Pisa. The equivalence is hypotheti-cal, but Fibonacci’s problems are always based on reasonable hypothetical val-ues, and twelve to one is reasonable for the Venetian grosso of the time andridiculous for the penny.⁷ The first mention of the grosso by name appears in

The Age of the Grosso, –

³Martin da Canal, Les estoires de Venise, ed. Alberto Limentani, Civiltà veneziana, Fonti e testi, ,d ser., (Florence, ), , c. .⁴Dandolo, Chronicon, ⁵Pietro Giustinian, Venetiarum historia, ed. Roberto Cessi and Fanny Bennato, Monumenti storici,n.s., (Venice, ), .⁶Leonardo Pisano (Fibonacci), Il Liber abbaci, ed. Baldassarre Boncompagni, Scritti di LeonardoPisano, (Rome, ), . This edition is based on MS Magliabecchiana I. , a fourteenth-century copy of the treatise; a manuscript that is not identified by the editor as bearingFibonacci’s corrections of , as are other MSS: Baldassarre Boncompagni, Della vita e delle operedi Leonardo Pisano (Rome, ), ; cf. .⁷Cf. Peter Spufford, Handbook of Medieval Exchange, Royal Historical Society, Guides and Hand-

the will of Jacopo della Scala of Venice in , in which he notes that he is owed“denarios grossos tres” by one individual and “denarios grossos” by another;all his bequests are in “libras denariorum venecialium.”⁸ Another will drawn upin Venice in contains the first known accounting in terms of sums of grossi;while most sums are expressed in terms of “libras denariorum venecialium,” oneobligation is given as “solidos venecialium grossorum quinque” and another as“solidos denariorum venecialium grossorum octo.”⁹ The Venetian grosso alsoappears in in the receipts of the bishop of Padua from clergy in Aquileia.¹⁰

The imagery of the grosso was a great departure from earlier Venetian coinsand from those of other northern Italian mints. The most complex image onthe earlier coins was the diminutive facing head of Saint Mark on the penniesin the name of the emperor Henry and of Vitale Michiel II. On the grosso theobverse contains a scene with full-length figures of the doge and Saint Markholding a standard between them and on the reverse a seated figure of Christ.Although there are parallels to this depiction on twelfth-century seals of Venice,the clear source for it is from Byzantine coins, specifically the electrum aspron


a

Fig. . Venetian coins of the reign of Enrico Dandolo (‒).a. Grosso. b. Penny. c. Half penny. d. Quarter penny.

Sources: a. ANS ... b. ANS ... c. MCC, Papadopoli . d. Museo Bottacin, Padua

books, (London, ), ‒: the penny of Pisa was worth about two pennies of Venice inthe period, so a : ratio for the grosso would be about right.⁸MRLD, :‒, #.⁹Ibid., ‒, #.¹⁰Guido Levi, ed., Registri dei Cardinali Ugolino d’Ostia e Ottaviano degli Ubaldini, Fonti per la storiad’Italia, Registri—secolo XIII (Rome, ), ‒, #. I thank Andrea Saccocci for callingthis document to my attention.


trachy of the twelfth century.¹¹The most significant differences between the Ve-netian grosso and the Byzantine aspron are that the grosso was of pure silverrather than a gold-silver alloy and that the Venetian coin was flat, unlike theByzantine one, which was cup shaped.¹² Unlike Byzantine coins, and many con-temporary European ones, the edge of the design for the grosso had a beadedring that was usually lined up with the edge of the flan. This would make anyclipping of the coin while in circulation evident and allow the coins to be usedby count in transactions rather than having to be weighed.

The original standards of the grosso are not known from any contempo-rary source. The earliest definition of them is from the capitulary, or manual, ofthe mintmasters for silver, which is extant in a redaction edited in ; there isno indication in the document whether these standards were original or the resultof more recent alterations.¹³ In the capitulary the weight of the grosso is fixedat ½ coins per mark and a fineness at . percent silver.¹⁴ There is no docu-mentation to indicate a change in standard of the grosso between its inceptionand this documentation, nor is any alteration visible in physical appearance orto be inferred from patterns of circulation. Therefore, it is likely that the stan-dards of represent the standards of the grosso as it was introduced underEnrico Dandolo. The unit of weight in effect in Venice in the twelfth centurywas the mark of Cologne, which probably varied a bit in this period but wasabout equal to . modern grams.¹⁵This would give the grosso an ideal weightof about . grams, consistent with that found in examples in the name of En-rico Dandolo in a recent hoard.¹⁶ While this weight is only about one-thirdhigher than that of the original Venetian penny of the ninth century, it is at leastsix times as high as that of the Venetian pennies of the time of Dandolo.¹⁷


¹¹Hendy, Coinage, pl. , ‒ (John II, ‒); pl. , ‒, and pl. , (Manuel I, ‒); andpl. , ‒ (Alexius II, ‒). The grosso also resembles a Norman coin of , also calleda ducat, but there is no reason to believe that it was derived from that coin rather than from themore common Byzantine prototype of both: cf. Lucia Travaini, La monetazione nell’Italia normanna,Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, Nuovi studi storici, (Rome, ), ‒.¹²The flatness is especially noteworthy, in that the Venetian pennies preceding the grosso, andthose that would be minted later in the thirteenth century, were also cup-shaped.¹³Papadopoli, :‒, #, and PMV, ‒. For this document, see Alan M. Stahl, “The Mintof Venice in the Thirteenth Century,” ed. N. J. Mayhew and P. Spufford (Oxford, ), ‒.¹⁴See below, Chap. , for further discussion of the fineness standard.¹⁵Rialto, : Gloria, Codice, :, #; for a review of medieval Venetian weight units, see Laneand Mueller, Coins and Moneys of Account, .¹⁶Andrea Saccocci, “Un ripostiglio di monete aquileiesi, triestine e veneziane da Aquileia,” RIN (): .¹⁷Morrison and Grunthal, Carolingian Coinage, ‒, ; Papadopoli, :‒. Surviving exam-

What was most revolutionary about the grosso, however, was not its ap-pearance or its weight but its fineness. The fineness of the contemporary pennywas about percent.¹⁸The imperial pennies of northern Italy in the late twelfthcentury were finer than those of Venice and Verona but nowhere near that of thegrosso.¹⁹ The coins of Norman Sicily began with under percent silver in theducat of Roger II but had declined to below one-third fine by the end of thetwelfth century.²⁰ In the twelfth century the Byzantine Empire issued no trulysilver coins; there were “electrum” coins with an alloy of silver and gold, andbillon ones with a high amount of copper mixed in with the silver.²¹ OutsideItaly, there were a few coinages of fine silver. The minting of fine-silver coins bythe Muslim rulers of Syria began about , and their imitation by Crusadersseems to have begun about the same time as the grosso.²² In northern Europe,the mints of Cologne and England produced silver coins about . percent finein the period of Enrico Dandolo.²³

In both weight and fineness, the grosso represented a complete innovationnot only in relation to Venetian coins but in respect to most of the coinages withwhich the Venetians were familiar. With ½ coins to the mark, it was not madeat a convenient reference to existing weight standards, and its fineness of .percent would have required the additional refinement of virtually any suppliesof silver which came into Venice, in the form of either coins or ingots. Thesestandards must have been chosen for a specific reason, the most likely of whichis to make a coin that would fit evenly into an existing monetary system of im-portance to the Venetian economy.

The two chronicles that give a value for the earliest grosso in terms of themoney of Venice put it at pennies, but they were both composed more thana century later and may reflect later values.²⁴The earliest document that gives anequivalence between the grosso and the penny of Venice (or of Verona) is a


ples of the Dandolo penny suggest that it was actually minted at a somewhat lower weight thanthat inferred by Papadopoli: CNI, :‒.¹⁸See above, Chap. , n. .¹⁹Cipolla, Avventure, ‒ and n. .²⁰Travaini, Monetazione, ‒.²¹Hendy, Coinage, ‒.²²Bates and Metcalf, “Crusader Coinage,” and ‒.²³Walter Hävernick, Die Münzen von Köln . . . vom Beginn der Prägung bis , Die Münzen undMedaillen von Köln, (Cologne, ), ‒; Nicholas J. Mayhew, “From Regional to CentralMinting, ‒,” in A New History of the Royal Mint, ed. C. E. Challis (Cambridge, ), and n. .²⁴See above, nn. and .

receipt of in which the agent for the patriarch of Aquileia, charged withborrowing £, of Venetian piccoli, acknowledges the receipt of £ inVenetian grossi, a ratio of piccoli to the grosso.²⁵ A procuration made in

to collect a debt gives the rate of grossi per pound, that is, ⅔ pennies pergrosso.²⁶ A document of Padua of speaks of a payment of three “denari-orum Venetorum grossorum a XXVII,” implying that the grosso was worth

pennies.²⁷These sources, then, put the value of the grosso in terms of the pennyof Venice in the range of to pennies, figures that do not correspond eas-ily to the basic system of account, in which even multiples of or subdivisionsof would be the logical choice for a new coin.

Though there are no documentary sources to describe the stages of theintroduction of the grosso, we can construct at least a hypothetical scenario. Atthe time of the election of Enrico Dandolo in , the coinage comprised apenny and halfpenny. The debasement of the coinages on which the Venetianeconomy depended, especially Veronese and Byzantine, made this limited sys-tem inadequate. Soon, probably in , the grosso was introduced. The mint-ing of the grosso was to continue virtually unchanged for a century and a half,but by the end of Dandolo’s reign in , the penny was no longer minted, anda new denomination, the quarter penny, had been introduced. The most plausi-ble original value for the grosso is pennies, making it worth an even shillingsof account and making grossi equal to a pound. Its weight was probably setto give it twenty-four times the amount of silver as the penny.

The Venetian minting authorities would then have faced a problem thatwould plague all medieval minters who tried to keep coinages in “white” moneyand “black” money circulating side by side at a fixed relationship. The differen-tial utility value of the two coinages could cause higher demand on one or theother, which would cause hoarding and strain the market relationship. More-over, the lower production costs of grosso compared with pennies would


²⁵Known from an eighteenth-century transcription by Giuseppe Bianchi in the Biblioteca Civicadi Udine, Fondo Principale, MS , Documenti per la storia del Friuli dal al , vol. ,n. . I am grateful to Andrea Saccocci for calling this document to my attention and provid-ing me with a copy of it.²⁶MRLD, :‒, #. A date of for the law giving an equivalence of grossi and piccoli to the pound of Venice is hypothetical; cf. Lane and Mueller, Coins and Moneys of Account,, and Frederic C. Lane, “Le vecchie monete di conto veneziane ed il ritorno all’oro,” Attidell’Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti (‒), reprinted in idem, Studies in Venetian Social andEconomic History, ed. Benjamin G. Kohl and Reinhold C. Mueller (London, ), ‒ n. .²⁷Giovanni Brunacci, “De re nummaria Patavinorum,” in Argelati, De monetis Italiae, :. In thereign of Lorenzo Tiepolo (‒) a new Venetian penny was introduced, so quotations after may be in reference to the new penny rather than that of the beginning of the century.

encourage the mint to produce only the larger-denomination coin. To make theproduction of pennies a realistic enterprise, the mint may have debased the sil-ver content of them, counting on the demand for small change to override theirlesser intrinsic value. This could have had the effect of leading to the culling andeven melting of grossi; the rarity of those in the name of Dandolo in finds com-pared with the apparently high number of dies used for the issue suggests suchhoarding (see below, Chap. ). This situation could have led the government tosuspend the minting of the penny and let small change be limited to halfpenniesand quarter pennies of such low alloy as to offer no threat to the grosso.

By this time, the value of the grosso would have risen against the penny.When the quantity of old pennies in circulation had diminished, the system ofvalues would have become based on the grosso. The traditional pound of Venicebased on the penny (L: libra parvorum; V: lira di piccoli) was defined at the rate of¹⁄⁹ pennies per grosso, or ⁵⁄²⁶ grossi per pound, by the mid-thirteenth cen-tury. To simplify accounting, a new pound of account came into use, defined as grossi (L: libra grossorum; V: lira di grossi); it was worth ¹⁄⁹ times as much asthe old pound of pennies.²⁸

:

For a half century after the innovations of the reign of Enrico Dandolo,the coinage of Venice remained essentially unchanged. The grosso graduallyestablished itself as the basic coin of Venice, though old pennies of the twelfthcentury continued to circulate, as did a variety of other local coinages. An exam-ple of this mixed circulation is offered by the record of a series of thefts of Vene-tian merchants carried out by men believed to be in the hire of the Este lords ofFerrara in the s: one merchant lost Venetian grossi, Venetian pennies,and , pennies of Ravenna, and another lost grossi, , Venetian pen-nies, , pennies of Verona, and English sterlings, among other coins.²⁹

Virtually no documentation on Venetian minting can be ascribed to thefirst half of the thirteenth century. A brief mention in a fragmentary record ofthe Great Council notes that in those in charge of minting appeared beforethe doge and his counselors and took an oath upon their capitulary and enteredinto office.³⁰This is the first extant mention of the office and its rule book; there


²⁸See Lane and Mueller, Coins and Moneys of Account, ‒ and ‒, for moneys of account ingeneral and for these two pounds of account.²⁹June and Apr. : DMC, :, .³⁰ Mar. : DMC, :, #; PMV, , #.

are no further references for several more decades. The mint was given a com-mercial advantage in by an act of the Great Council which exempted thosewho sold their silver to it from any import duty on the bullion; this provisionstayed in effect for more than a century.³¹ In this era, the doges swore in theirinaugural oath to maintain the coinage as they had found it, unless new stan-dards were set by a council.³²

In the reign of Jacopo Tiepolo (‒), a system of distinctive marksbecomes evident on the grosso, first as variations in the punctuation on the ob-verse and then in the use of small marks around the feet of Christ on the re-verse.³³ These no doubt correspond to the provision in the capitulary ofthe mintmasters for grossi that they put a mark on their coins so that it couldbe known that a given piece was minted during their period in office.³⁴ Thereseem to be two marks per year, which suggests two masters in office at a time fora term of one year.³⁵

While the Venetian mint continued a stable regime of production of grossifrom to , other minters, responding to the same circumstances that hadled to the introduction of the grosso, and also no doubt to the example set byVenice, introduced silver coins above the penny denomination.³⁶ By the middleof the century Genoa had issued a grosso, perhaps as early as .³⁷ The Tus-can mints of Pisa, Lucca, Sienna, and Florence were all producing grossi by ,and perhaps earlier.³⁸ Closer to home, Verona also introduced a fine-silver grossoin the first half of the century, which by was worth pennies in the equiv-alent systems of Verona and Venice.³⁹ By this period as well, rich sources of sil-


³¹ Sept. : DMC, :‒; PMV, , #.³²ASV, Secreta, Promissioni, R. , f. (Jacopo Tiepolo, ), f. v (Marin Morosini, ), f. v(Rainiero Zeno, ), f. (Lorenzo Tiepolo, ). Beginning in the doges also swore toprosecute counterfeiters: Novissimum Statutorum ac Venetiarum Legum Volumen (Venice, ), pt. , f. .³³Papadopoli, :, , and ; CNI, :, and .³⁴CMM, c. .³⁵Later in the century, when three masters are known to have rotated for a term of a year, thenumber of marks averages per year of the doge’s reign; see below, Chap. .³⁶In general, see Spufford, Money and Its Use, ‒. For Italy, see Grierson, “Origins of theGrosso”; Cipolla, Avventure, ‒; Saccocci, “Tra Bisanzio,” ‒.³⁷Lopez, “Prima del ritorno all’oro nell’ occidente duecentesco,” ‒.³⁸David Herlihy, “Pisan Coinage and the Monetary History of Tuscany, ‒,” in Le zeccheminori toscane fino al XIV secolo, Centro Italiano di Studi di Storia e d’Arte, Pistoia (Pistoia, ),‒. The introduction of the grosso in at least some of these mints before has beenargued on the basis of indirect evidence: Michael Matzke, “Vom Ottolinus zum Grossus:Münzprägung in der Toskana vom . bis zum . Jahrhundert,” Schweizerische numismatische Rund-schau (): ‒.³⁹Quintilio Perini, Le monete di Verona (Rovereto, Italy, ), and , # and #.

ver in the Carinthian Alps had made their way to a number of mints to the northand east of Venice, chief among which were Friesach, Aquileia, Gorizia, andTriest.⁴⁰ The coins of these mints, which circulated under the name friesacher, fitinto the Venetian system of the thirteenth century with a value of about Vene-tian pennies, or shilling. The Tyrolean Alps were another rich source of silver,and the counts of Tyrol and bishops of Trent issued grossi on the standards ofthose of Verona, worth pennies in Venice.⁴¹

Shortly after , the mint of Venice resumed the production of pennies.No pennies are known in the name of Ranieri Zeno (‒), but those in thename of his successor, Lorenzo Tiepolo, are relatively common in finds and incollections.⁴² By the end of the new penny seems to have been in circula-tion. In February of that year an official rate of . pennies to the grosso wasset for the pay of officials.⁴³ In December of that year, a circulating rate of

pennies to the grosso was recognized, and it was established that all transactionsless than £ in value be made in pennies, except for precious metals.⁴⁴This rein-troduction may have been occasioned by the local circulation of Veronese coinsand friesachers, or it may have been a response to the gradual attrition of theold pennies from the coin supply (fig. ).⁴⁵

For the next decade, a series of reforms established separate minting teamsfor the petty coinages and the grosso.⁴⁶ The two masters in charge of the small


⁴⁰Andrea Saccocci, “La monetazione dell’Italia nord-orientale nel XII secolo,” in Härtel, Diefriesacher Münze, ‒.⁴¹Helmut Rizzolli, Münzgeschichte des alttirolischen Raumes im Mittelalter (Bolzano, Italy, ), :‒.Soon after , Count Meinhard II of Tyrol raised the fineness of his grosso with the issue ofthe aquilino of Merano, which circulated as pennies in Venice: ibid., ‒.⁴²Papadopoli, : and ; Paolucci, Monete dei dogi, ; below, App. B, table B., #‒, ‒.⁴³ Feb. []: Papadopoli, :, #; DMC, :. That this rate was official and unchanging isdemonstrated by its reiteration in , after the market value had certainly changed: Apr.: Tafel and Thomas, Urkunden, :‒, #.⁴⁴ Dec. : DMC, :. Dec. : DMC, :. This rate of pennies to the grosso wasrecognized in Padua in : Andrea Gloria, ed., Statuti del Comune di Padova dal secolo XII all’anno (Padua, ), , #; in the manuscript, the number was added in a later hand overa canceled earlier figure: Gloria, Statuti, , n.a.⁴⁵In hoards of the late thirteenth and earlier fourteenth centuries, pennies from the twelfthcentury represent a small but significant portion of the circulation; see below, App. B, table B.,#‒.⁴⁶ Aug. : DMC, :; this act is known only from a rubric: ASV, MC, Rubriche, R. , f. .Before this date the masters had been referred to simply as massarii monete or illi qui sunt super mone-

money supervised the minting of pennies and the lower denominations, whichnow included the bianco, or halfpenny; the quartarolo, or quarter penny; and anew denomination visually equivalent to the quartarolo but twice its weight.⁴⁷These masters for small coinage were given a minimum number of coins theyhad to produce, but they were allowed to produce more.⁴⁸ An act of soughtto ban the circulation within Venice of “bagattini,” probably the pennies ofVerona.⁴⁹

By , the three masters for grossi had their own capitulary.⁵⁰ New regu-lations were passed by the Council of Forty in , which sought to guardagainst any possible illegal profiteering by the mintmaster for grossi.⁵¹ It is inthese acts that the system of rotation among the three masters by fortnight ofservice (quindena) is first documented with its series of provisions for the over-sight of each master by his colleagues (see below, Chap. ). Twenty reversemarks are visible on grossi of the seven years of office of Lorenzo Tiepolo.⁵² As


tam; their number earlier is not documented: June : DMC, :‒; Sept. : DMC,:.⁴⁷This new denomination was continued at least until : Papadopoli, :, , , . Its roleis unclear—if it was a double quartarolo, as it is usually interpreted, it would have had the samevalue as the bianco. It is possible that the lighter coin of the same appearance (minted since thereign of Enrico Dandolo) was in actuality an eighth of a penny and it was to this new coin thatAndrea Dandolo referred as a “quartarolus valoris quartae partis unius denarii” in the section ofhis chronicle dealing with the construction of the Rialto bridge in : Chronicon, .⁴⁸ Nov. : DMC, :. This act, known only in rubric, also allowed them to “dare tabu-lam,” which presumably meant to act as moneychangers; cf. Charles Du Fresne Du Cange, Glos-sarium mediae et infimae latinitatis, new ed., vols. (‒; reprint, Graz, Austria, ), s.v.Tabula..⁴⁹ Apr. : DMC, :; this act is known only from its rubric.⁵⁰ Oct. : DMC, :; PMV, ‒, #.⁵¹ Dec. : DMC, :‒.⁵²Papadopoli, :; CNI, :‒.

a

Fig. . Venetian coins of the reign of Lorenzo Tiepolo (‒).a. Grosso with Mint master’s mark (triangle under left elbow). b. Debased penny.

Sources: a. ANS ... b. MCC, Papadopoli


there seem to be about three marks per year, these marks probably correspondto the yearly production of each of the masters in office.

In March , three men were chosen by the Forty to revise the regulationsgoverning the mintmasters and the gold estimators and to establish rules for anew office, that of the mint weighers.⁵³ Their recommendations were accepted,and new capitularies were drawn up for all three offices; of these, that for themintmasters for the grosso survives in a manuscript incorporating additionalprovisions through the end of the thirteenth century. The chief changes evidentin the capitulary from regulations known from before are those that stemfrom a reorganization of the administration of the mint. The basic text assumesthree masters for grossi and two mint weighers for silver. In general, the weigherstook over responsibilities related to minting which had been assigned the goldestimators in ; they also served as adjudicators of disputes in place of themasters for pennies. Another change was the requirement that the masters ren-der their accounts every six months, rather than only at the end of their one-year term.

In December the staffs for the production of grossi and pennies weremerged, and new standards were set for the penny: an alloy of just under per-cent silver with a weight of just over . grams.⁵⁴ This is consistent with theweights recorded for pennies of the doge in office at the time (Lorenzo Tiepolo)and his two successors, Jacopo Contarini and Giovanni Dandolo.⁵⁵ These stan-dards for the penny represented a decline from those minted in the twelfth cen-tury and were accompanied by a drop in the value of the coin in relation to thegrosso. In May , the Great Council changed the official value of the grossofrom the pennies set in to pennies.⁵⁶ A few months later, the Fortyasked the mintmasters at what standards they could make the penny withoutloss, encouraging them or anyone else to think of a way to improve the stan-dard.⁵⁷The masters recommended minting on standards that they said were cur-rently in effect, almost identical to those given in the capitulary, resulting in apenny containing about . grams of grosso-grade silver.⁵⁸ As the grosso wasto be made at a weight of about . grams of silver, it would have contained


⁵³CMM, c. .⁵⁴CMM, c. [a].⁵⁵The pennies of these three reigns show a modal weight in the range of .‒. grams: CNI,:‒, , ‒.⁵⁶ May : DMC, :, #; Papadopoli, :‒.⁵⁷DMC, :‒, #; Papadopoli, :.⁵⁸There were to be carats of grosso-grade silver, with a cut of pennies per mark.

just over thirty-six times as much silver as the penny.⁵⁹ The penny, tariffed at to the grosso, was then overvalued by . percent in relation to it; its utility asa divisional coin as well as greater costs of minting would have justified such adisparity in values.

The debasement of the penny did represent a lowering of the silver con-tent of sums calculated in terms of it, but this was offset by the introduction ofa new system of accounting.⁶⁰ In addition to the pound of pennies (L: libra par-vorum ; V: lira di piccoli), representing of the new, base pennies, and the poundof grossi (L: libra grossorum; V: lira di grossi), grossi, a new pound of accountcame into use, the pound based on the grosso (L: libra ad grossos, V: lira a grossi).The basis of this system was a ghost penny defined as ¹⁄²⁶¹¹ of a grosso, the valueit had had before the debasement. A sum traditionally calculated in pennies couldstill be paid with the same amount of silver grossi as before the debasement, ifit was defined as being in lira a grossi, rather than lira di piccoli. For those pay-ments that were calculated in this new accounting system (and it is not alwaysclear to us from documents which system was used for a given payment), the de-basement of the penny had no effect.

The reintroduction of the penny at a debased standard enabled Venice toachieve what it had failed at a century earlier: a system with a large fine-silvercoin suitable for trade and a coin with a small amount of silver which couldserve as the basis of its low-level, internal economy.


⁵⁹CMM, c..⁶⁰See Lane and Mueller, Coins and Moneys of Account, ‒, for an explanation of the systems inuse in this period.

The �ge of the �ucat, ‒

The reintroduction of the penny at a debased standard brought Venetiansilver currency into an equilibrium that lasted for the next half century. Soonthereafter, the republic turned its attention to a major innovation in its coinage,the first gold coin in its almost five centuries of minting (fig. ).

As we have seen, in the twelfth century Venice’s trade was based in large parton Byzantine coins, especially the hyperpyron of (.%) carat gold and theelectrum aspron trachy of (.%) carats. These were debased in the late twelfthcentury and eliminated with the fall of Constantinople to the Fourth Crusadein . The minting of the hyperpyron appears to have been resumed by theNicaean claimant John III Vatatzes (‒), whose coins imitated closely thoseof John II Comnenus (‒) but with a lower and varying gold content.¹Thesewere in turn imitated by the Latin emperors of Constantinople, whose hyper-pyra were known in Italy as being ¾ carats (.%) fine.² Though Venetiancommercial documents continued to reckon sums in hyperpyra in the thirteenthcentury, these appear to be based on other coins, chiefly European silver issues.³

In the course of the thirteenth century, European rulers began the regular

¹Morrisson et al., “La monnaie d’or,” ‒.²Francesco Balducci Pegolotti, La pratica della mercatura, ed. Allan Evans (Cambridge, Mass., ),.³In Thebes there was a system based on yperperatas sterlinorum, that is, in terms of a hyperpyrondefined as one-seventh of a mark of coins of Cologne of sterling fineness: May : MRLD,:‒, #. Crete used a hyperpyron defined as Venetian grossi: May : MRLD,:‒, #. See Alan M. Stahl, The Venetian Tornesello: A Medieval Colonial Coinage, AmericanNumismatic Society, Numismatic Notes and Monographs, (New York, ), ‒, foraccounting systems based on the hyperpyron as they appeared in the fourteenth century.

issue of gold coins for the first time since the pre-Carolingian age.⁴ The excep-tional cases had been Latin rulers who were involved in the Islamic trade net-work and minted in that tradition: Crusaders in the Levant, Castilians and Ara-gonese in Iberia, and Salernitans and Normans in southern Italy and Sicily.⁵Theearliest gold coin of the south, even preceding the Norman presence there, wasthe tari, a gold coin of variable weight with a fineness that by the thirteenth cen-tury became fixed at ⅓ carats (%) fine.⁶The tari was supplemented, thoughnot replaced, by Frederick II in with the augustalis, a coin of fixed weight(. grams) and an alloy known as pagliola: ½ carats gold (.%), ⅝ caratssilver, ⅞ carat copper.⁷Trade between Venice and southern Italy, especially Apu-lia, was important in the thirteenth century, and payments were sometimes madein gold for grain purchased there. The basis of this trade at first appears to havebeen gold ingots at about the pagliola standard; in Venice sent gold to Apu-lia in ingots worth about £,, some with a fineness of ½ carats and others½ carats.⁸ Later, however, Venetian payments seem to have been made mainlyin bars of silver and grossi. By the second half of the century, the accounts ofthe royal treasury of Apulia were being carried out in terms of the Venetiangrosso.⁹ In the Council of Forty banned the trade within Venice of gold ofpagliola fineness in amounts of more than marks (about one-half kilo) andinsisted that such gold be refined into ingots.¹⁰ The standard for Venetian gold

The Age of the Ducat, ‒

⁴The classic study of this is Roberto Sabatino Lopez, “Settecento anni fa: Il ritorno all’oro neloccidente duecentesco,” Rivista storica italiana (): ‒ and ‒. See also Grierson, “Ori-gins of the grosso,” ‒; Lane and Mueller, Coins and Moneys of Account, ‒; Spufford,Money and Its Use, ‒.⁵Spufford, Money and Its Use, ‒.⁶Travaini, Monetazione, ‒.⁷Heinrich Kowalski, “Die Augustalen Kaiser Friedrichs II,” Schweizerische numismatische Rundschau (): ‒.⁸ Apr. : DMC, :, #; BG, ‒, # and #.⁹Francesco Carabellese, Carol d’Angiò nei rapporti politici e commerciali con Venezia e l’Oriente, Commis-sione Provinciale di Archeologia e Storia Patria, Documenti e monografie, (Bari, ), ‒.¹⁰ Oct. : DMC, :; PMV, , #.

Fig. . A Venetian ducat of the reign of Giovanni Dandolo (–).Source: ANS ..


was set in as at least ¾ carats fine, that is, about as close to pure as medievaltechnology could achieve.¹¹

The precedent for the Venetian minting of gold coins came from the westof Italy rather than directly from the south. In both Genoa and Florenceinitiated the minting of coins of pure gold at the same weight, . grams.¹²Theexample of Florence and Genoa was followed by Lucca by and by Perugiain ; neither issue proved long lived or successful.¹³ Outside Italy, Henry IIIof England minted a gold penny in , and Louis IX of France a gold écu by; neither of these issues entered regular circulation.¹⁴ Nor is it clear thateven the genovino and the florin were immediate successes. The genovino is doc-umented in a few Genoese documents of the s, but little after that.¹⁵ Evenfor the florin, there is little evidence that it was widely used in its first fewdecades of minting. In papal collections of about , the gold florin did notachieve the wide prominence that it would have by the end of the century.¹⁶Only two coin hoards containing florins are known from the thirteenth century,one from Pisa and one from the Levant; no genovini are known from finds fromthis period.¹⁷

On October , the Council of Forty approved the issue of Venice’sgold coin, the ducat.¹⁸ As the records of the Forty are lacking for this period,


¹¹ Dec. : DMC, :‒; Papadopoli, :‒, #.¹²Lopez, “Settecento anni fa,” ‒.¹³Thomas W. Blomquist, “The Second Issuance of a Tuscan Gold Coin: The Gold Groat ofLucca, ,” Journal of Medieval History (): ‒; Lopez, “Settecento anni fa,” ‒.¹⁴Spufford, Money and Its Use, ‒.¹⁵Lopez, “Settecento anni fa,” ‒. The “denaros . . . Janue auro . . . que valent solidos decemJanue” of appear to be a later, baser issue: G. I. Bratianu, Recherches sur le commerce génois dans laMer Noire au XIIIe siècle (Paris, ), , #, , #, and , #; Lopez, “Settecento annifa,” .¹⁶For example, in Viterbo, ‒, the florins were only a small part of the collection,which also included , Venetian grossi that were worth almost twice that amount: GiulioBattelli, ed., Rationes decimarum Italiae nei secoli XIII e XIV. Latium, Studi e testi, (Vatican City,), ‒.¹⁷The Pisa hoard appears to date from the late s; it contained Byzantine gold coin, southern Italian tari, gold grosso of Lucca, and very early florins: Luciano Lenzi, Il ripostigliodi monete auree scoperto in Pisa sotto le logge dei Banche (Pisa, ). The Aleppo hoard is from the lastdecade of the thirteenth century or later; it comprised mainly florentine florins but had Vene-tian ducats (of G. Dandolo [‒] and P. Gradenigo [‒]) and French gold coinsfrom . It is known only from a note in Philip Grierson, “The Interpretation of Coin Finds(),” Numismatic Chronicle, th ser., (), reprinted in his Later Medieval Numismatics (London,), :vi n. . Grierson dates the hoard to and connects its burial to the fall of Acre inthat year.¹⁸DMC, :, #; PMV, ‒, #; Papadopoli, :.

the act is known only from its inclusion in the registers of the Great Council.There is no way to know the context of this act, whether it was carried out afterfailed motions reaching back perhaps years and even decades and whether it wasthe result of strong controversy or compromise. It is of note that the recordedact states that only twenty-nine members of the Forty were present; this was aweak quorum, especially if it included the doge and his six counselors who satwith the Forty.¹⁹ The vote to adopt was even weaker; only twenty-two membersapproved the measure, while seven abstained.

The act is brief and straightforward.²⁰ It lacks a preamble stating the con-text and necessity of the legislation, a common feature of acts of this period.The entire act is a single sentence. There should be of the new coin (whosename is not given) per mark of gold, which is at least as good as that in the florin.The gold should be received at a price that allows the coin to be given for grossi. The design should be selected by the doge, his six counselors, and thethree heads of the Forty, who are authorized to review and alter designs.

It is explicit from the standards that the new coin was intended to be a re-sponse to the Florentine florin and to be its equal in value. The cut of coinsto the Venetian mark is an awkward figure compared with the coins per ounceof the Florentine standard. It is probably as close as one could come to theflorin’s weight in integers or even common fractions; a cut of ⅓ ducats to themark would have made them exactly equal.²¹ At coins to the mark, the ducatwould then be about a half of a percent heavier than the florin (. grams,compared with .) and at least as fine as the nominally pure florin.

The imagery chosen for the ducat in was maintained virtually un-changed through the reign of the last Venetian doge in . In iconography itappears to be derived almost entirely from the grosso, but in style it representeda great advance on the linear frozen appearance of the grosso.²² The minting of


¹⁹Giuseppe Maranini, La costituzione di Venezia (; reprint, Florence, ), :‒.²⁰It is identical in the register of the Great Council and the copy of the state advocates: ASV,MC Luna, f. v, and AC Cerberus, f. v: “Capta fuit pars quod debeat laborari moneta auricommunis, videlicet LXVII pro marcha auri tam bona et fina per aurum vel melior ut estflorenus, accipiendo aurum pro illo precio quod possit dari moneta pro decem et octo grossis,et fiat cum illa stampa que videbitur domino duci et consiliariis et capitibus de quadraginta etcum illis melioramentis que eis videbuntur, et si consilium est contra sit revocatum quantum inhoc; pars de XL et erant XXVIIII de quadraginta congregati, ex quibus voluerunt hanc partemXXII et septem fuerunt non sinceri et nullus de non.”²¹Pegolotti, Pratica, : mark of Venice equaled ounces, denarii of Florence in the earlydecades of the fourteenth century. The ounce of Florence was divided into denarii, so theequivalent of the Venetian mark would have produced ⅓ florins at the rate of to the ounce.²²See below, Chap. , for the iconography, style, and legend of the medieval ducat.

the ducat began in March , an event marked by the erection of a marble in-scription at the mint which remained until it was taken down in the early six-teenth century.²³ Two new masters for gold were appointed, whose office wasrenewed the next year.²⁴ The next month the rules governing the bullion marketwere amended so that Germans could sell their gold directly to the mint; up tothat time the sales of gold had been carried out by the vice-lords of the Ger-man fondaco on behalf of the Germans.²⁵

There were clearly problems attracting gold to the mint and getting the ducatto circulate at its intended value. In June a set of regulations was passed,apparently by the Great Council, to effect its circulation at about . grossi,rather than the grossi specified half a year earlier.²⁶ In order to control thevalue of the ducat versus the grosso, the masters were given the option of pay-ing in whichever coin they preferred. Venetian merchants who wanted ducats tocarry with them in trade to Apulia or the East were given a special rate until thereturn of the fleets; their gold would be minted into ducats for a fee of grossiper mark, which was said to be the actual cost of minting. The mint was allo-cated enough capital from the state treasury for more than , ducats’ worthof gold, so that it could give foreigners ducats for their gold with no delay. Upuntil this point, there is no documentation of the mint holding capital; the doc-uments imply that the regular procedure for grossi was for those bringing silverto the mint to await the end of the master’s quindena to get their own bullionback in minted form. The same appears to be true in the special provision forVenetians getting ducats for trade at a reduced rate. However, the establishmentof the ducat was deemed important enough for the state to advance enough cap-


²³Marin Sanudo, Vite dei dogi, cc. ‒. In his revision of a account of the zecca,Sanudo noted that this inscription had been removed: Marin Sanudo, De origine, situ e magistratibusurbis Venetóae ovvero la città di Venetia (‒), ed. Angela Caracciolo Aricò (Milan, ), ‒,, .²⁴Vincenzo Padovan, “La nummografia veneziana: Sommario documentato,” AV (): :“Da una cronachetta di Donato Contarini già esistente nella Biblioteca Foscariniana, e citata dalSanudo, si apprende: ‘Nel dicto tempo () fo facto i primi ofiziali a far far ducati Ser ZuanneBondimier e Ser Matio de Rainaldo e per e’l so bon operar fo confermado quelo nel .’” Ihave been unable to find the citation within the works of Sanudo or in any of the chroniclescurrently attributed to Donato Contarini in the Biblioteca Marciana, or any other documenta-tion relating to Giovanni Bondulmier or Matteo de Rainaldo as mintmasters.²⁵ Apr. : DMC, :, #, and PMV, , #. Compare Dec. : DMC, :.²⁶ June : DMC, :‒, #; PMV, , # (as May); Papadopoli, :, #. This is theearliest extant document to call the coin a ducatus rather than moneta aurei. The ducat was set at shillings ad grossos. A grosso was ¹⁄⁹ pennies ad grossos, so a ducat at shillings adgrossos would be . grossi. See below, Chap. , for a discussion of the profit margin impliedin this act.

ital to the mint to pay foreigners up front for their gold. Capital at the mintseems to have been the key to getting the ducat into circulation. For the nextdecade, the state authorized the mint to borrow from a number of state agen-cies the gold necessary to keep a supply of ducats on hand (see below, Chap. ).

The introduction the gold ducat occasioned alterations in minting in late-thirteenth-century Venice, both administrative and physical. These changes coin-cided with a general reordering of the Venetian state often subsumed under therubric of the Serrata, or Closing of the Great Council.²⁷ The mechanisms andeffects of this procedure on Venetian society as a whole are controversial, butone result was the explicit definition of powers and responsibilities that had upto that point been governed by tradition and circumstance. For the mint, thisdefinition included the specification that both the election of officials and thesetting of regulations to cover them was the province of the Council of Forty,whose acts would have force as if they had been done by the Great Council.²⁸

The existence of masters designated as being in charge of the minting ofgold and having their own capitulary is documented from , the first year ofthe minting of the ducat.²⁹ Provisions in this capitulary specify two masters anda single weigher for gold, as well as a separate vault to which only these officialshad keys.³⁰There is no documentation at this point of the other physical arrange-ments for the minting of gold; it was probably carried out in separate roomswithin the same building complex as the silver mint, across the Piazzetta fromthe doge’s palace.

The Venetian mint began to be referred to as the zecca during the periodwhen the gold ducat was first struck; its use is first documented in .³¹ Theword is derived from the Arabic sikka, literally “die” and, by extension, mint.³²


²⁷See Cessi, Storia della Repubblica, ‒; Frederic C. Lane, “The Enlargement of the GreatCouncil of Venice,” in Florilegium Historiale: Essays Presented to Wallace K. Ferguson, ed. J. G. Rowe andW. H. Stockdale (Toronto, ), ‒, reprinted in his Studies in Venetian Social and Economic His-tory, ed. Kohl and Mueller; Cracco, Un “Altro Mondo,” ‒.²⁸ Aug. : DMC, :, #; PMV, , #; Papadopoli, :, #. Dec. : DMC, :,#; Papadopoli, :, #. See below, Chap. .²⁹ Aug. : DMC, :, #; PMV, , #.³⁰CMO, cc. and . See Stahl, “Mint of Venice in the Thirteenth Century,” ‒, for a discus-sion of the composition of this capitulary.³¹ Apr. : DMC, :, #; PMV, , #.³²Lucia Travaini, “Mint Organization in Italy between the Twelfth and Fourteenth Centuries:

Before this time, the term for the mint had been moneta, and the word zecca hadappeared in Venetian documents in reference to Islamic mints.³³ It had also ap-peared in reference to the minting in Genoa and Tuscany of coins referred to asmiliarenses, which may have been imitation Islamic silver coins or grossi.³⁴ By ,the term zecca was used for the silver mint of Venice as well as that for gold.³⁵

In the mint suffered a fire, which destroyed the domum operariorum, theworkshop in which those who made the blanks worked.³⁶ This provided an op-portunity for rearranging the facilities to take into account the reorganizationnecessitated by the resumption of the minting of pennies and the introductionof gold coinage in recent decades. The mintmasters were instructed to adapt thedoors and balconies and to buy whatever supplies were needed to resume mint-ing. In the meantime, only those on staff would be entitled to their pay; noth-ing was authorized for the workers, emenders, or strikers. The expenses of thisrebuilding were to come out of the mint profits, past and future.

:

By the beginning of the fourteenth century, Venice had a three-tiered mon-etary system in place. At the top was the ducat, a coin of pure gold and fixedweight, almost identical to the gold coins of Florence and Genoa. As sophisti-cated traders in bullion, the Venetians must have recognized that the relation-ship of values between gold and silver was constantly fluctuating. In the firstthird of the fourteenth century, the gold-silver ratio rose dramatically in theMediterranean world, from a range of values around : at the beginning of thecentury to rates that hovered around and exceeded : in the years up to .³⁷There were occasional decrees of various authorities to define what specific stateagencies should value the ducat at for limited periods, but for the most part, the


A Survey,” in Later Medieval Mints: Organisation, Administration, and Techniques, ed. N. Mayhew andP. Spufford (Oxford, ), ‒.³³E.g., the pact with the sultan of Aleppo in ‒ which gives provisions for Venetians whowish to have silver struck at the sultan’s mint, “ala zecha”: Tafel and Thomas, Urkunden, :‒,#.³⁴Lopez, “Settecento anni fa,” ‒ n. : “miliarensium argenti de ceca Ianue vel de cecaTuscie.”³⁵ Sept. , ASV, AC Cerberus, f. v (dated Aug.): “Et portent [denarios grossos deBrescoa] ad zecam et dentur parvis denarii .”³⁶CMM, c. .³⁷Spufford, Money and Its Use, ‒, esp. graph , p. .

ducat was left to float free in value against other coinages, both Venetian and for-eign.³⁸ In the years from to the ducat’s value in Venetian grossi fluctu-ated between ½ and grossi to the ducat.³⁹

The grosso remained stable at the standards that had been fixed since theend of the twelfth century. It continued to circulate at the value of piccolidefined in .⁴⁰ In this period, foreigners were forbidden from exporting newlystruck grossi, and Venetians could not do so by land or within the Adriatic with-out special permission.⁴¹ This regulation must have been to ensure a good sup-ply of the coinage for use within Venice and, especially, for trade with the Lev-ant. The minting of silver appears to have fallen off significantly in the s, aphenomenon that was probably connected with the beginning of minting of theducat, though the chronology and causation are not clear (see below, Chap. ).Things improved soon thereafter; in there was a rise in the supply of silverfrom “Germans” which required the spreading out of the intake of bullion overthe quindene of successive masters and justified the hiring of new emenders andthe granting of raises to the die engraver and blacksmith.⁴² In the mint wasrecognized as too small to meet the needs of production and was enlarged byexpansion into the adjacent arsena, where the Procurators of San Marco storedtheir wood.⁴³ As it was the masters for grossi who were granted an extension ontheir accounts because of the disruption caused by this expansion, it is likelythat the demand for more space came from an increase in the volume of mint-ing of grossi.⁴⁴

The black money, the penny, halfpenny, and quarter penny, continued in


³⁸In the rate paid for gold leaf was raised by order of the Justiciars: Sept. : G. Monti-colo and E. Besta, eds. I capitolari delle arti veneziane, Istituto Storico Italiano, Fonti per la storiad’Italia, ‒ (Rome, ‒), :‒, #. In the Forty set the value of the ducat at grossi for the next two years: NMC, ‒, #. Lane and Mueller viewed the act as partof as an expansionist and anti-inflationary policy: Coins and Moneys of Account, ‒.³⁹Lane and Mueller, Coins and Moneys of Account, ; Spufford, Handbook, .⁴⁰Lane and Mueller, Coins and Moneys of Account, ‒. Certain traditional payments, involvingVenetian officials in outlying places, were paid at archaic rates of or pennies per grosso: Dec. : BG, ‒, # (patriarch of Aquileia at pennies per grosso); Mar. : LCR,:, # (procurator of Ravenna at pennies per grosso); June : G. Giomo, ed., Letteredi Collegio ‒ (reg.), Monumenti storici, Miscellanea III, vol. (Venice, ), , #,# (podesta of Farra and Brazza at pennies); cf. PMV, xlv n. .⁴¹ Dec. : NMC, ‒, #.⁴² Aug. : ASV, MC Commune II, f. v. Oct. : ASV, MC Commune II, f. . June : ASV, MC Presbiter, f. .⁴³ Jan. []: ASV, MC Fronesis, f. v. Feb. []: PMV, , #.⁴⁴ June : ASV, AC Neptunus, f. v, #, #, #; see below, App. A, table A., forthe identification of these men as masters for grossi.

this period with no documented change in standard or value. Despite its highovervaluation, there was apparently some resistance in the mint to the manufac-ture of the penny. In the masters were enjoined to make at least marksof pennies per quindena; to encourage greater production the masters wereoffered a personal boon of penny per mark above this amount.⁴⁵ At pen-nies to the mark and a quindena of two months, this production would havebeen almost £, per year. Citing the scarcity of Venetian pennies in circula-tion and the poor quality of its halfpennies, the Commune of Treviso decidedin to resume minting after a hiatus of more than a century and a half.⁴⁶ In the Forty of Venice noted that the mintmasters were not required to makeany specific number of pennies and ordered a production of at least £, amonth, more than double the earlier rate.⁴⁷ Before this date, the production ofblack money had probably been curtailed but not been stopped; piccoli in thename of Pietro Gradenigo (‒) are relatively common in finds, thoughthere are none known in the name of his successor, the short-lived Marino Zorzi(‒).⁴⁸ Piccoli are known in the name of Giovanni Soranzo (‒), butthey are considered rare and are found in small quantities in excavations by com-parison with earlier and later issues.⁴⁹

In addition to these mint issues, there were other coins circulating in Venicein these decades, some of which caused problems for the government and forthe mint and some of which were accepted without difficulty. In general, thewell-informed and competitive moneychangers could be relied upon to evaluateforeign issues and keep them circulating according to their respective market val-ues. In a few cases, especially those of exotic coinages, the state intervened atleast to the point of investigating the intrinsic content of the coins so that theirrelative value would be common knowledge.⁵⁰

The Florentine gold florin was specifically authorized to circulate alongsidethe ducat at the same value and under the same conditions.⁵¹ Even the Venetianstate used florins in transactions, as in a purchase of grain in which the com-mune paid for with about , ducats and , florins.⁵² When it came to thesilver coinage, that of Venice was preferred for state transactions; officials were


⁴⁵ May : CMM, c. [a]; misdated in PMV, ‒, #.⁴⁶Angelo Marchesan, Treviso medievale: Istituzioni, usi, anedotti, curiosità, vols. (Treviso, ), :.⁴⁷ May : NMC, ‒, #.⁴⁸See below, App. B, table B., #‒, ‒. Papadopoli, :.⁴⁹Paolucci, Monete dei dogi, ; See below, Chap. .⁵⁰ Oct. : PMV, , #.⁵¹ May : PMV, ‒, #.⁵² Apr. : LCR, :, #.

forbidden in from taking payments in the coinages of neighboring mintsworth and pennies, respectively.⁵³ For other purposes, however, such for-eign grossi, mainly from Verona and mints in the Tyrol, were actually protectedwithin Venice by the prosecution of individuals making or passing counterfeitsof them.⁵⁴ In the case of imported black money, pennies with a great deal ofadded value, a bit more care was taken to control circulation. In a new issueof Lombard pennies were observed to be circulating at par with the Venetianpenny at to the grosso, while their intrinsic value dictated a lower rate of

to the grosso; these coins were banned from circulation.⁵⁵ In all foreign pen-nies but a couple of old, common ones were banned from circulation.⁵⁶

One foreign coinage that aroused significant concern among the governingcouncils of Venice was that made by the kings of Serbia from their silver minesin Bosnia (fig. ).⁵⁷ Unlike patently foreign coins, whose values would be dis-counted on the Venetian market, these coins were closely copied after Venetiangrossi.⁵⁸ When they first appeared in the s, they were of appropriate fine-ness, though of uncertain weight, and the mint was instructed to exchange grossifor them at a weight-for-weight basis.⁵⁹ Their fineness dropped after that, andin they were valued at pennies each (compared with pennies for aVenetian grosso), and the Venetian mint paid £. per mark of them.⁶⁰ By theend of the century, these coins were allowed to circulate freely at pennies each,and the mintmasters were instructed to perform monthly assays on circulatingexamples to make sure there was no further debasement in their standard.⁶¹ Intypical Venetian fashion, the bureaucratic office that had been created to dealwith this specific issue lived on under the name Office of Serbian Grossi for anotherquarter century, gathering unrelated competencies and disputing other officesfor jurisdictions (see below, Chap. ).


⁵³ July : PMV, , #.⁵⁴ May : ASV, SN, R. , f. ; May : ASV, AC Raspe, R. /, f. ; May :NMC, , #; Mar. : NMC, ‒, #.⁵⁵ May : PMV, , #.⁵⁶ Feb. []: NMC, ‒, #.⁵⁷Desanka Kovacevic, “Dans la Servie et la Bosnie médiévale: Les mines d’or et d’argent,”Annales: Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations (): ‒.⁵⁸Vujadin Ivanisevic, “Le début du monnayage des gros serbes,” Actes du XIe Congrès Internationalde Numismatique (Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, ), :‒. The notoriety of this imitationcaused the king of Serbia (or “Rascia”) to be immortalized by Dante as “quel di Rascia / chemale ha visto il conio di Vinegia” (Paradiso, Canto XIX).⁵⁹ Oct. : DMC, :, # (with incorrect date).⁶⁰ June : CMM, c. []; DMC, :‒, #; PMV, ‒, #.⁶¹ May : DMC, :, #.

A persistent problem related to the circulation of the Venetian grosso, andmost medieval European coins, was clipping (see below, Chap. ). The clippingof grossi became severe enough in to cause special action by governmentcouncils. The earliest indication of a problem is the arrest of a certain Boni-facius of Milan, known as Clericus, who was arrested that summer for clippinggrossi within Venice and suffered the usual punishment of the loss of a handand an eye and banishment.⁶² In October, the Forty ordered state officials torefuse any grosso more than . percent below the prescribed minimum mintweight of . grams; they were given an extension on their accounts to allow forthe problems caused by such measures.⁶³ The long-term remedy for this situa-tion included the creation of a new office to deal with clipped grossi and a rem-inting of clipped ones in circulation.⁶⁴ Individuals who were suspicious of thecoins they received in transaction from moneychangers or other individualscould take them to the officials of clipped grossi to be weighed and certified.This documented recoinage of grossi does not seem to have resulted in greatlyincreased activity at the mint. There are none of the usual pleas for raises byemployees which correspond with heavy production, nor are the grossi in thename of the reigning doge, Giovanni Soranzo, particularly common in hoardsof the period (see below, Chap. and App. B, table B., #‒).

The decade of the s seems to have been a period of slow activity in theproduction of ducats, as the gold mint was authorized repeatedly to lend out itscapital to other agencies.⁶⁵The apparent reduction of the minting of ducats was


⁶² July : ASV, SN, R. , f. .⁶³ Oct. : ASV, Cinque Savi alla Mercanzia, R. bis (Cap. degli Estraordinarii), f. llv. Thecapitulary gives the minimum weight as “grossos denarios grossos” per mark, an apparenterror for s d grossorum. Oct. : PMV, ‒, #.⁶⁴ Oct. : ASV, MC Fronsesis, f. v. Nov. : PMV, ‒, #. See below, Chap. , forthe officials of clipped grossi.⁶⁵Loans to doge—: LCR, :, #. For galleys— June : PMV, ‒, #; June: PMV, , #. For the patriarch of Aquileia— Oct. : ASV, MC Fronesis, f. . For

Fig. . A Serbian coin modeled on the Venetian grosso, c. .Source: ANS ..


probably connected to the price of gold, which in these years reached its high-est value in relation to silver.⁶⁶

The era witnessed an unusually high level of irregularities in coinage bothoutside the mint and within it. In , the duke of Crete banned the importthere of counterfeits of Venetian grossi manufactured in Chios and ordered theirconfiscation.⁶⁷ A series of accusations were brought against some Venetians in and for operating a mint in Romagna which counterfeited Venetian pic-coli as well as a variety of other regional coinages.⁶⁸ It was no doubt in responseto this case and others like it that the Forty adopted a series of laws in whichforbade Venetian citizens and residents from operating any foreign mint as con-tractors and from making or owning any implements of minting other than thoseof the zecca.⁶⁹

Widespread corruption within the mint was exposed in a series of prose-cutions between and . Two involved casters who were accused of tak-ing marks (. kg) and marks (. kg) of silver, respectively.⁷⁰ One work-man who took marks of silver was only deprived of office and required tomake restitution, but another who substituted copper filings for silver had hisright hand amputated and was banished.⁷¹The blacksmith of the mint was con-victed of various thefts and was hanged and his body left hanging in front ofthe mint around the clock as an example to future malefactors; his accuser wasgranted the right to bear arms out of fear of reprisals from his family.⁷² Twomintmasters were implicated in these activities and removed from office.⁷³ Oneof them, Donato Bobizo, had had a history of illegal actions before going towork at the mint: he had been excommunicated for prohibited commerce with


Justinopolis (Capo d’Istria): May : ASV, MC Fronesis, f. , and succeeding years through, ASV, AC Brutus and AC Philipicus passim through f. v. For Slavonia— Aug. :PMV, , #. For grain— Nov. : PMV, , #; Oct. : ASV, AC Brutus, f. v. Forarmaments— Apr. : ASV, AC Brutus, f. v. See Reinhold C. Mueller, The Procuratori di SanMarco and the Venetian Credit Market (New York, ), n. , for the legal basis of this transfer.⁶⁶Spufford, Money and Its Use, ‒. There are insufficient published hoards of ducats from thisperiod to allow any comparison of their production on the basis of finds; see below, Chap. .⁶⁷ Sept. : Paola Ratti Vidulich, ed., Duca di Candia: Bandi (‒), FSV, st sec. (Venice,), , #.⁶⁸ May : ASV, AC Raspe, R. /, f. v. Jan. []: ASV, AC Raspe, R. /, f. . Feb. []: ASV, AC Raspe, R. /. f. v.⁶⁹: CMA, ff. ‒. Dec. : NMC, , #.⁷⁰ Oct. : ASV, AC Raspe, R. /, f. . Sept. : ASV, GR, R. , f. v.⁷¹ Nov. : ASV, AC Raspe, R. /, f. . Feb []: ASV, AC Raspe, R. /, f. v.⁷² Mar. : ASV, AC Raspe, R. /, f. . Apr. : ASV, AC Brutus, f. .⁷³ Aug. : ASV, AC Brutus, f. . Feb. []: ASV, AC Brutus, f. .

Egypt in and fined in for passing counterfeit coins as a moneychanger.⁷⁴He fled Venice and was given special protection to come back and settle his debts,but not without being physically attacked and robbed by the father of one ofhis former colleagues as mintmaster in retribution for losses suffered by the son.⁷⁵By this time the mint was certainly ready for a major reform.


⁷⁴ Oct. : LCR, :‒, #. Sept. : ASV, AC Raspe, R. /, f. .⁷⁵ Aug. : ASV, AC Brutus, f. . Sept. : ASV, AC Raspe, R. /, f. v. July: ASV, GR, R. , f. v, #.

The �ge of the Soldino, ‒

:

Sometime around , major changes were instituted in the Venetian coinageand in the procedures for the acquisition of silver by the mint (fig. ).¹ Thechanges appear to have followed a new issue of coinage in Verona by Mastino IIand Alberto II della Scala, who succeeded their uncle Cangrande in .² A newstandard was decreed in for the friesacher coinage of Aquileia, Venice’s chiefmonetary competitor in the Adriatic.³ These new issues were probably debase-ments, as they were greeted in Venice by the clipping of imported coins in cir-culation there, probably to bring them into parity with the new standards.⁴Venicecould not ban the new coins, however, as it was experiencing a shortage of cir-

¹These provisions were evidently passed in the Forty or Senate, whose records are lacking forthis period. The earliest extant resolutions of the Forty are from . Outside of a fragmentfrom ‒, the Misti of the Senate begin with R. in Mar. ; for the period before thatthe volume known as Indice preserves the subject of acts indexed by subject and withoutspecific date.²The new coin is first documented in a letter of from Verona to the podesta of Trevisowhich mandates the circulation there of “monetam nostram novam de XX parvulis”: Azzoni,“Della zecca,” . It is probably the grosso aquilino with the mintmark of a ladder (scala):Perini, Monete di Verona, , #. Andrea Saccocci now sees this debasement as having beeneffected a decade earlier by Cangrande himself: “Produzione e circolazione di monete nelVeneto (‒),” in Il Veneto nel medioevo: Le signorie trecentesche (Verona, ), ‒ n. .³Bernardo Maria de Rubeis, “De nummis Patriarcharum Aquilejensium,” in Argelati, De monetisItaliae, :‒.⁴ Apr. : ASV, AC Raspe, R. /, f. v; June : ASV, AC Raspe, R. /. f. v.On Mar. , the Forty gave the Lords of the Night Watch authority to prosecute clippers ofTyrolean grossi, as they had over counterfeiters; this jurisdiction was challenged by the state advo-cates but upheld by the doge and his counselors on Dec. : ASV, AC, R.P. /, ff. v–.

culating coinage in this period within the city; in it went as far as exempt-ing Germans from the customary percent duty on foreign grossi to encouragetheir importation.⁵

In January , the Senate charged the officials of clipped grossi and thegold estimators with reporting on the amount of silver in Venice.⁶ On July ofthat year, the Great Council transferred authority over matters relating to silverand to silver coinage from the Forty to the Senate.⁷ A week later the Senateadopted provisions for silver on the advice of its advisors.⁸ The only provisionof this act which has survived is a passage forbidding the reselling of silver morethan three days after its purchase, which was renewed a year later. It is possiblethat the act contained the regulations that established the quinto, and it may alsohave set the standards for the two new coinages, the soldino and the mezzanino.

The first evidence of the quinto is from a year later.⁹This provision had the


⁵ Nov. : PMV, , #; the explanation that the exemption was to alleviate a shortage incirculating coinage comes from the legislation that repealed it: Nov. : ibid., , #.⁶ASV, Senato, Indice , f. v, to R. , f. , dated to Jan. in Roberto Cessi et al., eds., Ledeliberazioni del Consiglio dei Rogati (Senato) (Venice, ‒), :, #.⁷ July : PMV, , #; Papadopoli, :‒, #.⁸ASV, Senato, Indice , f. v as R. , f. ; dated to July by Cessi et al., Deliberazioni, :,#.⁹In , a silver merchant appealed a fine for the quinto; in defending their action, the officialsexamined all his transactions since Apr. , which must have been the first date at which hewas subject to the new regulations: Feb. []: ASV, GR, R. , f. v. In May , another

Fig. . Venetian coins of the reign of Francesco Dandolo (‒).a. Ducat. b. Grosso. c. Mezzanino, type . d. Soldino, type .

Sources: a. ANS ... b. ANS ... c. MCC, Papadopoli . d. ANS ..


effect of forcing one-fifth of the silver that passed through Venice to be re-minted at a rate that amounted to a duty of about percent on all imported sil-ver. The mint was to pay for this bullion in new coin denominations, soldini andmezzanini; only silver voluntarily sold to the mint in addition to the quintowould be made into grossi. A provision almost a century later which suspendedthe quinto introduced a fee that it said was to cover the day-to-day expenses ofthe silver mint, as the quinto had done until then.¹⁰

The soldino and mezzanino were put into production by the middle of; in July of that year one of the engravers in the mint was given a raise inrecognition of his work on the “diversis monetis.”¹¹The new issues were linkedto a single system of account, the moneta, which was used for payments that hadearlier been calculated in lire di piccoli and lire di grossi. The soldino was worth pennies, a shilling or solidus, as its name implied, while the mezzanino wasworth half a grosso or pennies. The standards of the new coins are not doc-umented, but it is possible to estimate them from indirect evidence and numis-matic analysis (see below, Chap. ). From such comparisons, it appears that thesoldino brought a debasement of about percent to the lira di piccoli, formerlybased on the penny, while the mezzanino lowered the value of the lira di grossiand lira a grossi, formerly based on the grosso, by about percent. In the proc-ess, the profit to the state of minting rose from £. (di piccoli) per mark ofsilver to about £..

The ducat and the grosso were physically unaffected by the change and wereleft to float free against the new coins; they became in essence trade coinages.There appears to have been an increase in the minting of ducats at this time; inMarch raises were sought by and granted to officials in the gold mint be-cause of the great amount of activity there.¹² Grossi also continued in produc-tion; those in the name of Bartolomeo Gradenigo (‒) are common inhoards (see below, App. B, table B., #‒). They were, however, intended forexternal use only. In , Venetian officials were required to take their pay inducats or soldini; if they received grossi, they were to sell these and transfer the

The Age of the Soldino, ‒

merchant appealed a fine for not “putting silver in the mint” by the fifth day in accordance withthe ordinance to that effect: May : ASV, GR, R. , f. . This language concerning sellingsilver to the mint for a prescribed price within five days of purchase is explicitly referred to asthe quinto in an appeal of a year later: June : ASV, GR, R. , f. v: “quia non presentavitin cecha quintum cuiusdam quantitatis argenti . . . infra terminum scilicet diei quinti.”¹⁰ Nov. : Cap. Broche, .¹¹ July : ASV, GR, R. , f. .¹² Mar. : ASV, GR, R. , f. , passed in the Forty in Feb. and in the Great Council inJune .

profit to the state.¹³ The penny continued to be minted after the introductionof the soldino, but at a lower standard; the halfpenny and quarter penny wereeliminated.¹⁴

The mutation of ‒ was revolutionary in several ways. It tied the vari-ous accounting systems developed over the previous century and a third into asingle standard represented by two related coins, leaving the grosso and the ducatto float independently of Venetian currency. It introduced denominations thatwere new not only to Venetian coinage but to European coinage in general; thesoldino was the first time that the shilling of account defined by Charlemagneas pennies was represented by an actual coin. The soldino appears to have beenmade of an alloy of about percent silver; the mezzanino, somewhat finer (seebelow, Chap. ). As such, these coins were innovative in being made from nei-ther the almost pure silver of the Venetian grosso and most other Italian high-denomination coinages nor the very base billon typical of Italian pennies.¹⁵

The new coins were innovative in imagery, as well. The mezzanino separatedthe doge and Saint Mark, who appeared together on the same side of the grossoand ducat, and put one on either side of the coin, with the doge holding thebanner alone and the saint in a pose of benediction analogous to that of Christon those coins.¹⁶ The soldino was more revolutionary. The doge was alone onthe obverse, kneeling with the banner in a pose analogous to that on the ducatand which gave the denomination its nickname of cenoglello, or “little knee.”¹⁷ On


¹³ Nov. : ASV, AC Philippicus, f. . The new coins were not intended to replace foreigncoins that circulated commonly in Venice; in Nov. German merchants were exempted fromthe percent import duty they had had to pay for bringing Veronese and Tyrolean grossi intoVenice: Nov. : PMV, , #. When this exemption was repealed in , it was noted thatit had been made because of a shortage of coinage which was now alleviated: PMV, , #.¹⁴Papadopoli, :‒. By the cut had risen from the pennies per mark prescribed in to pennies per mark, a loss of weight of almost percent: Feb. []: PMV, ,#.¹⁵The coin lists appended to Pegolotti’s Pratica, which reflects the situation in the decade prior tothe introduction of these denominations, contain no coins of sub-Alpine Italy between oz dfineness (.% silver) and ounces (%) fine: Pegolotti, Pratica, ‒; see Philip Grierson,“The Coin List of Pegolotti,” Studi in onore di Armando Sapori (Milan, ), ‒, reprinted in hisLater Medieval Numismatics (London, ).¹⁶Contemporary sources imply that the side with Christ was considered the “front” and that ofthe doge and saint secondary: Dandolo, Chronicon, : “cum ymagine Iesu Christi in throno abuno latere, et ab alio cum figura sancti Marci et ducis.”¹⁷The soldini are referred to in the Treviso documents as cenoglelli, “little knees,” for the kneelingposture of the doge: see below, n. ; cf. Giuseppe Boerio, Dizionario del dialetto veneziano (;reprint, Florence, ), s.v. “zenochielo.”

the reverse there appeared a nimbed but unwinged lion standing holding a ban-ner, labeled “Saint Mark of Venice.”¹⁸

The first documentation of the circulation of the new coins comes fromRagusa (modern Dubrovnik), where in June the new Venetian mezzaninowas given currency at the value of half of a Venetian grosso.¹⁹ Within the year,the soldino was banned in the same place, with an injunction against anyone try-ing to pass a soldino as a mezzanino.²⁰ That same year concern was voiced inTreviso about the new Venetian coins.²¹ Merchants there suspected that themezzanini were overvalued and that the soldini were even worse; they also fearedthat the new denominations would give rise to new counterfeits. An assay wasordered of the new coins, as well as of the new Veronese grossi of pennies,but before this could be done, word came from the agent of the Scaliger gover-nors that the new mezzanini and soldini were circulating with no problems inVerona and Padua and should do so in Treviso, as well. The following March theVenetian Senate decreed that the new mezzanini and soldini should circulate inCrete and other Aegean colonies of Venice.²²

The reforms of had mixed results. The soldino quickly became the com-mon circulating coin of Greece, in the Venetian colonies of Crete, and also onthe Frankish mainland, where they replaced the local deniers tournois, whoseproduction had recently been curtailed.²³ The success of the soldino was con-firmed by the appearance in of a significant number of imitations, believedto come from Slavonia. These were banned from circulation, and an embassy wassent to Count Bartholomew of Slavonia to persuade him to stop this produc-tion.²⁴ By the Venetian mint was producing enough soldini that the Great


¹⁸This unwinged rampant lion is known from a drawing of the arms of the thirteenth-centurydoge Marino Morosini but is otherwise rare in medieval Venetian depictions of Saint Mark:Maria-Luisa dal Gian, Il leone di S. Marco sulle monete e sulle oselle della serenissima, La bala d’oro, (Venice, ), .¹⁹Fr. Racki, Monumenta Ragusina. Libri Reformationum. Academia scientiarum et artium slavorummeridionalium, Monumenta spectantia historiam Slavorum meridionalium, (Zagreb, ),:: “Quod illa moneta nova, que fit Veneciis et nuncupatur mezanini et habet cursum in civi-tate Veneciarum pro medio grosso, similiter habeat cursum in Ragusio et eius districtu, videlicetpro medio grosso pro quolibet et II pro uno grosso et XLVIII pro uno ducato auri.”²⁰ Dec. : Racki, Monumenta Ragusena, :.²¹‒ Nov. : Giambatista Verci, Storia della marca trivigiana e veronese, vol. , pt. (Venice, ),‒, #‒.²² Mar. : Cessi et al., Deliberazioni, :, #.²³Alan M. Stahl, “European Coinage in Greece after the Fourth Crusade,” Mediterranean HistoricalReview , no. (): ‒. See below, Chap. .²⁴ Nov. : NMC, ‒, #. Jan. []: ibid., , #. May : ASV, SM, R. , f. .

Council could reinstate the percent import duty on foreign grossi brought inby Germans, which had been rescinded in because of a dearth of circulat-ing coinage.²⁵

In the years immediately following the mutation, the activity of the silvermint increased significantly. Within three years, twenty men were granted grazieto be strikers in the silver mint, some of whom were transferred from the pic-colo mint to the section of the mint where soldini were struck.²⁶ All twenty-seven benches were filled in , and the masters claimed that marks (about kg) of soldini were being minted a day.²⁷ At about soldini to the mark,this would have been about , coins a day, worth £,, or . ducats.That same year, the mint scribe, the three mint weighers, and the two mint casterswere all given raises in recognition of their greatly increased workload.²⁸

The mezzanino vanished with barely a trace; it is not documented after ,nor does it appear in any recorded hoard.²⁹ It was gone from circulation by ,when the Great Council ordered that Venetian officials receive their salaries “inthe coins that circulate here today, that is, ducats or soldini.”³⁰The soldino con-tinued to be minted with the same appearance and apparently the same stan-dards throughout this reign and into that of Andrea Dandolo (‒).³¹ Thereason the mezzanino failed and the soldino survived is probably a reflection ofthe fears expressed in the documents from Ragusa and Treviso of that thesoldino was proportionally a worse coin than the mezzanino. Under these con-ditions, with the two coins related in extrinsic value but out of proportion inintrinsic, Gresham’s law would have operated to allow the worse coin, the sol-dino, to drive out the better, the mezzanino.³²

Despite the disappearance of the mezzanino, the moneta system endured,with the soldino taking the value of ¹²⁄³² of a grosso in the systems that had beenbased on that coin. Within the system, the terms grosso and ducat became used for


²⁵ Nov. : PMV, , #.²⁶From Feb. [] to Feb. []: ASV, GR, R. , ff. v, v, v, v, ; R. , ff. v, v,v, v, v, , , .²⁷ Aug. : ASV, GR, R. , f. v; this petition makes it explicit that it was in the grossomint where the soldini were struck. Dec. : ASV, GR, R. , f. .²⁸ Apr. : ASV, GR, R. , f. v. Apr. : ASV, GR, R. , f. v.²⁹It is not too uncommon in modern collections, however, and it is likely that these coins derivefrom a hoard or hoards discovered in modern times but not recorded before dispersal: cf. Pao-lucci, Monete dei dogi, , in which it is listed as common.³⁰ Nov. : ASV, MC Spiritus, f. v; AC Philippicus, f. : de monetis que current hodie,scilicet de ducatis vel duosinis.³¹Papadopoli, :, #, and , #.³²See Lane and Mueller, Coins and Moneys of Account, ‒, for the operation of Gresham’s law.

their traditional values in terms of the old lira di piccoli: the grosso of accountwas worth pennies, or £.⅓ in the moneta system and the ducat of accountworth £. in it. The physical ducat and grosso coins circulated at a value setby the market, expressed in terms of the agio, or premium over their value ofaccount. Thus a major debasement had been carried out in Venice’s coinage with-out disturbing the coins on which its trade depended. As the mutation took placeat the time of the transfer of some jurisdiction over the coinage to the Senate,whose principal interest was in trade and foreign relations, this “defense” of theducat and the grosso was probably an important goal of the legislation.

The most significant result of the changes, however, may well have been thegreat addition of income to the fisc from the control of imported silver and theminting of the new, debased denominations. The quinto, which lasted for therest of the century, amounted to a tax of percent on all imported silver, notjust that which had come through the mint.³³ A document of implies a mint-ing of about , marks of silver into soldini per year (see below, Chap. ).If all of this derived from the silver of the quinto, the state profit would haveamounted to about £, a year, or about forty times the maximum stateincome calculated above for the grosso in the thirteenth century. This wouldhave made a significant contribution towards covering at least the interest on thestate debt, estimated to have been about £,, at this time.³⁴ The interna-tional trade based on the ducat and grosso, and the merchants whose fortuneswere tied to it, were barely affected by the mutations. It was those who receivedtheir income in the debased currency, chiefly the working people and landown-ers of Venice, who would have paid the price of this rise in state revenues.

In this period, large quantities of gold were being mined and exported fromKremnica in Slovakia.³⁵ Between and a series of treaties were workedout between the king of Hungary, who controlled this ore, and the king of Bo-hemia which had the effect of sending much of the bullion to the Dalmatianport of Senj, under Hungarian control.³⁶The value of gold in relationship withsilver was at a historic high in this decade, reaching as much as :, so there was


³³It was reduced to a decimo in and raised back to a quinto in ; see below.³⁴Frederic C. Lane, “The Funded Debt of the Venetian Republic, ‒,” in his Venice andHistory (Baltimore, ), .³⁵Spufford, Money and Its Use, ‒.³⁶Ibid., , map .

great incentive for shipping as much of this gold as possible to bullion markets,of which Venice was certainly one of the world’s most important. In the rateat which the zecca paid out ducats for gold bullion was revised so that pure goldfrom different sources was handled differently.³⁷ The mint was to offer a returnof percent to Germans as an incentive to bring their gold to Venice ratherthan Florence (where they were getting .%) and to Venetians bringing goldfrom the Levant.³⁸ Venice, however, took advantage of all the gold delivered tothe Adriatic from Hungary by paying out only . percent for it.

The next year, the Forty passed legislation that indicates that production atthe gold mint had begun to increase.³⁹The mintmasters and weighers were autho-rized to work late when necessary and were required to sleep in the mint when-ever gold was being refined overnight. Another provision sought to ensure thatthere would be enough backup dies for the strikers of ducats to allow them tocontinue working when dies broke. Another indication of the activity at the mintwas the granting of the right to bear arms to the mint’s scribe in , because ofthe danger he incurred from working late.⁴⁰The following year, the mint weighersfiled a plea that they were overwhelmed by weighing and recording the amountof gold brought to the mint by ship and by German merchants and by weighingthe minted ducats and supervising the sale of the by-products of refining; theysought a raise from £ a year to £ and were granted £.⁴¹ Another indexof the influx of gold is the rate of the ducat against the moneta. The value of thecoin had risen as high as £. in , but by it was so close to or below theofficial rate of £. that government offices were finding it necessary to pay anagio to get moneta with their ducats rather than the usual converse operation.⁴²

In December , Venetian galleys brought back an unusually large quan-tity of gold, probably from Hungarian sources. To deal with this supply, theForty ordered the mintmaster for gold currently in his quindena rotation to takein as much of the bullion as he could process at a time, in addition to the goldbrought by Germans, for which he paid up front with ducats from his capital.⁴³


³⁷CMA, ff. ‒; PMV, ‒, #, for the section dealing with gold brought by Venetians.³⁸Mario Bernocchi, Le monete della Repubblica Fiorentina, Arte e archeologia, Studi e documenti, , ,, , (Florence, ‒), :.³⁹ Nov. : CMO, ff. v–, cc. ‒.⁴⁰ Mar. : ASV, AC Philippicus, f. .⁴¹ Dec. : ASV, GR, R. , f. .⁴²Lane and Mueller, Coins and Moneys of Account, ‒. Apr. : ASV, MC Spiritus, f. ;the officials were instructed to deposit their ducats in the Grain Office, which always neededgold, in exchange for moneta without agio.⁴³ Dec. : DQ , :, #.

His two associates were required to work beside him until the rush was over (in-stead of one staying at home to finish his own accounts), and the support staff

was enlarged, bringing the number of weighers from two to three, of strikersfrom three to five, and emenders from five to seven. The Forty must have antic-ipated that the supply of bullion would be minted within the normal quindenaof two months, as it set the length of employment for the new weigher for thisperiod.⁴⁴The quindena of the master for silver was extended because of the dis-ruption to his staff caused by the activity of the gold mint.⁴⁵

The flow of gold did not stop as quickly as envisioned. In May theSenate had to deal with the question of who received priority in having bullionminted.⁴⁶ The rule in effect then was that those who brought gold by sea wouldhave it minted on a first-come, first-serve basis. Some bullion merchants wereseeking to be first at the mint by bringing the gold overland from Istria ratherthan waiting for the galleys to unload in Venice. To circumvent this dangerousprocedure, the Senate established a system whereby all the gold that arrivedwithin a three-day period would be registered together, and lots would be castto determine who would receive his ducats first.

Finally, in June , the flood of gold became so heavy that extraordinarychanges had to be ordered for the gold mint to process it all.⁴⁷The current threemasters and two weighers for gold were to be supplemented by the election ofan additional master and two more weighers, bringing to four each the numberof these officials. They would be split into two teams of equal numbers. If therewas more than marks (about kg, making , ducats) of gold to beprocessed at a time, they would work separately on equal amounts of the bul-lion. If the amount was less than that, they would draw lots to see who wouldwork, and the other team would wait for the next supply of gold. The masterswere authorized to hire as many new workers, emenders, and strikers as they sawfit, as well as another caster and two apprentices.

In order to house this doubled workforce, the gold mint was expanded. Anadditional floor was added above those in use, built with the profits of the ducatproduction. It was to be built with sufficient windows and vents (“nape”),⁴⁸ withfour hearths (“fornelli”) for refining gold added to the existing four and twoforges (“fusine”) for casting fine gold and two for casting less pure gold. In addi-


⁴⁴ Jan. []: DQ , :, #.⁴⁵ Jan. []: DQ , :, #.⁴⁶ May : ASV, SM, R. , f. .⁴⁷ June : DQ , :‒, #‒.⁴⁸Probably from the Venetian word for nose: cf. Boerio, Dizionario, s.v. “napa.”

tion, the gold refinery at the Rialto was also expanded with additional hearthsand forges. It was noted that until this time dies had been made by two engravers,and the Forty decided that henceforth only the more skilled of these shouldwork on those for ducats. By December, the engraver Giovanni Quintavalle wasworking full-time on dies for ducats, and the silver masters were authorized tohire their own engraver.⁴⁹

It was not only gold bullion that was arriving in Venice by sea in . Spe-cial provisions were made in the fall of that year for silver brought on the return-ing galleys.⁵⁰ This bullion had to be reported to the silver officials at the Rialtoas usual, but it was exempt from the quinto, no matter whether imported by aVenetian or other. The amount must have been considerable, as two weeks laterthe master for silver sought and was granted an extension of his quindena, cit-ing the loss of services of sixteen of his workmen and one of the engravers tothe busy gold mint. Much of this silver appears to have been reexported thefollowing spring; special provisions were made in the Senate for two galleysbringing silver to Cyprus, two to Constantinople, and an unspecified number toAlexandria.⁵¹ It is not clear whether this silver was exported specifically to payfor gold bullion, but it did contribute to a flow of silver out of the city and itscolonies while the gold was flowing in.

The glut of gold lasted only a few years at most. By , the Forty reducedthe officials of the gold mint to two masters and two weighers, with appropri-ate reductions in the various staff positions, but kept the doubled mint struc-ture.⁵²The allocation of gold to the mint to serve as capital for ducats was autho-rized again in and repeated in .⁵³The ducats minted from through would have borne the names of doges Bartolomeo Gradenigo (d. Decem-ber ) and, especially, Andrea Dandolo (installed January ), the medievalissue most heavily represented in ducat hoards and most commonly imitated.⁵⁴


⁴⁹ Dec. : DQ , :, #.⁵⁰ Oct. : DQ , :, #; Nov. : DQ , :, .⁵¹ Mar. : ASV, SM, R. , f. . June : ASV, SM, R. , f. v. See Frederic C. Lane,“The Venetian Galleys to Alexandria, ,” in Wirtschaftskräfte und Wirtschaftswege: Festschrift für Her-mann Kellenbenz, ed. J. Schneider (Stuttgart, ), :‒; reprinted in his Studies in Venetian Socialand Economic History, ed. Kohl and Mueller.⁵²: CMO, ff. v–, #.⁵³ Mar. : DQ , :, #.⁵⁴See below, Chap. ; Herbert Ives and Philip Grierson, The Venetian Gold Ducat and Its Imitations,American Numismatic Society, Numismatic Notes and Monographs, (New York, ),‒; Simon Bendall and Cécile Morrisson, “Un trésor de ducats d’imitation au nom d’AndreaDandolo (‒),” Revue numismatique, th ser., (): ‒.

The heavy minting of gold in Venice (as well as in Florence) had the pre-dictable effect of lowering the value of the ducat against the silver-based mon-eta coinage.⁵⁵ In March , the Venetian merchant Pignol Zucchello was quoteda rate of £. for the ducat by his factor in Crete.⁵⁶ Six months later the factorasked to be paid in soldini rather than ducats, because there was no longer anagio on the ducat; it had fallen to its official value of £..⁵⁷ This request wasrepeated the following month, with the note that soldini were so much in demandthat no one was distinguishing between better or worse ones.⁵⁸ A year later, theagent in Crete was still asking for debts to be paid in soldini rather than ducats.⁵⁹

A similar situation can be noted in Venice, where a moneychanger asked tobe forgiven a fine for changing ducats away from his table with the argumentsthat bad soldini were no longer to be found and that moneychangers got no profiton the exchange of ducats for soldini.⁶⁰ The officials who fined him agreed thatthere was no legitimate profit to be made on such exchanges but that changerscould still pass off poor soldini on unsophisticated customers, so they still neededto conduct all their transactions publicly.

In the quinto, which had required one-fifth of the silver brought toVenice to be sold to the mint at a fixed low price, was changed to a decimo, thatis, a requirement of only one-tenth.⁶¹ Moreover, the rate paid for the quinto wasraised from £ per mark to £..⁶² Various provisions were passed to shieldGerman merchants from direct dealings with private Venetian silver merchants.⁶³These measures reflect a demand for silver coinage and a desire by the Venetianstate to stimulate the import of silver and its supply to the mint.

This situation was paralleled in Florence, where in , according to thechronicler Villani, there was a shortage of silver currency and the price of silver


⁵⁵From to Florence was minting florins at the rate of more than two hundred thousandcoins per year, a production it would never again approach through the end of the Middle Ages:Bernocchi, Monete, :‒.⁵⁶ Mar. : Raimondo Morozzo della Rocca, ed., Lettere di mercanti a Pignol Zucchello (‒

) (Venice, ), , #; the florin was quoted at only £ s to ½s.⁵⁷ Oct. : ibid., ‒, #.⁵⁸ Nov. : ibid., , #.⁵⁹ Oct. : ibid., , #.⁶⁰ Sept. : ASV, GR, R. , f. v.⁶¹The decimo is recorded first in a grazia petition filed on Dec. : ASV, GR, R. , f. v.⁶² Jan []: ASV, GR, R. , f. .⁶³ Oct. : Lane and Mueller, Coins and Moneys of Account, ‒, #.

had risen on the market.⁶⁴ There were other strains on the Florentine economy,most notably the failure of the major banks of the Bardi and Peruzzi followingthe default of Edward III in .⁶⁵ Florence reacted to the situation by debas-ing its silver currency in , effected by the replacement of their grosso of

pennies with one tariffed at pennies but with proportionally less silver; thetotal debasement was about percent.⁶⁶ By , the petty coinage of Veronahad also been debased.⁶⁷ The carrarino of Jacopo II da Carrara of Padua wasintroduced at some point in the period ‒ and went into wide circulation,bringing another mutation to the petty coinage of the Venetian region.⁶⁸ Silverwas also scarce in Ragusa from to ; the rulers of that republic dealt withthe situation by raising the mint price for bullion twice and by farming out theminting by auction.⁶⁹

Early in , the Forty of Venice selected a team of advisors to examinethe questions relating to a mutation in the coinage.⁷⁰ Two weeks later there wasdebate on whether the new coin to serve as the basis for the moneta system wasto be of pure silver, like the grosso, or of an alloy, like the present soldino.⁷¹ Bya vote of twenty-seven to seven (with three abstentions) the Forty voted to setthe moneta coinage on a pure silver base. Thus, the debasement could be pre-sented in the context of restoring the silver purity of the coinage. Though itwould undergo frequent debasements in weight during the next century and ahalf, the moneta system of Venice would remain based on a coin of fine silverfor the remainder of the Middle Ages.

The new basis of the moneta was not a soldino, as before, but a mezzaninoor half grosso, reviving the brief experiment of a decade and a half earlier (fig.). It was released sometime in ; its first documentation is a proclamationthat it would circulate at its official value of pennies throughout the Venetiancolony of Crete.⁷² The new coin looked the part of a half grosso more con-


⁶⁴Carlo M. Cipolla, Il fiorino e il quattrino (Bologna, ), ‒; trans. as The Monetary Policy ofForteenth Century Florence (Berkeley, ), .⁶⁵Cipolla, Il fiorino, ‒.⁶⁶Ibid., ‒.⁶⁷Saccocci, “Produzione e circolazione,” ‒.⁶⁸Luigi Rizzoli Jr. and Quintilio Perini, Le monete di Padova (Rovereto, Italy, ), ‒; AndreaSaccocci, “‘Monea de Pava’: Circolazione di moneta padovana nel medioevo,” Padova e il suo terri-torio , no. (), ‒.⁶⁹Paolo de Resetar, La zecca della Repubblica di Ragusa (Split, Yugoslavia, ‒), ‒.⁷⁰ Jan. []: ASV, XL, R. bis, f. . The act is in the missing section of the resolutions ofthe Forty; it is known from this transcription by Marin Sanudo in the sixteenth century.⁷¹ Feb. []: ASV, XL, R. bis (Sanudo), f. .⁷² Jan. []: ASV, ADC, Proclami, B. , f. , #.


Fig. . Venetian coins of the reign of Andrea Dandolo (‒).a. Ducat. b. Imitation ducat. c. Grosso. d. Mezzanino, type , Mint master N.

e. Soldino, type . f. Soldino, type , Mint master M. g. Tornesello.Sources: a. ANS ... b. ANS ... c. ANS ... d. ANS ...

e. MCC, Papadoppoli . f. ANS ... g. ANS ..


vincingly than its short-lived predecessor had. The obverse had two figures, thedoge and Saint Mark, as on the grosso and ducat, rather than the single figureof the doge on the mezzanino of the s. Instead of holding the military ban-ner between them, the men supported a candle; the substitution of this religioussymbol for the military standard may have been intended as a sign of piety. Onthe reverse was a full-figured Christ (as on the higher denominations), steppingboldly from his tomb, illustrating the new legend . This imagewas even more dynamic than the figures of the ducat; it represented an activescene with a background in perspective rather than figures floating in space.

Another innovation in the mezzanino was the placing of the initial of theChristian name of the mintmaster in whose quindena each coin was produced.The grosso had a system of secret marks that appear to have referred to the mas-ter, but all such marks were lacking from the soldino and the earlier mezzanino.⁷³This may have been connected with the return to pure silver for the denomi-nation; the lower alloy of the earlier mezzanino and soldino may have not beendeemed worthy of such guarantees. It may also have been an indication of theintention to have the mezzanino totally replace the grosso. Although grossi inthe name of Andrea Dandolo are not particularly rare in hoards or collections,there are none known in the name of his successor, Marino Falier (‒), andonly two specimens in collections known in the name of the following doge,Giovanni Gradenigo (‒).⁷⁴ Grossi are lacking in the names of the suc-ceeding three doges. It seems that the grosso could still be struck for those bring-ing in silver at market price to the mint up to , but that few actually were.

Despite its improvements in alloy and advances in artistic style, the mez-zanino did, in fact, represent a debasement in the Venetian coinage, a . per-cent reduction in the amount of silver represented by the pound of moneta fromthat based on the soldino of ‒ (see below, Chap. ). The most likely motivefor the debasement was the desire to attract scarce silver to Venice. The lower-ing of the quinto to a decimo and the raising of the price paid for this servilesilver, both of which happened before the debasement, seem to have been clearefforts to attract German silver imports. These steps, however, would have cutinto state profits from the silver mint. Though the gold mint was producing anextraordinary volume, its finances were accounted separately, and the profit on


⁷³There are only three marks known on the grossi of Francesco Dandolo (‒) and threefor Bartolomeo Gradenigo (‒); it is not certain whether more than three masters madegrossi during these reigns; see Papadopoli, : and , and below, App. A, table A..⁷⁴See below, App. B, table B., #‒; CNI, :, #‒, and , #.

the ducat was considerably less than that on the soldino, at least in terms of valueof metal processed. At this time, Venice’s fiscal expenses were at a high point.The pressure can be seen in the amount required for Venice’s forced loans, a chiefsource of state income, which in this period was raised to unprecedented heightsto cover the costs of putting down a rebellion in Zara in , as well as subse-quent actions against Genoa.⁷⁵ A decrease in the amount of silver put into thepound of moneta would have kept the profit from the silver mint intact whilemaking it more attractive for suppliers of bullion.

Any hopes to have the mezzanino replace the grosso in long-distance tradedo not appear to have succeeded. Reported finds of it are mainly from north-ern Italy and the Dalmatian coast; it is lacking from finds of Greece, as well asfrom the eastern Mediterranean. Nevertheless, it appears to have succeeded quitewell for its brief minting period of only seven years. By there was an illicitmint in Emilia turning out counterfeit mezzanini, a sure sign of their accep-tance.⁷⁶ Though mezzanini were no longer minted after , they were referredto in a tariff of pennies sent to Crete fifteen years later.⁷⁷They were still in activecirculation in Venice in , when they were stolen from a purse in the porticoof Santa Sofia Church, and were among the hoarded coins stolen from the bed-room of a wine merchant in the parish of San Bartolomeo in .⁷⁸ Mezzaniniin the name of Andrea Dandolo are common on the modern collector market,in contrast with grossi in his name, which are scarce.⁷⁹

The minting of the mezzanino was accompanied by some of the worst nat-ural disasters Italy suffered in the Middle Ages. The island republic of Venicewas, of course, dependent upon imported grain for its population. The Easternsources of grain suffered a setback with an embargo on exports from the BlackSea instituted by the Tatar khan in .⁸⁰ This was compounded by disastrous


⁷⁵Gino Luzzatto, Storia economica di Venezia dall’XI al XVI secolo (Venice, ), ; Cessi, Storia dellaRepubblica, ‒.⁷⁶ June : DQ , :‒, #, ; ASV, AC Raspe, R. /, fasc. , f. v.⁷⁷ Sept. : ASV, ADC, Proclami, R. bis, f. ‒v, #.⁷⁸ Oct. : ASV, SN, Processi, R. , ff. ‒; Feb. []: ASV, SN, Processi, R. , f. v.⁷⁹Paolucci, Monete dei dogi, .⁸⁰Elizabeth A. Zachariadou, Trade and Crusade: Venetian Crete and the Emirates of Menteshe and Aydin(‒), Istituto Ellenico di Studi Bizantini e Postbizantini di Venezia, Biblioteca, (Venice, ), ‒.

crop failures in Italy. Torrential rains from the fall of through the spring of resulted in a failed crop that summer, bringing famine to Florence.⁸¹ ByMay , Zucchello’s factor in Crete would report to him that famine extendedthroughout the West but that relief might come from the reopening of tradewith Tana, an entrepôt on the Black Sea.⁸² Extraordinary provisions were madewithin Venice that summer to deal with shortages of grain and wine.⁸³

The ships that came from the East the following spring may have broughtneeded grain, but they also brought the Black Death. The plague of devas-tated Venice as much as any other place in Europe and affected every aspect ofits life, including the operation of the mint.⁸⁴ The immediate mortality (prob-ably between a third and a half of the population succumbed in the summer of) caused enormous dislocations in the mint’s staffing at all levels and dis-rupted the normal provisions for oversight and precautions against malfeasance.The long-term effects may have been even more significant. A shortage of pop-ulation strengthened the position of independent artisans, which in turn put theskilled and unskilled mint staff in a position to command improved conditions.Changes are also visible among the nobles elected to the offices of mintmasterand weigher, as members of prestigious old families appeared more frequentlyin bureaucratic posts throughout the Venetian state.⁸⁵ On an even larger scale,the plague may have affected the zecca by changes in population and economicsthroughout Europe which favored the type of luxury goods Venice traded in andcontributed to a movement of bullion from the north through Venice on its wayeast.⁸⁶ The immediate effects of the plague on the mint and coinage were dra-matic enough in themselves, however, to engage our attention here.

The disruption in staffing is most clearly illustrated in the case of the mas-


⁸¹Cipolla, Il fiorino, .⁸² May : Morozzo della Rocca, Lettere, , #.⁸³ Aug. : ASV, SM, R. , ff. v–. Oct. : ASV, SM, R. , f. .⁸⁴For Venice and the plague, see Mario Brunetti, “Venezia durante la peste del ,” Ateneo veneto, nos. , (): ‒, and , nos. , (): ‒, and Reinhold Mueller, “Aspettisociali ed economici della peste a Venezia nel medioevo,” in Venezia e la peste, ‒ (Venice,), ‒. For the effects on the mint, see Alan M. Stahl, “The Black Death and the Mint ofVenice,” Festsckrift till Lars O. Lagerqvist, Numismatiska Meddelanden (): ‒.⁸⁵See below, Chap. , and Alan M. Stahl, “Office-holding and the Mint in Early RenaissanceVenice,” Renaissance Studies , no. (): ‒.⁸⁶The arguments for this position are summarized in Harry A. Miskimin, The Economy of EarlyRenaissance Europe ‒ (Cambridge, ), ‒ and ‒. For the question of the levelof Venetian trade in the decades following the plague, see Alan M. Stahl, “Venetian Commercein the Later Middle Ages: Feast or Famine?” in Medieval Cultures in Contact, ed. Richard Gyug(New York, ).

ters for silver, whose initials on mezzanini supplement the information derivedfrom written sources.⁸⁷When the plague hit in the spring of , Angelo di Pri-uli was probably still in the office with more than twenty years of tenure; MarcoNavager had fifteen years tenure, and Filippo Venier was the newcomer withonly five years in the office. Di Priuli and Navager were both gone by the mid-dle of July. In the fall of the mint scribe died, and Venier took advantageof the inexperience of his replacement to have him backdate a record of pay-ment of mezzanini to a moneychanger who had brought silver to the mint when,in fact, the coins had never been paid out; he was fined and disqualified fromholding office.

Eight other men are documented to have held the office of mintmaster forsilver within the two years following the arrival of the Black Death. Some diedsoon after election, and others quickly moved on to other offices. An additionaltwo undocumented individuals are known from their initials on mezzanini ashaving served as master by , when the denomination was stopped. This posi-tion, which involved direct supervision over all aspects of the minting and offeredsignificant opportunities for malfeasance, was just one of many that the coun-cils were desperate to fill with any eligible individual. The loss of populationdirectly to the plague was compounded by the flight from Venice of potentialofficeholders; scribes were ordered back to the city in July , but there was noway to so command nobles.⁸⁸ Similar shuffling of officials can be seen in theposts of mintmaster for gold (eight individuals in the two positions between and ), mint weigher for silver (six men known for three positions), andmint weigher for gold (five men in two positions). The disruptions and irregu-larities can only be guessed at, since the normal oversight bodies and systems ofchecks and balances were themselves in chaos.

At least as much damage may have been done to the mint by the loss of thedie engravers.⁸⁹ At the time of the gold flood of , there had been concern inthe Forty that only one of the two engravers then working was skilled enoughto produce the dies for ducats. A new engraver had been hired in ; thoughhe was a goldsmith and claimed to have been already trained at the mint, he hadbeen taken on only as an apprentice with no salary for his first year of work.Both engravers were dead by September , when the Forty authorized the hir-ing of a new master and subordinate engraver at whatever salary was necessary.


⁸⁷See below, App. A, table A., for documentation, and Papadopoli, :, as well as CNI, :‒, for the marks.⁸⁸ July : ASV, SM, R. , f. v.⁸⁹See below, Chap. , for details and documentation.

The desperate need for skilled artisans is evident in a decree of the Senate inJuly of that year in which masters and apprentices from anywhere were invitedto come to Venice and exercise their craft without even having to pay the nor-mal entrance fees for the guilds.⁹⁰ The new men hired to cut dies at the mintwere not able to keep up with the work; a third engraver was hired in , andby the engravers were receiving ducats a year each, higher than any ear-lier ones are documented to have received even after decades of service. Thanksto the use of punches for images as well as letters, there was no apparent declinein the quality of dies, at least in the case of the mezzanino, the only denomina-tion for which individual specimens can be dated to the plague years.

The importance of the proper functioning of the mint overrode even theterrors of the plague. In August , in the only significant legislation in a three-month period, thirty-six members of the Forty met to ensure that the mint pro-cedures would not get too corrupted.⁹¹ They sought to keep the mintmastersfrom profiting from the ignorance of the scribes by instructing them to makeexplicit which grossi in their accounts were accounting terms for moneta andwhich were actual coins. The books of the master of the quindena were to beexamined by one associate and one weigher to avoid any “scandal or suspicion”;the production of halfpennies would henceforth have to be fully accounted.Since the presence of the master of the quindena was problematic on any givenday, his colleagues were given keys to the office in which those bringing silverwere received, though not to the vault in which such bullion was stored.

The emergency was barely passed in October when the three membersof the Forty who supervised the mint reported the need for a major reform ofboth the gold and the silver mints and recommended the election of a commit-tee of advisors to draft legislation to that end.⁹² The systems for accountingwere tightened to prevent the masters from various subterfuges and to speed upthe return of coins to those bringing bullion.⁹³ The election of the masters wasreformed; instead of being eligible for reelection every year, each of the threemasters would have to have his accounts examined before the Forty every twoyears, and only two could be reelected. The election of the weighers was set upalong the same lines, and, for the first time, former weighers could be elected asmasters. At the gold mint, the separate teams working there since were com-


⁹⁰ July : ASV, SM, R. , f. .⁹¹ Aug. : DQ , :‒, #‒.⁹² Oct. : DQ , :‒, #.⁹³ Oct. : DQ , :‒, #‒.

bined back into one mint.⁹⁴The annual election and possible reelection of bothmasters was retained here, but as in the silver mint, weighers were for the firsttime made eligible for election as masters.

The reason for the overriding concern of the Forty in getting the mint backinto efficient operation is evident from a provision of April , introduced bythe doge and his council.⁹⁵ It cited the plea from the three masters for silver thatthey were overwhelmed by bullion, both free silver for making grossi and dec-imo silver for mezzanini. As it had in the case of the gold glut barely seven yearsearlier, the Forty established a procedure for multiple teams working concur-rently to deal with the bullion, though not a complete duplication of the mintstaff as had been done for gold. It is not certain whether this silver bullion wasindeed a greater amount than the mint had earlier handled or a backlog as theresult of the inexperience of all the new staff at the mint.

By the end of , the chief problem facing Venice was a shortage of foodand the high prices charged for goods and services.⁹⁶The Forty had to deal withthe demands of officials and employees concerned with minting for raises intheir salaries. Sometimes these pleas were couched in the traditional terms oftoo much work and too many family responsibilities, but in general they reflectthe high cost of living and the greater leverage that working men at all levels hadin the matter of wages.⁹⁷ In the weighers at the silver mint received a raisefrom £ a year to £.⁹⁸ The silver officials at the Rialto also received a raisein salary at this time, as did their scribe.⁹⁹

Relief was given to the mint’s workers and moneyers in with the elim-ination of the custom that each of them who was employed had to give a ban-quet for all the officials and moneyers, at a cost of more than £.¹⁰⁰ At the sametime, the Forty authorized the hiring of a third caster and third die engraver,bringing these offices up to pre-plague levels to deal with what was character-ized as “the great abundance of silver currently struck.”¹⁰¹ Additional pressure


⁹⁴ Oct. : DQ , :, #.⁹⁵ Apr. : DQ , :‒, #.⁹⁶ Nov. : PMV, , #.⁹⁷The plague had left the Florentine mint so short of artisans that it offered inducements tominters to immigrate there from Naples: A. B. Falsini, “Firenze dopo il : Le conseguenzedella peste nera,” Archivio storico italiano (): ; I thank Reinhold Mueller for this reference.⁹⁸ July : ASV, GR, R. , f. ; Dec. : ASV, GR, R. , f. .⁹⁹ Apr. : ASV, GR, R. , f. v; Apr. : ASV, GR, R. , f. v.¹⁰⁰ May : DQ , :‒, #‒.¹⁰¹Silver was also abundant in Tuscany at this time: Cipolla, Il fiorino, ‒.

for state funds came from the preparations for a new phase of the ongoing war-fare with Genoa. In the advisors charged with raising revenue for this warconvinced the Senate to raise the amount of imported silver which needed to besold to the mint at a low price from the decimo, or tenth, where it had been since, back to the quinto, or fifth.¹⁰² In another provision, a duty of grossi permark was put on all gold processed by the mint.¹⁰³

In March the emenders and strikers of the silver mint sought raises intheir rate of pay on the grounds that living expenses had doubled and they couldno longer feed their families.¹⁰⁴They were supported in their request for per-cent raises by the mint advisors, but there is no indication that their request wasgranted.¹⁰⁵ Not long after, a series of pleas were registered by mint emendersand strikers who claimed that they had had to leave Venice and work at othermints (specifically in Ravenna in one case) and were seeking exemption from thestatutory fine and permission to return to work at the mint; in at least somecases this was granted.¹⁰⁶ The workers who cut the blanks in the silver mintsought and received a raise of percent in .¹⁰⁷

:

Pressure was clearly on the Venetian state to increase revenues from the mint,both to pay the workers there and to cover increased expenditures throughoutthe state, which included pay raises for other employees and military prepara-tions.¹⁰⁸ In March the Forty appointed a new committee for a general reviewof coins and procedures for both the gold and silver mints.¹⁰⁹ After consider-


¹⁰² Aug. : La regolazione delle entrate e delle spese, DF, st ser., vol. , pt. (Padua, ), ‒,#. In Florence the mint duty on silver rose at the beginning of : Cipolla, Il fiorino, .¹⁰³ Sept. : Regolazione, :‒, .¹⁰⁴ Mar. : ASV, GR, R. , f. .¹⁰⁵Unlike for other petitions of the period, which have the resolution recorded in the margin,the margin of this plea is blank.¹⁰⁶ Dec. : ASV, GR, R. , f. v (granted by the Forty Jan. []; Mar. : ASV,R. , f. v; May : ASV, GR, R. , f. v; Dec. : ASV, GR, R. , f. v; Mar. :ASV, R. , f. v [granted by the Forty and Great Council Mar. ].¹⁰⁷ Mar. : ASV, GR, R. , f. v [granted by the Forty May ].¹⁰⁸In Feb. , for example, the workers at the arsenal, the largest Venetian state enterprise, weregranted a raise in wages: Ennio Concina, L’arsenale della Repubblica di Venezia (Milan, ), . Ingeneral, the state was actively seeking new sources of revenue: Giovanni Pillinini, “Marino Faliere la crisi economica e politica della metà del ’ a Venezia,” AV, th ser., (): ‒.¹⁰⁹ Mar. : DQ , :, #; PMV, ‒, #.

ing three different proposals, the council decided to introduce a new soldinothat represented a debasement of . percent in the lira, accompanied by a raisein the price the mint paid for silver.¹¹⁰ Unlike its predecessor, the new soldinowas of fine silver. In appearance, it represented a return to the coin that had con-stituted the basis of the Venetian currency from to with the doge kneel-ing with the banner on the obverse and the unwinged, nimbed lion on the reverse.The only difference in imagery was the addition of the master’s initials, to theleft of the standard on the reverse, as prescribed by the enabling legislation. Themost obvious difference was in size and weight; the new soldini of pure silverweighed only about . grams each, compared with the .‒. of the origi-nal pieces of about ⅝ fineness. Though it represented a debasement of about .percent to the lira of moneta based on the mezzanino introduced less than adecade earlier, the soldino of could be presented as a true return to the good,old coinage by being of pure silver and of a type that most people had grownup with.

With the minting of the soldino, the production of the mezzanino ended;there is no mention of it in any documents relating to minting after this date,nor are any known in the name of any doge succeeding Andrea Dandolo, whodied in . The quindena that had been scheduled for the production of mez-zanini was now designated for soldini, and its time was doubled to allow forchanges and reminting.¹¹¹ A month after deciding on this debasement, the Fortyvoted substantial raises for the three largest groups of mint employees.¹¹²Thesehigher salaries, plus the higher price for silver, would have more than consumedthe extra income generated by the debasement of the moneta.

The Venetian state then turned to a new source of mint revenue with theintroduction of the tornesello, authorized four months after the new soldino.¹¹³In the preamble to the legislation, the new coin, the tornesello, was described asbeing initiated “for the good of the Republic and for our places of Coron,Modon, Negroponte and Crete,” the Venetian colonies in the Aegean.¹¹⁴ Of analloy of one part silver to eight parts copper and a weight of to the mark,the tornesello was tariffed at pennies, or one-quarter of a soldino. It had, how-ever, barely percent of the silver of the soldino and so represented a standard


¹¹⁰ Mar. : DQ , :‒, #‒. See below, Chap. .¹¹¹ July : DQ , :, #.¹¹² Apr. : DQ , :, #‒.¹¹³ July : DQ , :, # and #.¹¹⁴See Stahl, Tornesello, , #, for the text of the resolution and passim for elaboration and doc-umentation on the discussion that follows.

percent lower than that recently established for Venice.¹¹⁵ Its introductionrepresents a separation of the coinage of the Venetian colonies in Greece fromthat of Venice itself and its trade. It was designed to replace the Frankish denierstournois that had circulated throughout Greece since the Fourth Crusade a cen-tury and a half earlier.¹¹⁶ Venice had contemplated minting its own tournois asearly as , and there is evidence that counterfeit tournois were minted therein .¹¹⁷ Though the tournois had never officially circulated in the Venetiancolonies of Greece (where the grosso and then the soldino were the recognizedcoinages), it was certainly well known there; it appears in a Cretan document of.¹¹⁸

The Venetian tornesello copied the obverse cross from the Greek tournoiscoinages, with the name of the doge in an outer circle. Though called a turonis,the new Venetian coin was lacking the image that gave its name to the denomi-nation, the tower, which had served as the reverse type for all Frankish Greekissues as well as those of France. Instead, there appeared on the reverse the sym-bol of Saint Mark in moleca, that is, “like a soft-shelled crab.”This frontal viewof the winged lion holding an open book and rising from the waves had neverbefore appeared on a Venetian coin, though it was a feature of the seals of someofficials of the period.¹¹⁹The image was clearly a success, as it was to replace therampant unwinged lion on the soldino following the next debasement. The leg-end of the reverse of the tornesello, , “Standard-bearerof Venice,” was also new to the Venetian coinage and singular in identifying bothSaint Mark and Venice only indirectly.

The key to effecting such a major debasement in the colonial currency andonly a minor one at home was getting the tornesello to circulate in Greece andkeeping it from acceptance within Venice. The circulation in Greece was envi-sioned in the original authorization, which decreed that torneselli be sent to thegovernors of all the colonies for payment of their expenses and that they beinstructed to promote the circulation of the coin there. Resistance to the tor-nesello on the part of merchants in Crete is documented as late as , but bythen the denomination had begun its spread onto mainland Frankish Greece and


¹¹⁵Its silver content may have even been lower, as it appears that the coin was actually mintedbelow the prescribed standards: Stahl, Tornesello, ‒.¹¹⁶See Stahl, “European Coinage in Greece,” ‒.¹¹⁷Stahl, Tornesello, and n. .¹¹⁸Ibid., n. .¹¹⁹Maurizio Rosada, “‘Sigillum Sancti Marci’: Bolle e sigilli di Venezia,” in Il sigillo nella storia enella cultura, ed. Stefania Ricci (exhibition catalogue, Museo Civico Correr, Venice) (Rome, ),‒.

was being minted at ever greater numbers within Venice.¹²⁰ The power of thefiscal purse of Venice in the islands combined with Gresham’s law to allow thetornesello to drive out virtually all other coinage from Greece from its incep-tion to the Turkish conquests of the next century. The circulation of the torne-sello in Venice never seems to have been a serious threat. For the overvalued tor-nesello to drive out the new soldino, there would have had to have been peoplewilling to accept it at its face value of one-quarter soldino, and with the stateneither imposing it nor accepting it in payments and with moneychangers awareof its low intrinsic value, such a working of Gresham’s law was avoided.

()

The main change in minting in Venice in the decades following the debase-ment of the soldino and the inception of the tornesello in was a markeddecline in the amount of bullion that passed through the city and through themint. This can be seen as part of a general European phenomenon known as thebullion famine of the later Middle Ages.¹²¹

The first evidence of diminished supplies of bullion can be seen at the goldmint. In the Forty decided to reduce expenses for the Genoese war by elim-inating the doubling of the mint which had been occasioned by the flood ofgold a decade earlier.¹²² The number of weighers was reduced from two to one,and the system of accounting to the commune tightened up. The , ducatsthat had been advanced to the mint as capital from the state treasury was re-scinded; from now on if a German had gold to be coined into ducats, the mas-ter was to bring the German to the Minor Counsel and have the coins paid outto him there on an ad hoc basis.

A problem in the supply of silver can be inferred from a set of resolutionsin the Forty in which sought to tighten up the control over the bullion mar-ket and, for the first time in many years, expressed concern over the circulationof foreign and counterfeit coins.¹²³ In , the purchase of silver was limited toindividuals, with a specific prohibition of any purchase by a company (societas)or of unrefined silver being bought by an agent for another individual.¹²⁴ Fur-


¹²⁰ Dec. and Dec. : Stahl, Tornesello, , #‒.¹²¹The literature on this issue is large and to some extent controversial. The best summary ofthe thesis is in John Day, The Medieval Market Economy (Oxford, ), esp. ‒.¹²² Mar. : CMO, f. ‒v, #‒; # publ. in PMV, , #.¹²³ Feb. []: DQ , :‒, #‒.¹²⁴ Dec. : PMV, ‒, #.

ther restrictions were imposed to ensure that German and Ragusan importersof silver reported it to the silver officials and sold it at public auction rather thanclandestinely to Venetian merchants.¹²⁵ Procedures for large pieces of silver wereextended to summi, small ingots less than saggi (. marks, or grams).¹²⁶The silver officials were instructed to supply the mintmasters on a monthly basiswith an accounting of all the silver they had examined, including free silver, thatof the quinto, and even silver foil for industrial purposes.¹²⁷

In major legislation to encourage the import of silver to Venice and todirect it to the mint was enacted by the Forty.¹²⁸ All imported silver was hence-forth to be “chambered” (L: cameratum; V: chamerado), that is, deposited with thesilver officials, where it would be stamped with the dies of the grosso, before itcould be sold at auction (free silver) or sent to the mint for the quinto (servilesilver).¹²⁹ To please Emperor Charles IV of Luxembourg, king of Bohemia, aswell as the merchants of Nuremberg, the Senate decided in that all “Ger-mans”would be exempt from the percent import duty on gold ducats and florins(including those of Germany and Hungary) and on silver coins, specifically grossiof Venice, Verona, and the Tyrol; these coins would be treated as bullion.¹³⁰

Another problem that Venice was experiencing with foreign silver coinageseems to have derived from an active counterfeiting operation in Romagna, whichused the services of a number of Venetian mint workers and had a distributionnetwork in Venice.¹³¹ A new team of advisors was elected to deal with the prob-


¹²⁵ Apr. : G. M. Thomas, ed., Capitolare dei visdomini del Fontego dei Todeschi in Venezia (Berlin,), ‒, #.¹²⁶ June : ASV, CMA, ff. v–.¹²⁷ July : ASV, CN, R. , f. , #.¹²⁸The text of the legislation is not extant. Not only are the acts of the Forty lacking for thisperiod, but the legislation was not copied into any of the extant capitularies that are useful inreconstructing its other acts. The legislation was, however, invoked in and was still in effectin , when it was cited as not being adequately enforced: May : PMV, , #; Nov.: Cap. Broche, , where it is dated Sept. .¹²⁹In another lost act of the following year, the Forty insisted that all silver extracted from theby-products of minting be subject to the quinto: Oct. : PMV, , #, cited as Sept..¹³⁰ Oct. : PMV, ‒, #.¹³¹Several of the emenders and strikers who worked there (allegedly against their will in somecases) were given grazie to return to work at the mint: Dec. : ASV, GR, R. , f. v; Dec.: ASV, GR, R. , f. v; Aug. : GR, R. , f. v; May : ASV, GR, R. , f. ; June : ASV, GR, R. , f. . The distributors Nicolò Mocenigo and Victor Stornadowere tried before the Forty and let off with the relatively light fine of £ each: Jan. []:ASV, AC Raspe, R. /, fasc. , f. .

lem and set the standards for the circulating foreign coins in Venice.¹³²Venetianswere forbidden to make false foreign coins within Venetian territory or elsewhereand to import them and pass them in Venice. The fear of counterfeiting becameso pervasive that a new paragraph was added to the ducal promise to extend cap-ital punishment to foreign counterfeitors as well as Venetian.¹³³

There was also a rash of clipping of silver coins within Venice, probablyoriginally to bring the old circulating pieces down to the standard of the newlight soldini but eventually practiced on the new coins themselves. In thenobleman Francesco Contarini was tortured by the night watch for clippingTyrolean grossi of pennies but was acquitted by the Forty.¹³⁴ It was then dis-covered that the laws against clipping applied only to foreign coins, and the Fortyrectified this in by extending the law to clippers of ducats, grossi, mezzanini,and soldini with a punishment of loss of the right hand for a man and the nosefor a woman, followed by permanent banishment.¹³⁵ To stop the circulation ofsuch clipped coins, the gold estimators and silver officials were instructed in

to check the tables of moneychangers and were given two new assistants to carryout the work.¹³⁶ The wave of clipping continued into , when four men werepublicly mutilated and blinded for clipping new soldini.¹³⁷

As no grossi are known in the name of Doge Giovanni Dolfin, the effectiveminting of the denomination must have ceased by his accession in . Citingthe great potential for commercial harm from a lack of trade coins, the Fortyelected a new panel of advisors in September to look into questions of coin-age and banking.¹³⁸ The council did not, however, get an opportunity to deal


¹³² Oct. : ASV, XL, R. bis (Sanudo), f. ‒v; Oct. : ASV, Cod. Brera (Capit.Ufficiali di Levante), ff. ‒v, partially publ. in Azzoni, “Della zecca,” ‒. The minimumsset for grossi of pennies were ounces of de bulla silver (.% of de bulla fineness) weighingat least shillings per mark (. gr); for Paduan grossi (carrarini): de bulla fineness at a weightof shillings per mark (. gr); and friesachers (coins of Friesach or other mints following thestandard such as Aquileia) ounces de bulla (% de bulla fineness) and shillings per mark(. gr).¹³³ Apr. : ASV, MC Novella, f. v.¹³⁴ Apr. : ASV, AC Raspe, R. /, fasc. , f. .¹³⁵ June : CMA, ff. v–v. Two years later, on the grounds that such punishment was notenough to discourage a sin so abominable to God and man (“tale peccatum sit abominabile deoet mundo”), the Forty raised the penalties for clipping to the loss of the right hand and botheyes for a man and life imprisonment for a woman, along with the loss of the clipped coins anda fine of £, (½ ducats): Feb. []: CMA, ff. ‒.¹³⁶ Feb. []: PMV, ‒, #.¹³⁷ Sept. : AC Raspe, R. /, f. ‒v; Nov. : AC Raspe, R. /, f. v.¹³⁸ Sept. : PMV, ‒, #; Oct. : PMV, , #.

with the recommendations of this panel, as in October the Great Council or-dered the advisors to give their report to the Senate rather than the Forty.¹³⁹When the Senate took up the issue in January , it found itself plunged intoa sea of conflicting proposals.¹⁴⁰ The Senate rejected all the plans to save thegrosso and voted to make no changes at all in the coinage, implicitly allowingthe grosso to die.

The gold ducat alone was left as Venice’s trade coin, supplemented by ingotsof stamped silver and soldini. Production of the ducat may have been reason-ably strong in this period; a general revision of the salaries of state officials in cited the “maximam quantitatem” of gold in the mint as the basis of rais-ing the salary of the mintmasters and weighers.¹⁴¹ The tornesello was the bigmoneymaker for the mint; its circulation was imposed on Crete in with threatsfor anyone refusing it, and its production went from two hearths to three in

with appropriate increases in staff.¹⁴²In this period, the number of bidders at the gold auctions at the Rialto sank

from a former high of about eighteen merchants to a single man who appearsto have cornered the market on private gold in the city.¹⁴³ Fearing that Germanmerchants would be unwilling to bring gold to such an uncompetitive market,the Senate removed various fees connected with the sale of bullion at the mint.It also instructed the gold estimators to advise merchants bringing bullion tothem for estimation that they might find better terms at the mint than at auc-tion. The desire of officials in Venice to attract silver by making its auctions morecompetitive led the silver officials to bring fabricated charges against the de Borafamily of moneychangers.¹⁴⁴ After extensive investigations, including the tor-turing of the officials, charges against the de Bora were dropped, and the officialswere removed from office and made to pay a fine, part of which went as com-pensation to the de Bora. The echoes of the affair lived on for years afterwards,limiting the ability of the state to control the silver market and encourage theimportation of silver to Venice and its sale to the mint.

In , the Senate again wrestled with the problem of attracting silver toVenice, this time impelled by the observation that its neighbors had sufficient


¹³⁹ Oct. : PMV, , #.¹⁴⁰, , Jan. : PMV, ‒, #‒.¹⁴¹ Apr. : Regolazione, :‒, #.¹⁴² Apr. : Stahl, Tornesello, , #; Nov. : DQ , :, #, and Stahl, Tornesello, , #; Dec. : DQ , :, #, and Stahl, Tornesello, , #.¹⁴³ Jan. []: PMV, ‒, #.¹⁴⁴See below, Chap. , for a recounting of the “de Bora Affair.”

supplies and workers in precious metal, such as those who worked with leaf andthreads of silver, were leaving the city to work elsewhere.¹⁴⁵ It took the advisorsappointed in November until the following May to come back with proposals,and those that were not just repetitions of old procedures were unacceptable tothe majority of senators.¹⁴⁶ Less controversial legislation passed the next year.¹⁴⁷This included moderate regulations on the role of bankers in the silver marketand provisions concerning imitations of Venetian ducats that were believed tobe manufactured in Germany (“Alemania”) of inferior gold.

The problem of the silver shortage remained. In , the Forty noted thatrising prices of silver had led speculators to export soldini from Venice for melt-ing.¹⁴⁸ A new team of advisors was selected but failed to come up with any solu-tions.¹⁴⁹ Other advisors were elected in the fall of to examine all the waysby which Venice might again become fertile (ubertosa) with silver and gold coins,and this time a second panel was also nominated to come up with competingsuggestions.¹⁵⁰ Finally, in December , the Senate had to face the reality ofthe silver market and debased the soldino from its standards.¹⁵¹The soldinowas debased by . percent, and the payment for silver from the quinto was raisedto give suppliers a higher return in money of account but less in actual silver.For the first time, this authorization prescribed the remedy, the degree of weightvariation that was allowable from coin to coin; this was set at coins per mark,or . percent. Other provisions included the reiteration of prohibitions againstclandestine sale and export of silver. In a concession to silver speculators, thesilver officials were prohibited from inquiring about the source of any silver pre-sented to them.¹⁵²


¹⁴⁵ Nov. : PMV, , #.¹⁴⁶ May : PMV, ‒, #‒, and ASV, SM, R. , ff. v–v.¹⁴⁷ Oct. : PMV, ‒, #. See Reinhold C. Mueller, “The Role of Bank Money inVenice, ‒,” Studi veneziani, n.s., (): ‒.¹⁴⁸ Oct. : DQ , :‒, #.¹⁴⁹The following April, the Forty decided to debase the piccolo from . grams to .grams, which would have permitted the mint to manufacture these coins for local circulationand make up a bit for the lack of soldini: Apr. , a decision of the Forty known only fromthe Senate’s further alteration on Feb. []: PMV, , #. This was apparently not carriedout, as no pennies are known in the name of Andrea Contarini, who had become doge the pre-vious year: Papadopoli, :; CNI, :.¹⁵⁰ Sept. : PMV, ‒, #.¹⁵¹ Dec. : PMV, ‒, #.¹⁵²An amendment was offered by the heads of the Forty and one counselor which would havesuspended the auction of silver, leaving the sale of bullion to private individuals; it appears tohave been defeated. In the MS as well as Cessi’s transcription it is separated from the four para-graphs headed as “capta.”The sixth ballot left it with twenty-two votes for, four opposed, and

The Senate specified that the new soldino be easily distinguishable from theold ones and, as was customary, left its imagery to the Signoria. The obverse ofthe soldino (called Type ) was left almost unaltered from that of the issuebegun in ; the only change was the placing of the mintmaster’s initial in frontof the kneeling doge instead of on the reverse of the coin. The reverse type wastransformed; instead of the rampant unwinged lion with banner, the new sol-dino bore the winged lion in moleca, as he appeared on the tornesello. The reverselegend remained that of the old soldino: ...

For the next five years the silver mint seems to have functioned reasonablywell, mainly owing to the increasing production of the tornesello. In thescribe for torneselli, Filipo Bon, was given a raise because he was kept so busythat he could not earn his usual income as a notary.¹⁵³ The following year thetwo mint weighers testified that although their number had shrunk from threeto two, the amount of silver they had to work rose from , marks (pre-sumably per year) to , marks and the amount for torneselli from ,

ducats’ worth to , ducats’ worth.¹⁵⁴A controversial set of proposals to control banking in included a pro-

vision that bankers not buy silver themselves or on behalf of others and that allsilver be paid for in the presence of the silver officials, but it did not seek to pro-hibit bank money as payment for silver as had been proposed in the past.¹⁵⁵ InNovember , the Senate noted a sudden rise in the value of silver, which itattributed to the speculation of certain unnamed individuals, and appointed ateam of officials to look into the matter.¹⁵⁶ As no action appears to have beentaken, either the matter was handled unofficially, or it was the result of a “blip”in supply and demand for bullion which worked itself out. It did, however, coin-cide with the onset of a series of failures of Venetian banks.¹⁵⁷


three abstentions, but it seems to have lacked a majority of those present. This is supported bythe fact that when the other provisions were renewed at the end of two years, this section(which also would have needed renewal) is lacking: Dec. : ASV, SM, R. , f. v.¹⁵³ Aug. : ASV, GR, R. , f. .¹⁵⁴ July : Cap. Broche, n. .¹⁵⁵ Sept. : PMV, ‒, #.¹⁵⁶ Nov. : PMV, , #.¹⁵⁷Reinhold C. Mueller, The Venetian Money Market: Banks, Panics, and the Public Debt, ‒, vol. of Money and Banking in Medieval and Renaissance Venice (Baltimore, ), ‒.

The �ge of Crisis and Reform, ‒

The next significant change in Venetian minting came with the FourthGenoese War, known as the War of Chioggia, which brought Venice to a stateof fiscal as well as military emergency. In April the Senate ordered that allofficials work without salary and with only half their usual income from fines.¹The next week, it tabled consideration of changes in the coinage because of theimportance of the issue.² A mutation of the coinage had evidently been sug-gested as an additional source of the extraordinary revenues required to conductthe war.

During the first week of May , three advisors on coinage made a set offifteen recommendations for changes in the monetary situation to meet the cri-sis.³ From a series of proposals for mutations, the Senate chose to lower theweight of the soldino by . percent and to raise the mint price for silver fromthe quinto by percent and that for free silver by percent. To encourage themelting of plate and jewelry, private individuals (with the exception of bankers)who brought up to marks of silver (. kg) to the mint would be paid imme-diately in new coin at the rate of free silver; for amounts over marks theywould have to follow the usual procedures and pay the quinto. People couldbring foreign silver coins to the mint and have them reminted under the sameprovisions. To force privately held stocks of bullion into the mint, those whoowned free silver were ordered to bring at least half their holdings to be coined.

¹ Apr. : Cap. Broche, ‒.² Apr. : PMV, ‒, #. It is evident that the original discussion of a mutation is lack-ing from the Senate registers, as is the order of Apr.: Cap. Broche, xiv.³‒ May : PMV, ‒, #‒.

The biggest innovation of this currency mutation was the introduction ofa new grosso after at least twenty-three years since the last issue. Not only wasthis coin to be at a new standard and with modified design, but it was no longerto represent an independent value. Instead, it was defined as soldini, in termsof both its physical weight and silver content and its value in the moneta sys-tem. As such, it would be of de bulla silver, that is, about percent fine, downfrom the . percent of the original issues.⁴ Its weight would now be to themark (. gr), from the original ½. It would have a value of Venetian pen-nies, up from its original pennies (or ) around and pennies in .In all, the grosso of represented a physical debasement of about percentof its silver content and a devaluation of about percent of its original value years earlier. Its image (left to the Signoria to determine) was little changedfrom the original; on the obverse of the Type grosso the doge is in profile ratherthan facing forward, and on the reverse a star and the initial of the mintmasterflank the seated Christ, replacing the secret system of marks around the legs.The new grosso seems to have found strong acceptance in the eastern Mediter-ranean; it appears in more hoards there than had the old one, often mixed withexamples of the earlier type (see below, App. B, table B., #‒, ‒).

A year later, just as the Genoese were being turned back from Chioggia, anew problem arose in keeping the mint supplied with silver to fund the wareffort. German merchants were bringing silver to Venice but were unable to findbuyers who had gold ducats to pay for the silver.⁵ To deal with the situation, atemporary measure was passed that any silver imported by Germans could beput into the mint at the free-silver price with no quinto required, and the quintowas raised almost to the price of free silver.⁶The prohibition against buying sil-ver with bank money was suspended for the duration of the war, and all restric-tions were lifted from the sale of silver except its purchase by bankers. Capitalof up to , ducats was sent from the treasury to the Accounts Office to reim-burse immediately any Germans who brought gold bullion to Venice and wantedducats for it.

Although Venice just pulled through the Fourth Genoese War, settled in thePeace of Turin of August with terms that seemed adverse to it, in fact this


⁴See below, Chap. , for a discussion of the fineness of “grosso-grade” silver.⁵ Apr. : PMV, ‒, #.⁶ Aug. : PMV, ‒, #.

war ended up with Venice as the victor in its long duel with Genoa.⁷ The warhad, however, cost dearly, and the Venetian state immediately turned to econ-omies to restore its depleted treasury. A reduction of salaries for state officialswas imposed for five years.⁸ With reductions of about percent, most of themint officials fared about the same as other state officers. A couple of monthslater the reductions were extended to lower levels of state employees, includingthe mint’s wardens.⁹ An import and export fee of percent was placed on allmerchandise that passed through Venice, including coins and bullion, with theexception of silver brought into Venice from the eastern Mediterranean.¹⁰ A gen-eral sales tax of percent included a tax on silver of pennies per mark sold;after objections made before the Great Council, Germans were exempted fromthis tax (fig. ).¹¹

In spring of , as trade was being reestablished, it was discovered that sil-ver and other metals were “taking a different route” to the detriment of Vene-tian merchants.¹² A team of advisors was appointed and extended, but no legis-lation was proposed to deal with the situation.¹³ In January the quinto pricefor silver was lowered from its wartime high, but to a level that was still consid-erably above what it had been before the war.¹⁴ The masters were instructed touse this extra income to buy silver and copper to make torneselli, which wouldbe turned over to the treasury for the profit of the state. The shortage of coins,especially ducats, remained a concern, and three more advisors were elected inMay to come up with solutions.¹⁵The only proposal they came up with wasfor a new system of allocating , ducats’ worth of capital to pay for im-ported gold.¹⁶ In January the price paid by the mint for silver of the quintowas lowered again, and the extra profit was allocated for expenses on the Ter-raferma (the Italian mainland) or for making more torneselli.¹⁷ The extra in-come for the state was no doubt welcome, but a lower price for silver couldhardly have encouraged Germans to bring it to Venice.

The Age of Crisis and Reform, ‒

⁷Frederic C. Lane, Venice: A Maritime Republic (Baltimore, ), ‒.⁸ Sept. : ASV, SM, R. , ff. ‒. Partly publ. in Cap. Broche, , and Bartolomeo Cecchetti,“Appunti sulle finanze antiche della Repubblica Veneta,” AV (): ‒.⁹ Nov. : ASV, SM, R. , f. .¹⁰ Feb. []: ASV, MC Novella, ff. ‒.¹¹ Mar. : PMV, , #. July : ASV, MC Novella, f. v.¹² May : ASV, SM, R. , f. .¹³ May : ASV, SM, R. , f. v.¹⁴ Jan. []: Cap. Broche, ‒; PMV, ‒, #.¹⁵ May : PMV, , #.¹⁶ July : PMV, ‒, # (as July).¹⁷ Jan. []: PMV, ‒, #, and Cap. Broche, n. .


Fig. . Venetian coins of the reign of Antonio Venier (‒).a. Ducat. b. Grosso, type , Mint master F (Filipo Barbarigo). c. Grosso, type , early.d. Grosso, type , late with portrait head of doge. e. Soldino, type , Mint master F.

f. Soldino, type , Mint master F. g. Tornesello.Sources: a. ANS .. b. ANS ... c. ANS ... d. ANS ...

e. MCC, Papadopoli . f. ANS ... g. ANS ..



In June, yet another panel of advisors was elected to deal with the problemof the lack of coins, which was “getting worse and worse every day.”¹⁸ Again,there was no solution. In February , the bankers Pietro Benedetto and GabrielSoranzo appeared before the Senate to seek exemption from a law of whichhad banned bankers from commercial companies; citing the lack of gold, theydenied charges that they were trying to control the silver market.¹⁹ The Senategave them permission to engage in trade for two years but kept the prohibitionagainst them or any other bankers buying silver. The next year the Senate clampeddown even harder on bankers by rescinding the wartime exemption that allowedindividuals to pay for silver with bank money.²⁰To encourage the production ofgrossi and benefit the “paupers” who worked at the mint, the price the mint paidfor free silver was raised slightly.²¹

In the meantime, the mint was suffering a series of scandals involving sev-eral of its officials and workers. The problem first appeared in the casting depart-ment. The first of these, in , concerned the casters Vettore Pugno and PietroCalegario, acquitted of having lost marks of silver in smelting it.²² Later thatyear, Pugno was convicted of having mixed copper scraps into the silver shav-ings he presented to the mintmaster Filipo Barbarigo.²³ The following August,Calegario was charged again, this time along with his other colleague AntonioChanaca, and was again acquitted.²⁴The next problem arose among the strikers,where Jacobello Jeremie was convicted of having stolen £. worth of torne-selli, about five hundred coins, from blanks given to him for stamping.²⁵ He wastried before the Forty and was fined, removed from office, and banned for fiveyears from Venice.

Next it was the turn of a mintmaster to be prosecuted. In June thenobleman Bianco da Mosto, who had been master for silver for at least five years,was accused of having embezzled £, from mint receipts.²⁶ He fled Venice,but about £ worth of silver coinage was found in his strongbox. He was tried

¹⁸ June : ASV, SM, R. , f. .¹⁹ Feb. []: ASV, SM, R. , f. v. See Mueller, Venetian Money Market, , for the back-ground of this privilege.²⁰ June : ASV, Sen., Del. Sec., Reg. R., f. .²¹ Aug. : Cap. Broche, . The price of shillings had been the price to which free silver hadbeen raised during the War of Chioggia; there is no documentation of it having been lowered.²²Mar. : Cap. Broche, .²³ Dec. : ASV, AC Raspe, R. /, fasc. , f. .²⁴ Aug. : ASV, XL Parti, R. , f. v.²⁵ Feb. []: ASV, XL Parti, R. , f. . Mar. : ASV, XL Parti, R. , f. . Mar. :AC Raspe, R. /. fasc. , f. .²⁶ May : ASV, XL Parti, R. , f. . June : ASV, AC Raspe, R. /, fasc. , f. v.


in absentia, assessed the total of his theft plus one-fourth fine, and banned per-petually from all Venetian offices. The following February his pledges (those whohad originally sponsored his nomination in the Great Council) paid £, ofthe amount still due for his thefts.

During the War of Chioggia, there followed a series of incidents involvingrefining and casting which one of the casters characterized as resulting from thefact that the mint “was not in good order” because the master Filipo Barbarigowas home sick during the plague.²⁷The first of these incidents actually occurredin July , before the major plague recurrence of , but Barbarigo was homeill at the time and had to be called in to settle a dispute concerning a quantityof silver which was assayed as being below required fineness. Barbarigo joinedthe weighers in placing the blame on the caster and fining him for the missingsilver. In it became clear that the problem lay not with the casters but withthe elusive mintmaster Filipo Barbarigo.²⁸ He was brought to justice as a resultof the incentives that the Senate offered special auditors charged after the warwith rooting out corruption. First indicted along with the mint scribe for spec-ulating with the mint’s capital, Barbarigo was finally charged with embezzling£, worth of profit from torneselli over seventeen years and £, fromgrossi.²⁹

The Barbarigo affair cast such a pall over the mintmaster’s office that whenJacopo Trevisan was elected master of the gold mint during Barbarigo’s trials hecouldn’t find the requisite pledges; the Great Council restored the salaries formasters of gold and silver to £ each (from the postwar levels of £).³⁰ InDecember , it was still impossible to find a master for gold, and the salarywas raised to £.³¹ Barbarigo’s successor as master for silver, Marco Baffo, wasbrought before the Senate in to answer charges of having kept more thanhalf the profits from minting for himself.³² Two motions to fine him for themissing funds failed in the Senate in August and another two the following Feb-ruary; finally, in March , with sixty-two ballots for him, twenty-eight against

²⁷ July : Cap. Broche, –. Jan. []: ASV, GR, R. , f. . : ASV, GR, R. ,f. v.²⁸See below, Chap. , and Stahl, “Office-holding and the Mint,” –, for details of the Bar-barigo affair.²⁹The next year, Filippo Bon, the scribe who had covered up Barbarigo’s manipulations, wasremoved from office and fined: July : ASV, XL Parti, R. , f. v; ASV, AC Raspe,R. /. fasc. , f. v.³⁰ Aug. : ASV, MC Leona, f. .³¹ Dec. : ASV, MC Leona, f. v.³² Mar. : ASV, AC Raspe, R. /, fasc. , f. ‒v; ASV, SM, R. , f. v.


him, and twenty-four abstentions, the charges against Baffo were dropped. In one of the masters for gold, Antonio Tiepolo, was charged with taking

ducats that belonged to the state and to the bank of Gabriel Soranzo and PietroBenedetto; he was indicted, made to pay back the sum plus half again as fine,and banned perpetually from the mint and from all other offices for four years.³³

Not all mintmasters in this period were working against the interests of thestate. Marco Sanudo introduced an innovation into the manufacture of torne-selli which greatly increased the profit on this denomination, already a greatsource of revenue to the treasury.³⁴ By casting the billon directly into sheetsrather than into ingots, which had to be hammered into sheets, Sanudo claimedto have increased state profit by £, a year. In recognition of this, the Fortyvoted him a raise from £ a year to £.³⁵

The larger problem of attracting bullion to Venice and to the mint remained.In , the Senate prohibited Venetians from buying silver within the Adriaticand exporting it east without bringing it to Venice and paying the quinto; thisprovision was probably aimed at those buying bullion in Ragusa on the way tothe Levant.³⁶ In another effort to get piccoli circulating within Venice, the Fortydecreed that about percent of the payout of the quinto was to be in piccolirather than soldini and that all foreign pennies were to be banned.³⁷ To encour-age the circulation of the piccolo, the doge changed its standards, raising its weightbut lowering its fineness above the standards set in .³⁸ Since piccoli in thename of Antonio Venier (‒) are the first actual coins of the denomina-tion known since , this effort seems finally to have paid off.³⁹

In the s, Venice experienced a period in which the trimming of silverfrom the edges of coins and the systematic hoarding of heavy coins threatenedthe stability of its circulating coinage. Although the Venetian state usually didnot intervene in the use of coinage once it had left the mint, the widespread

³³ July : ASV, AC Raspe, R. /, fasc. , f. . See below, chapter .³⁴ Jan. []: Cap. Broche, ‒. Apr. : ASV, GR, R. , f. v.³⁵The casters who carried out this innovation also apparently profited; they used their contribu-tion as the basis for a plea to be forgiven part of the ducats advanced to them in pay: Aug.: ASV, GR, R. , f. ; the disposition of this plea is not indicated.³⁶ Jan. []: ASV, SM, R. , f.v.³⁷ Apr. : Cap. Broche, .³⁸ June : Cap. Broche, .³⁹Papadopoli, :.


practice of clipping and culling could lead to a de facto lowering of the weightof the coinage and hence an unplanned debasement. It could also result in theimmediate culling of new mint issues of strong weight, leaving only the poor-est specimens in active circulation.

Even gold ducats were clipped in this period, though the circumstances seemto have been exceptional. In , the state advocates brought charges against thenobleman Leonardo Gradenigo, accused by a Jewish moneychanger in Alexan-dria of having given clipped ducats to an Arabic merchant there.⁴⁰The Vene-tian consul and the Council of Twelve seized Gradenigo’s strongbox and dis-covered an additional clipped ducats. Gradenigo fled Alexandria and was triedin absentia in Venice and sentenced to the loss of his right hand and both eyesand banishment.⁴¹

As was usually the case with clipping, the main problem was in the silvercoinage. In the Senate recognized a problem with widespread clipping ofsoldini and raised the reward that the silver officials received for confiscatingclipped coins from moneychangers.⁴² Two years later, Venetian officials were in-structed to cut clipped coins that they received and take them to the mint, wherethey would be paid at a rate above the normal rate for free silver though at lessthan a weight-for-weight basis.⁴³ In , the Great Council authorized the hir-ing of an experienced individual to go through the receipts of the state treasuryand pick out clipped silver coins as well as false ducats.⁴⁴

An even greater problem appears to have been culling, the hoarding and melt-ing of heavier coins. The responsibility for stopping this practice was placed withthe mint, which was admonished to control more tightly the variation of weightin the coins it issued. When the soldino had been debased in , the legislationhad set the remedy, or mint tolerance, at . percent above or below the theoret-ical weight.⁴⁵The mutation of gave a tighter remedy of . percent.⁴⁶ In ,a new team of mint advisors recommended the elimination of culling throughthe imposition of a tolerance of only . percent under the supervision of a newforeman (L & V: gastaldo); elected by the Signoria and reviewed annually by the

⁴⁰ Mar. : ASV, AC Raspe, R. /, fasc. , f. .⁴¹Fifteen years later, his wife persuaded the Great Council to allow the doge to issue him a par-don, but when he finally returned in , he was caught and the punishment carried out: June: ASV, MC Leona, f. ‒v.⁴² Nov. : PMV, ‒, #.⁴³ May : Cap. Broche, .⁴⁴ June : ASV, MC Leona, f. v.⁴⁵ Dec. : PMV, ‒, #.⁴⁶ May : PMV, ‒, #.


Forty, the foreman would weigh a sample of all soldini one by one, while the mas-ter continued to test them in batches.⁴⁷ Even though the emenders received a slightraise, this added precision turned out to be an impossible demand on them. Even-tually, the Senate agreed to allow individual soldini to vary up to . percent aboveor below the theoretical weight while insisting that the total variance of thecoinage as a whole be kept to only . percent. In the course of these “adjust-ments” to the weight allowance, the Senate tacitly lowered the mint weight of thesoldino by . percent below its official standard.⁴⁸

The grosso, now fixed at a value of soldini, was not involved in this tacitdebasement. Three years later, in , the Senate recognized the problems inher-ent in this discrepancy and reduced the weight of the grosso so that it wouldagain be exactly four times that of the soldino.⁴⁹ The choice of the new designwas delegated to the Full College, now including the advisors and the state pro-visioners as well as the doge, his councillors, and the heads of the Forty.⁵⁰ Theyelected to remove the initial of the mintmaster and to replace the abbreviatedname of Jesus Christ on the reverse with the phrase .⁵¹

If the debasement of was presented as a technical adjustment to allowbetter control of the weight of the soldino, and that of as an alignment ofthe grosso to the soldino, the next debasement was even less explicitly debatedand announced. In the counselors noted that while the grosso was supposedto be cut at about £. ( grosso coins) to the mark, for the past two yearsit had actually been cut at about £. ( coins) to the mark.⁵² The Senatedecreed that this should henceforth be the official rate and that soldini shouldweigh one-fourth as much. It was at about this time that the mint engravers pro-duced at least two sets of grosso dies with a radical new style, incorporating theportrait of Doge Antonio Venier in the place of the generic doge’s head on theobverse.⁵³ Although these pieces apparently did not enter general circulation, thetiny portrait of the doge remained on the denomination for the rest of the reign.⁵⁴

⁴⁷ May : Cap. Broche, ‒; ASV, SM, R. , f. ‒v.⁴⁸ July : Cap. Broche, ‒.⁴⁹ June : Cap. Broche, ; PMV, ‒, #.⁵⁰ June : Cap. Broche, ; PMV, , #.⁵¹Papadopoli, :‒, #.⁵² Oct. . Cap. Broche, .⁵³Alan M. Stahl, “A Fourteenth-Century Venetian Coin Pattern,” RIN (): ‒. A sec-ond specimen, from different dies, is in the collection of the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris:Paolucci, Monete dei dogi, ; I thank Andrea Saccocci for calling my attention to this piece.⁵⁴Alan M. Stahl, “A Fourteenth-Century Venetian Coin Portrait,” American Numismatic SocietyMuseum Notes (): ‒.


By the turn of the fifteenth century, the bullion famine in Europe, especiallynorthern Europe, had reached its extreme. By the minting of silver hadpractically ceased in most French mints, and mints were closed in Flanders andBrabant, as well.⁵⁵ Silver production in London in the years ‒ was a tinypercentage of what it had been half a century earlier.⁵⁶

Volume at the Venetian mint, in gold and especially in silver, had been inevident decline through the last decades of the fourteenth century, but therewere hopeful signs of a possible turnaround. The very dearth of bullion in thenorth created a new market for supplies flowing through Venice, if sources couldbe attracted. This was, of course, the reverse of the traditional direction of pre-cious metal, which had seen silver move from above the Alps, through Venice,and then to the eastern Mediterranean and beyond. The first attempt to exploitthis new trade was in , when the Senate, fearing that its percent duty ongold and silver would put them at a competitive disadvantage, reduced the dutyto percent for bullion coming from “outside the Gulf,” the traditional term forthe eastern Mediterranean.⁵⁷ The following year, however, a prohibition againstforeigners exporting silver and coins to Flanders was extended to bar Venetiansfrom such activity.⁵⁸ This was purportedly done in the interests of keeping asufficient supply of silver coinage in the Greek colonies and may represent anattempt to mollify Venetian merchants there in the face of the flood of overval-ued torneselli, then at its height.

Changes in the market for gold and silver coins brought about an alterationof this policy in the next decade. Possibly because of the needs of a new dynastyand a new sultan in Egypt, gold and especially the Venetian ducat became ingreat demand there.⁵⁹ In the Venetian advisors on trade observed that “sil-

⁵⁵John Day, “The Great Bullion Famine of the Fifteenth Century,” Past and Present (),reprinted in his The Medieval Market Economy (Oxford, ), ‒, ‒.⁵⁶Christopher E. Challis, “Mint Output ‒,” app. of Challis, New History, ‒.⁵⁷ Jan. []: PMV, , # (as Jan. ).⁵⁸ Mar. : H. Noiret, ed., Documents inédits pour servir à l’histoire de la domination vénitienne en Crètede à , Bibliothèque des Écoles Françaises d’Athènes et de Rome, ser. , fasc. (Paris,), ‒.⁵⁹Jere L. Bacharach, “Monetary Movements in Medieval Egypt, ‒,” in Precious Metals in theLater Medieval and Early Modern Worlds, ed. J. F. Richards (Durham, N.C., ), ‒. The argu-ment here rests on the assumption that the Venetian ducat had been debased soon before thistime, a conclusion not supported by any Venetian documentation. Rather, it seems to be basedon the misrecognition of imitation ducats from an Egyptian context: Philip Grierson, “The


ver had taken a different path” than the customary one and that Venetian ruleshad to change if the zecca was to continue to acquire any silver.⁶⁰ The greatdemand for gold ducats in the Levant was said to have closed the market therefor grossi, thus threatening to discourage any merchants from bringing their sil-ver to Venice for refining into certified ingots or minting.⁶¹ To compensate forthis, the Senate offered to mint all free silver on a weight-for-weight basis intogrossi or soldini, with the state paying the minting costs. Moreover, foreignersas well as Venetians were allowed to export silver ingots by land into Europe,with the condition that they have one-fifth of the silver minted into grossi orsoldini at a fee equal to the production costs. Foreigners could also export sil-ver ingots to the western Mediterranean under the same conditions, and Vene-tians could export any silver either east or west.⁶²

Although the ducat was still widely used and respected in the eastern Medi-terranean, it had come under attack since the mid-fourteenth century by a vari-ety of imitations of eastern Mediterranean origin, most of less than caratfineness.⁶³ In , the Forty passed an extensive series of procedures meant toensure the fineness of the ducat.⁶⁴ The main provisions were aimed at keeping

Fineness of the Venetian Ducat and Its Imitations,” in Metallurgy in Numismatics, ed. W. A. Oddy(London, ), :‒. If imitation ducats rather than Venetian ones did, indeed, constitute amajor portion of the circulation of Circassian Egypt, there would still have been an unusuallyheavy attraction of gold eastward in this period.⁶⁰ May : Cap. Broche, ‒; Papadopoli, :‒, #.⁶¹It appears that Egypt was suffering from an extreme silver famine in this period as well, so theprospect of silver actually coming west from the Levant was probably illusory: Bacharach,“Monetary movements,” ‒. Following this measure, Syrians are reported to have refusedVenetian grossi and insisted on ducats: Eliyahu Ashtor, Les métaux précieux et la balance des payementsdu proche-orient à la basse époque (Paris, ), .⁶²Another hope for improved silver supply, albeit ultimately illusory, was offered in , whena German named Heinrich of Heslinghen appeared before the Senate seeking a contract toexploit veins of silver in the region of Cividale: Apr. : ASV, SM, R. , f. . A facsimileof this act appears as Pl. in Cessi, Storia della Repubblica. The Senate gave him a license toexploit the mine and agreed to supply him with wood and water, reserving a percent royaltyon all metal discovered. There is no evidence that this undertaking yielded any success.⁶³See below, Chap. . In the same period the florin, the other standard gold coin of Europe, hadgone through a period of lower weight and had in been brought back almost to parity withthe ducat; in it would experience another drop in weight: Bernocchi, Monete, :‒.⁶⁴As the registers of the Forty are lacking for this period, the act is known only from copies incapitularies and references in later documents. It appears in vernacular in CMO, ff. v–, #‒, where it is dated July . The text appears in Latin in the capitulary of the accountofficials: ASV, Ufficiali alle Rason Nuove, R. , ff. v–, where it is dated July . The cor-rect date is probably that given in a revision by the Senate on May : ASV, SM, R. ,f. , where the act is given as passed on July .


the mintmasters from cheating, either by debasing the alloy, underpaying themerchants, or misreporting their accounts. Merchants’ gold was to be smeltedat the Rialto under the supervision of the gold leaf officials, who would thenaccompany the merchants and their ingots of bullion to the mint. A small sam-ple would be removed from the ingot and locked away until the end of the mas-ter’s quindena, when it would be assayed by the gold estimators under the super-vision of the state provisioners to ensure that the payout was appropriate for theoriginal fineness and weight of the gold.⁶⁵ The accounting system was revised,and the state provisioners were instructed to check the books each quindena andinterview the mint scribe at least every six months.

This new system did not work much better than the old one. The conflictsover the procedures and auditing of the gold mint made it difficult to attractmen to the office of mintmaster for gold. In , noting that no candidates werewilling to be elected to the office, the Great Council raised the salary of the mint-master for gold from £ a year to £ and lowered the number of pledgesrequired for each master from five to two.⁶⁶ A month later, when there werestill no candidates, the salary was raised to £, and two years later it was raisedto £ ducats a year.⁶⁷ The reluctance of men to enter the office proved wellgrounded. In one of the gold masters, Nicolò Trevisan, was fined £, fordiscrepancies in the accounts for his quindena of March and April .⁶⁸ Hecharged that the gold estimators had falsely reported the quality of bullion he hadreceived; two assays were made by the state provisioners, but these were incon-clusive, and the Signoria ordered a third by the provisioners and the account offi-

cials. The fine was apparently upheld, and Trevisan sought a grazia to pay it off ininstallments, as he could not afford such a large sum at once. Seven years later hereceived another grazia to pay off a fine of £ for a shortfall in accounts, whilehis colleague Giovanni Emo was given similar treatment on a fine of £,.⁶⁹

⁶⁵This system was subsequently found to be unworkable because the provisioners were notqualified to judge the assay and the gold estimators claimed they were too busy; the Forty thenauthorized an allocation of ducats a year to the gold estimators for this service: undatedentry in Capitulary of Ufficiali alle Rason Nuove, f. .⁶⁶ Mar. : ASV, MC Leona, f. .⁶⁷ Apr. : ASV, MC Leona, f. . Aug. : ASV, MC Leona, f. v. This salary wasspared in the widespread reductions for the Terraferma wars of but was reduced to ducats during the Dalmatian wars beginning in : June : ASV, SM, R. , f. ; Jan. []: ASV, SM, R. , f. .⁶⁸: ASV, GR, R. , f. v. June : ASV, CN, R. , f. , #.⁶⁹ Mar. : ASV, GR, R. , f. . Their predecessor Bernardo Malipiero was later beaccused of withholding about £, for his quindene of and , but after four ballots in


On November , the Venetian Senate passed the first resolution to berecorded in its Misti in vernacular rather than Latin.⁷⁰This was a general reformof the way in which silver was refined and minted in Venice and marked a returnto tight control of the silver market and mint procedures, a turning away fromthe lax procedures allowed in the second half of the fourteenth century to attractsilver to Venice. New safeguards were set in place to assure that no substandardsilver worked its way through the system. Each master refiner was to stamp allingots he made with his own touchmark, and if any were found to have morethan the allowable carats per mark of base alloy (a standard of .% fine-ness), he would be fined and eventually banned from the mint. All five mint offi-

cials (three masters and two weighers) were to inspect all ingots, and four ofthem needed to approve each piece before it was certified.

These reforms seem to have been followed by at least a modest upswing inthe activity of both mints. In summer of the blacksmith was given a raisefor making ducat dies in view of the large quantity of gold being brought to themint.⁷¹ The fleets returning from the Levant the following May brought a sup-ply of silver grossi, part of which the mint recoined into soldini to meet localdemand.⁷²

The conquest of territories on the Terraferma held the promise of revivingthe mint through the production of new petty coinages.⁷³ The huge success ofthe tornesello had taught the Venetians how much profit could come from theimposition of a highly overvalued coin on colonial subjects. In spring of

Venice joined in an alliance with Milan against the Carrara family, rulers ofPadua, Verona, and Vicenza, and eventually brought these three cities and theirregions under its governance.⁷⁴ Padua, capital of the Carrara and the city clos-

the Senate over the course of four months he was relieved of paying the fine: Apr. : ASV,SM, R. , f. v; ASV, AC Raspe, R. /, fasc. , f. v.⁷⁰ Nov. : Cap. Broche, ‒; ASV, SM, R. , ff. v–v. The act was followed on thesame day by a lengthy reform of the German fondaco, also recorded in vernacular, after whichacts appear intermittently in Latin and vernacular.⁷¹ Aug. : ASV, GR, R. , f. .⁷² May : Cap. Broche, .⁷³Reinhold C. Mueller, “L’imperialismo monetario veneziano nel Quattrocento,” Società e storia (): ‒.⁷⁴Kretschmayr, Geschichte, :‒.


est to Venice, was brought most closely under direct Venetian rule, while Veronaand Vicenza were allowed to maintain somewhat more of their identity.⁷⁵

In December , Venice banned the circulation within Padua of the oldcoinage of the Carrara and established its own coinage as the basis for circula-tion and account.⁷⁶ The coinage of Padua had gone through a series of muta-tions in the late fourteenth century, sometimes following that of Venice, some-times diverging.⁷⁷The Venetian Senate allowed Paduans a four-month period toexchange certain of their coins at about half face value, after which time allwould be demonetized. The resolution stated that according to an assay at theVenetian mint, Venice would realize an percent profit from the exchange, butthe actual profit appears to have been far higher.

For Verona and Vicenza, Venice sought to have its own coinage fit into thetraditional system of account. According to an act of February , old Vero-nese (and Milanese) coins were allowed to circulate until the following Septem-ber at their usual value, after which time only Venetian coins would be current.⁷⁸The Venetian coins would then circulate at their traditional value of three-quar-ters of the corresponding Veronese denomination.⁷⁹Three new coins were to beminted in Venice for circulation in Verona and Vicenza: a piccolo, a quattrino,and a mezzanino.⁸⁰ The piccolo would be made at the alloy of the tornesello,about percent silver, and cut at coins per mark (. gr.). The coin as mintedwas a new type, with a long-armed cross on one side and the facing bust of SaintMark on the other; it bore no resemblance to the coinage of Verona under theScaligeri or under Milan.⁸¹ Its minting was continued at least until ; exam-ples are known in the names of Doges Michele Steno (‒), Tomaso Mo-cenigo (‒), and Francesco Foscari (‒).⁸² No further mention is madeof the quattrino in documents, and none are known to have been minted.

The new mezzanino copied the imagery of the Venetian coin of that nameminted briefly a half century earlier, with the doge and Saint Mark supporting

⁷⁵Gaetano Cozzi, “Politica, società, istituzioni,” in G. Cozzi and M. Knapton, Storia della Repub-blica di Venezia: Dalla guerra di Chioggia alla riconquista della Terraferma (Turin, ), ‒.⁷⁶ Dec. : ASV, Sen. Sec., R. , ff. v–.⁷⁷Benjamin Kohl, Padua under the Carrara, ‒ (Baltimore, ), ‒, ‒; Rizzoliand Perini, Monete di Padova, ‒; Saccocci, “Produzione e circolazione,” ‒.⁷⁸ Feb. []: Papadopoli, :‒, #.⁷⁹See Peter Spufford, Handbook, .⁸⁰ Sept. : Cap. Broche, ‒ (transmitted Sept.), and ASV, Sen. Sec., R. , f. v.⁸¹Papadopoli, :‒, #; cf. Perini, Monete di Verona, ‒.⁸²Papadopoli, :, #, and , #.


a candle on the obverse and Christ rising from the tomb on the reverse.⁸³ Threemezzanini were to have the worth and intrinsic value of four Venetian soldini,so it would be worth pennies in the Venetian system (the value that the oldermezzanino had held). In the stronger Veronese system, it would be worth pennies, a soldino. Anyone bringing free silver to the Venetian mint could haveit minted into the new mezzanini with a fee of £. ( mezzanini) per mark,an added value of only . percent. The state would pay the rest of the mintingand forgo seignorage. The minting expenses of the new coin, enumerated in theauthorization, come to £. per mark, so the Venetian state was, indeed, takinga loss on the initial minting of the denomination.⁸⁴Those bringing silver for thequinto would get half of it in the new mezzanini through September andone-quarter thereafter. The new mezzanino was apparently minted only briefly;known examples bear the mark of only one of the seven masters known for sol-dini in the name of Doge Steno, and it is not known for subsequent reigns. Itis not, however, a particularly rare coin, so the initial minting must have beensubstantial.⁸⁵ Of the new coins for the Terraferma, it was the piccolo, specifi-

cally authorized to be at the fineness of the tornesello, which was continued fordecades and probably provided the more significant income for the Venetianstate.

On its eastern flank, Venice had to contend with the friesacher coinage. Orig-inally minted in Friesach in Carinthia, in the later Middle Ages the friesacherwas the product of a number of mints, most important for Venice, that of thepatriarchs of Aquileia.⁸⁶ In , the Senate recognized that despite many at-tempts to ban the circulation of friesachers, they still circulated in Venice, threat-ening to drive out the better Venetian coins.⁸⁷ Later that year, Venice regainedZara on the Dalmatian coast, having lost it fifty years earlier.⁸⁸ In the next decadeit extended its control over much of the coast, all at the expense of the Hun-garian ruler Sigismund of Luxembourg, king of Hungary from to , ofGermany from to , and emperor from to . It discovered in cir-culation in these regions coins that imitated Venetians ones but were on a stan-

⁸³Ibid., , #.⁸⁴The expenses per mark are: s d for loss of silver in smelting, s d for the workers, shillings for the emenders, s d for the strikers, pennies for the weighers, pennies for theforemen, pennies for the casters, and pennies for the masters.⁸⁵Paolucci, Monete dei dogi, ; examples are in the Salvarosa (Castelfranco Veneto) and San Gior-gio (Croatia) hoards, cf. below, App. B, table B., # and .⁸⁶See the articles in Härtel, Die friesacher münze.⁸⁷ Mar. : ASV, SM, R. , f. ‒v.⁸⁸John V. A. Fine Jr., The Late Medieval Balkans (Ann Arbor, Mich., ), ‒.


dard of about three-fourths those of Venice.⁸⁹ These comprised silver “grossi”of Spalato of Duke Hrvoje Vukcic Hrvatinic (‒), “soldini” of Hungary,and friesachers of Aquileia.⁹⁰

Noting that “throughout the world, every ruler and every state gives muchattention and forethought to monetary considerations,” the Venetian Senatedecided to make its own base friesacher that would be similar enough to thosein circulation to enter into circulation with them. This new coin would be of ⅜

fine silver and weigh . grams; at a value of pennies it would represent a percent overvaluation on the Venetian coinage.⁹¹ The legislation called for thecoin to have a figure of Saint Mark on one side and an empty shield on theother. This would correspond to the friesacher of Aquileia, which had the pun-ning eagle of the mint on one side and the arms of the family of the reigningpatriarch on the other. An initial minting of , ducats’ worth (about ,

coins) was authorized, to be sent to Zara as produced. Later that summer, theForty passed a set of wage rates for workers involved in making this coinage.⁹²Four years later the Senate noted that the enabling legislation for the issue hadbeen rescinded and that production had been suspended.⁹³ It ordered mintingresumed, at a slightly higher fineness and lower weight, which raised the intrin-sic of coins by about percent.

This issue of friesachers is noteworthy for being the first Venetian coinlacking the name of a ruler, be it the emperor (up to about ) or the doge.⁹⁴The obverse bears the legend around a standing image of thesaint in ecclesiastical garb with hands outstretched in a pose reminiscent of thatof Saint Doimus on the grossi of Spalato. The reverse bears the legend

around a shield apparently copied after that of Antonio Panciera,patriarch of Aquileia from to .⁹⁵The issue of these coins was probably

⁸⁹ May : Papadopoli, :‒, #; Antoni Teja, Aspetti della vita economica di Zara dal al, pt. (Zara, ), .⁹⁰“[M]oneta quam cudit Crevoia”: Ivan Rengjeo, Corpus der mittelalterlichen Münzen von Kroatien,Slavonien, Dalmatien und Bosnien (Graz, Austria, ), ‒, #‒; “soldini hungari”: LajosHuszár, Münzkatalog Ungarn (Munich, ), ‒, #‒; “frignachi”: Giulio Bernardi, Mone-tazione del Patriarcato di Aquileia (Triest, ), ‒.⁹¹ May : ASV, Sen. Sec., R. , f. v.⁹² Aug. : Cap. Broche, .⁹³ Apr. : Papadopoli, :‒, #.⁹⁴Papadopoli, :, #‒.⁹⁵One variety of the shield is a bend checky, almost identical with that of this patriarch, whilethe other is a bend sinister counterembattled, which may be derived from the Wittelsbach shieldof Lodovico II of Teck, patriarch of Aquileia from to : Bernardi, Monetazione del Patriar-cato, ‒.


never substantial; specimens are known from a single hoard and no excavations,and they are extremely rare in collections.⁹⁶

Farther down the coast, in the port of Skadar (Scutari) in Albania, Veniceestablished a colony in the early years of the fifteenth century. In theSenate noted that the Venetian count there was minting his own coins withoutauthorization.⁹⁷ A motion was made to order him to stop his minting and haveVenetian grossi circulate there, but it was defeated on the second ballot. Coinsof a grosso denomination are known from this mint, with the obverse legend around a standing image of the local saint and a reverselegend of around the lion in moleca, as on the torneselloand the soldino.⁹⁸ These coins are rare.

The wars in Dalmatia had effects on the zecca well beyond the introduc-tion of new colonial coinages. In a measure that was familiar from previous pe-riods of military expenditure, the Senate lowered the salaries of the masters,weighers, and engravers for the duration of the fighting.⁹⁹The war did have onefavorable effect on the mint, in obliging many citizens to melt their gold and sil-ver belts and ornaments to meet their own wartime obligation; the Senate allowedthem to have such bullion coined without paying the quinto.¹⁰⁰

Another effect of the war, however, was of grave consequence to the mint.Angered by the loss of lands in Dalmatia, as well as the cessation of tributesfrom Venice, Emperor Sigismund declared a blockade of Venice in , whichwas to last until .¹⁰¹ This was of particular importance to the zecca, as themines under Sigismund’s control (Kutná Hora in Slovakia and Kremnica in Bo-hemia) are estimated to have produced as much as one-third of the new silverand gold bullion available in Europe for minting. In the years to , theproduction of silver grossi in Genoa rose considerably over that of previous

⁹⁶Cf. App. B, table B., #; Raffaele Paolucci, La Zecca di Venezia (Padua, ), ‒, #‒.⁹⁷ May : ASV, SM, R. , f. .⁹⁸Paolucci, Zecca di Venezia, vol. , , #. There are also grosso, mezzanino, and piccolo issuesknown with the initials of Venetian counts of Scutari from the s and s.⁹⁹ Jan. []: ASV, SM, R. , f. .¹⁰⁰ June : ASV, SM, R. , f. .¹⁰¹György Székely, “Les facteurs économiques et politiques dans les rapports de la Hongrie etde Venise à l’époque de Sigismond,” in Venezia e Ungheria nel Rinascimento, ed. V. Branca, FondazioneGeorgio Cini, Civiltà veneziana, Studi (Florence, ), ‒; Wolfgang von Stromer, “DieKontinenalsperre Kaiser Sigismunds gegen Venedig ‒, ‒ und die Verlagerung dertranskontinentalen Transportwege,” in Trasporti e sviluppo economico, ed. A. V. Marx, Istituto Inter-nazionale di Storia Economica “F. Datini,” Atti delle Settimane di Studio, (Florence, ),‒.


decades, perhaps reflecting a redirection of bullion there from Venice.¹⁰² In ,Ragusa passed legislation controlling the export of silver and insisting that allbullion be refined at its own mint.¹⁰³The full extent of the effects of Sigismund’sblockade on the availability of silver and gold in Venice cannot be documented,but it certainly did not alleviate the effects of the general bullion famine or thedisorganization of the mint.

In general, the colonial coinages initiated by Venice in the early years of thefifteenth century never amounted to a significant minting, certainly not on thescale of the tornesello in the late fourteenth. If the mint was to revive signifi-

cantly, it would still have to attract the bullion of merchants and meet the needsof long-distance trade.

In , a decade and a half after a major reform of the gold mint and adecade after that of the silver, the Senate took up the question of mint reformagain.¹⁰⁴ A team of three advisors was charged with meeting with the masters ofboth silver and gold mints and the officials of both metals at the Rialto andcoming up with a comprehensive series of reforms, but no legislation resulted.¹⁰⁵Finally, in , the Senate returned to the question of mint reform, calling onthe advisors chosen three years earlier: Giovanni di Garzoni, a longtime mintadvisor and one of the most powerful men in Venice, and Francesco Girardi andMarco da Molin, both onetime members of the Council of Ten and future elec-tors of Doge Francesco Foscari.¹⁰⁶

The resulting legislation sought to uphold “the reputation of our city togreat honor and custom by ensuring that our gold coinage be maintained finerthan any other coinage in the world.”¹⁰⁷ It again addressed the problem of dis-crepancies between the fineness of gold brought to the mint and the amountpaid back by the masters. Instead of presenting their bullion to the gold esti-mators, merchants would henceforth present it to the account officials, who

¹⁰²Giuseppe Felloni, “Ricavi e costi della zecca di Genova dal al ,” in Studi in Memoria diFederigo Melis, (Naples, ), :‒.¹⁰³Resetar, Zecca della Repubblica di Ragusa, ‒.¹⁰⁴ Sept. : ASV, SM, R. , f. .¹⁰⁵ Jan. []: ASV, SM, R. , f. .¹⁰⁶See Alan M. Stahl, “A Prosopography of Medieval Venetian Mint Officials,” Medieval Prosopog-raphy ().¹⁰⁷ Apr. : ASV, SM, R. , ff. ‒v.


would test it, stamp it with their dies, and send it to the gold leaf officials forcasting. Then it would be sent to the gold estimators at the Rialto, who wouldtest it and, once they had agreed on its fineness, stamp it with their own dies. Atthe mint, the masters would check the gold they received and, if they disagreedwith the fineness certified by the estimators, would summon the account offi-

cials to adjudicate. The gold would then be cast, hammered into sheets, andrefined by cementation carats per mark beyond theoretical purity to a finenessof . percent. A sample of carat per mark (about .%) would be keptfrom each batch for future assaying. The bullion would then be made into ducatsat the rate of per mark, with a remedy of coins per marks allowed (adivergence of . gr below the theoretical weight of . gr, or about .%tolerance).

As a onetime measure, one ducat out of a thousand would be put aside.Once a mark of them was assembled, they would be melted and assayed by boththe masters and the estimators with needles more finely graduated than thoseused by the estimators. Once everyone was agreed that this mark of gold was thefinest that could be achieved, it would be preserved as the standard whereby allVenetian gold would henceforth be measured. On a regular basis, the masterwould retain one ducat out of a thousand, which would be assayed by the accountofficials at the end of his quindena along with the sample of carat per marksaved at the time of refining. The masters were instructed to pay out the ducatsto the merchants in the order in which they received the gold, with all accountsto be settled within one week before they started their next quindena. Thus, allmerchants would get their coins in no more than ¾ months from the time theybrought their gold to the mint. Two nobles were to be elected as auxiliary mint-masters; their salary of £ a year was below the £ to which that of the mas-ters had been reduced (from £) at the start of the Dalmatian wars two yearsearlier. Instead of the current practice of having the masters undergo a reviewby the Senate every two years with only one of the existing two eligible for reelec-tion, all four would be eligible for reelection following a report of their perfor-mance by the account officials.

Almost immediately, these reforms, which had taken more than two yearsto draft, proved to be inadequate. There was no master for gold currently in officeto deal with the bullion waiting there to be minted, so the Great Council estab-lished an ad hoc committee to find someone to fill the office.¹⁰⁸ The committeeauthorized one of the gold estimators at the Rialto, Gregorio Foscarini, to take

¹⁰⁸ Apr. : ASV, MC Leona, f. (incomplete), and CMA, f. ‒v.


over the gold mint, collecting the salaries of both offices for the duration of theminting. A month later the salary of the principal masters for gold was broughtback up to its prewar high of £ a year.¹⁰⁹ Foscarini remained alone in theoffice and was authorized to keep the one-half grosso per ducat fee that had pre-viously been shared by the two masters, as well as both of his salaries.¹¹⁰ Anobstacle to electing masters for gold still remained; members of the Great Coun-cil refused to nominate anyone because they would, by longstanding practice, beobligated to find all the pledges for their candidate. In June , the councilmade an exception in this case, limiting the liability of the nominator of eachmaster for gold to £, and leaving it to the master to find the other pledges.¹¹¹

The reluctance of members of the council to guarantee masters for goldproved well founded. One of the two masters elected immediately thereafter,Antonio da Riva, was accused of mixing mint scraps with gold and florins thathe bought to produce ducats of low fineness.¹¹² Although he was convicted, theSenate chose the least severe of the four punishments it considered: a ban frommint offices, two months in prison, and a fine of £. Da Riva was also accusedof having embezzled a total of about £, in his three quindene of service.¹¹³Charges were brought against him in the Senate five times and, having failed toreceive a majority of votes in any of the ballots, were ultimately dropped.

In October the account officials reported to the Senate the sorry statein which they had found the gold mint and urged the election of a new team ofmint advisors. The Senate authorized a college of the Signoria plus council advi-sors to carry out this selection, and Girardi and di Garzoni were reelected, joinedby Scipione Bon, a former account official.¹¹⁴ While they were preparing theirrecommendations, a new crisis illustrated how badly the gold mint had deterio-rated. In January a merchant from Bratislava called Petrus Strevestibus soughtto have marks of gold minted, which would have amounted to almost ,

ducats. The four gold estimators agreed that his bullion was fine, but the mint-masters for gold refused to accept it. In an extraordinary move, the college per-mitted the estimators to mint the gold themselves into ducats under the condi-tion that they take responsibility for any shortfall.¹¹⁵

The Senate was apparently deadlocked on the issue of the reform of the

¹⁰⁹ May : ASV, MC Leona, f. .¹¹⁰ May : CMA, ff. v–.¹¹¹ June : ASV, MC Leona, f. .¹¹² May : ASV, AC Raspe, R. /, fasc. , f. ‒v, and ASV, SM, R. , f. ‒v.¹¹³‒ May : ASV, AC Raspe, R. /, fasc. , ff. v–, and ASV, SM, R. , f. v.¹¹⁴ Oct. : ASV, SM, R. , f. .¹¹⁵ Jan. []: ASV, CN, R. , f. v, #.


gold mint, or did not want to debate the options openly, so it delegated to a spe-cial commission the authority to pass legislation to encourage merchants tobring their gold to Venice.¹¹⁶ Five days later the commission passed a new set ofregulations for the gold mint.¹¹⁷ The accepted legislation was all proposed bythe newcomer Bon, who noted in the preamble to one of his proposals that thecurrent delay in the mint’s payback of ducats to merchants was as long as a year.Bon’s major innovation was to leave the refining of gold up to the merchants,thus simplifying the operations of the mint and eliminating some of the possi-bilities for fraud there.¹¹⁸The refined gold would follow the usual path of beingtested by the estimators with a touchstone at the Rialto and being transportedto the mint to be coined into ducats. The staff was reduced back to two mastersfor gold with salaries back at £.

The procedures worked out by this commission were soon viewed as anexperiment that had failed completely. Two and a half months later, the Senateconsidered four plans for replacing the new system.¹¹⁹ These were presentedbefore the whole body by the standing officials of the Senate, with no input frommint advisors. The plan that eventually passed after five ballots was introducedby Andrea Dolfin, one of the heads of the Forty. In its preamble, it noted thatthere was an effort by a private individual to take over the mint and its profits,which would pose a great threat to Venetian merchants in Alexandria and Syria,where merchants were expert in recognizing the quality of gold coins.

This was probably a reference to the proposal of the council advisor Leo-nardo Mocenigo, which amounted to an effort to privatize the mint. This pro-posal would have allowed anyone to apply to be mintmaster (maistro), with theSenate choosing annually among candidates. This master would buy his ownsupplies, pay the workers himself, and be obligated to pay back suppliers of goldwithin two weeks with a fixed fee subtracted for the coining. The state wouldcontinue to set the standards of the coins and would elect two of its own mas-

¹¹⁶ Jan. []: ASV, SM, R. , f. v. The commission was to include the doge, his coun-selors, the heads of the Forty, the council advisors, the war advisors, the advisors of orders, themint advisors, the state advocates, and the account officials. It would contain at least mem-bers and its decisions would have the effect of those passed by the full Senate.¹¹⁷ Jan. []: ASV, SM, R. , ff. v–v; appropriate parts copied into the capitulary of theaccount officials: ASV, Ufficiali alle Rason Nuove, R. , ff. ‒; and CMO, ff. v–v and ,#‒ and #‒.¹¹⁸Lane and Mueller interpret the provision for refining bullion “a calo di mercanti” as indicat-ing that the merchant was responsible for refining the by-products of minting but not the golditself: Coins and Moneys of Account, ‒ and ‒.¹¹⁹ June : ASV, SM, R. , ff. ‒v.


ters (masseri) to verify the ducats before they would be distributed. Such a pro-posal to farm out the minting was a radical departure from the state-run mintthat Venice had operated since time immemorial but was typical of the practiceof most other European mints of the day, including most of those of Italy.¹²⁰This proposal received only five votes and was eliminated after the first ballot.

The Senate passed Dolfin’s proposal, which brought back the old system ofhaving the mint responsible for refining bullion and restored the procedures “ofour ancestors which could not be more sacred.” To guard against the kinds ofmalfeasance which had prompted the reforms in the first place, Dolfin proposedbanning bankers from bringing unrefined bullion to the mint and added to thisban the names of four specific individuals: three merchants of gold, Giovannide la Torre, Silvestro da Pessina, and Alvise Corner, and the supervisor of themint refinery on the Giudecca, Pietro Inchiostro. These men could still bringrefined gold to the mint, as could any other individual who so wished.

In the gold mint was still viewed as being in a state of disorder, andthe Senate established a new commission of at least twenty-eight members toreform it.¹²¹ Two weeks later, the commission passed legislation that tightenedprocedures but made no major changes in the organization of the gold mint.¹²²The main focus of the legislation was the gold estimators, who were henceforthto receive cast gold from the gold leaf officials in sealed leather sacks and esti-mate it with the merchant absent and anonymous. They were to stamp each ingotwith their own die; and after it reached the mint, the section of the ingot withthis stamp was to be preserved and sent to the account officials for verification.No gold less than ½ carats (.%) fine could be sent to the mint, and it wouldhave to be refined to a theoretical fineness of . percent before being coined.The account officials were given added access to the mint, being allowed to visitunannounced and take samples of flans and struck ducats for their own assay.

This reform seems to have set the gold mint on its path with little changeneeded for the future decades.¹²³ A few remaining details were adjusted the fol-

¹²⁰Travaini, “Mint Organization in Italy,” ‒.¹²¹ June : ASV, SM, R. , f. . The act was introduced by two of the counselors (BulgaroVettor and Giacomo Grissoni) but not by the counselor Scipione Bon, author of the reform offive years earlier. The commission would consist of the doge, his counselors, the heads of theForty, the counsel advisors, the advisors for new lands, advisors for income (“ad utilia”), advi-sors of orders, state advocates, and account officials.¹²² June : ASV, SM, R. , ff. ‒; copied into the capitulary of the account officials,ASV, Ufficiali alle Rason Nuove, R. , ff. v– and (in vernacular) that of the masters forgold: CMO, ff. v–v, #‒.¹²³Compared with forty-four chapters added to the capitulary of the mintmasters for gold


lowing year. The silver officials at the Rialto were instructed to go through allducats received by state officials and seal the good ones in sacks, cutting in halfthose that had been clipped or otherwise lightened and in quarters those thatwere false.¹²⁴ Lightweight ducats of Venetian manufacture could be brought tothe zecca for reminting on a weight-for-weight basis with a fee of pennies perducat.¹²⁵ When another Venetian merchant began speculating in gold, Zilio deCataldo, his name was added to those not allowed to bring unrefined bullion tothe mint.¹²⁶When the mint workers complained that they had extra work to dobecause of the tighter regulations of , they were awarded an extra ducat per, marks worked in a special grazia.¹²⁷

The Senate took longer to address the reorganization of the silver mint.The team of advisors elected in made no recommendations resulting in leg-islation concerning silver. Those of made a single recommendation con-cerning the silver mint; they eliminated the subsidized minting of free silverpassed in to encourage the import of bullion and imposed a fee of £.per mark for the production of grossi and £. per mark of soldini, an addedvalue of . percent and . percent, respectively.¹²⁸ Later that year, to attractcandidates for the office of silver official at the Rialto, the Great Council autho-rized a raise in salary from £. to £ each and in perks from pennies permark of silver examined to pennies divided between the two officials.¹²⁹

The special commission that reformed the gold mint in also ignoredthe silver mint, despite evident problems that required serious attention. In March the two masters for silver, Fantin Morosini and Daniele da Canal, wereaccused of intentionally coining silver below the required standard of finenessand minting coins that were under the mandated weight.¹³⁰ Of the three sen-tences considered for this serious offense, the Senate chose the mildest—depri-vation of mint-related office and a fine of £, with no jail time.

(CMO) between and , there was only one new paragraph added in the following thirty-eight years.¹²⁴ Sept. : ASV, MC Ursa, f. v.¹²⁵ Feb. []: ASV, Ufficiali alle Rason Nuove, R. , f. .¹²⁶ Jan. []: ASV, SM, R. , f. v.¹²⁷ Dec. : ASV, GR, R. , f. v.¹²⁸ Apr. : Cap. Broche, .¹²⁹ June : ASV, MC Leona, f. ‒v.¹³⁰ Mar. : ASV, SM, R. , ff. v–; ASV, AC Raspe, R. /, fasc. , ff. v–.


The next month the Great Council delegated to the Senate the responsi-bility for electing the replacements for these men and all future masters of thesilver mint.¹³¹ The Senate then restored the personnel to the traditional fiveofficials, two masters for silver, one master for torneselli, and two weighers.¹³²Each master would have a term of two years, after which he could not be reelectedor elected to the gold mint for another two years. The state provisioners wouldcheck the accounts of the masters twice a year and prepare for their reviews bythe Senate. To ensure that coins were well adjusted, the masters would pay thequinto by count rather than by weight. In June , the Senate allowed the mas-ter charged with torneselli extra time to finish his accounts because of the heavyproduction of the denomination and the recent arrival of a significant amountof silver at the mint.¹³³ A week later the Senate recognized that the silver coinagewas being issued under the prescribed weight of £. per mark and passed afew provisions to deal with the situation, none of which were likely to make anysignificant change in mint practice.¹³⁴

Finally, in the Senate was ready to undertake a major reform of the sil-ver mint. On February, three advisors were elected to propose new proce-dures, but the series of acts passed nine months later was not introduced by thembut by the three Procurators of San Marco and two other members of the Sen-ate.¹³⁵ The preamble to the act called it a “great and noteworthy reform,” occa-sioned by the fact that for many months the mint had been reduced to almostnothing, with the result that the trade in silver was bypassing Venice. It was alsonoted that the current cut of £. to the mark had been instituted when theducat was worth £.; the ducat was now worth £., and there was no reasonfor anyone to bring silver to the mint. The only way the mint had been gettingby, the act noted, was by producing coinage of such uneven weight that thecoins could be divided into two groups; the heavy ones exported as bullion andthe light ones (with an effective weight of £. to the mark) used at face valuewithin Venice.

The legislation first addressed the procedures for the quinto, which it notedwere so obscure that only God himself could keep them from harming the state.

¹³¹ Apr. : ASV, MC Ursa, f. v.¹³² Apr. : Cap. Broche, ‒. The text printed there is the proposal introduced by threestate provisioners and passed on the second ballot; that in n. is the proposal of the counselorCristoforo Soranzo, rejected on the second ballot.¹³³ June : Cap. Broche, ‒; ASV, SM, R. , f. v.¹³⁴ June : Cap. Broche, ‒.¹³⁵ Feb. []: ASV, SM, R. , f. v.; Nov. : Cap. Broche, ‒ and facsimile facing ;Papadopoli, :‒, #. Among the Procurators was the future doge Francesco Foscari.


In its place, a system was set up in which all imported silver had to be broughtto the mint for refining into stamped ingots at a fee of about percent of itsvalue. The merchant was then free to do whatever he wanted with three-quartershis silver; foreigners as well as Venetians could export silver by land or by sea inany direction with no export fees. The remaining one-quarter of the silver hadto be minted into coins, half into grossi and half into soldini at a fee of £.

per mark of silver, about . percent. A new standard was set for the silver coinage,£. to the mark rather than the theoretical £., which was admittedly nolonger observed, a debasement of . percent. The resolution called upon themint to control the weight variation of individual coins carefully so they couldnot be culled, but it did not set an official tolerance.

The silver mint was reorganized so that the three masters would work infour-month rotations. One would be master for the minting of fine-silver grossiand soldini, one for the base torneselli and piccoli, and one would be in chargeof the refinery. The mandatory refining charge would be used for the subsidy ofthe silver minting, and whatever was left would be put into the production of thebillon coinage. The master of the refinery would be assisted by a scribe paid thelarge sum of £ a year; both master and scribe would send accounts regularlyto the account officials, as would the master for silver. Two new wardens, speci-fied as popolani (“de puovolo”), were to supervise the emenders with a salary of ducats a year plus “utilities” (perks paid to the masters, weighers, and scribes)of pennies per mark coined.

The legislation specified the cost of production for each mark of grossiand soldini, enumerating the “utilities” as well as the wages of workmen and theestimated loss of silver in casting. These total manufacturing costs were toamount to £. per mark of soldini (.% of their value) and £. per mark ofgrossi (.%); half of the bullion was to be minted into each of these denomi-nations. The owner of the bullion was charged £. per mark of silver coined;the remainder of the expenses (an average of £. per mark) was to be subsi-dized by the state, which would also forgo any profit from the minting.

Within five days of the passage of this act, elections were held for the twonew positions of scribe and warden by a committee consisting of the doge, hiscounselors, the heads of the Forty, and the masters for silver.¹³⁶ For the highlypaid scribe office, the candidates included nine men, four of whom were speci-fied as being cittadini (“civis venetus,” “civis originarius”).¹³⁷ Among them was

¹³⁶ Nov. : ASV, CN, R. , ff. v–, #‒.¹³⁷See Dennis Romano, Patricians and Popolani: The Social Foundations of the Venetian Renaissance State(Baltimore, ), ‒, for the evolution of these categories.


Jacobello Nigro, who had worked at the mint refinery for fifty-three years, andAndrea Guidi, the mint scribe for the past thirty-four years. The position wentto Pietro Zanchani, a cittadino who had served as weigher in the gold mint six-teen years earlier (at a salary of £) but had been passed over for the positionin . Among the nine men who applied for the lesser-paying warden positionswere seven men already working at the mint; those chosen had thirty and twenty-four years seniority, respectively.¹³⁸ The following week, the Senate noted thatthey had forgotten to mention the mint weigher in the reforms and retained thecurrent occupant of the position, Tomaso de la Fontana.¹³⁹

Barely two years after this “Great Reform” of the silver mint, the Senaterecognized that it had failed.¹⁴⁰ One counselor noted that before the reform, marks (about metric tons) of silver used to come to Venice per year;the volume since then was one-quarter of that. Following the system devised forthe reform of the gold mint three years earlier, the Senate delegated jurisdictionfor the silver mint to a commission including, in addition to the Minor Coun-cil, the account officials and the mintmasters for gold and silver. The first re-forms of the commission were aimed at attracting merchants bearing silver. Not-ing that merchants had felt persecuted (“fi tegnudi a berssaio”) because onlythree or four people bid on their silver at the Rialto auctions, the commissionallowed them to sell their bullion any way they wished, as long as they contin-ued to have it properly recorded.¹⁴¹ The customs fee of about £. per markon imported silver was reduced to £. and was waived for those who broughttheir silver to the mint.¹⁴² A scribe was added to the refinery (at a salary of £)and two further wardens to the mint (£ each plus perks) to supervise the con-trols on coin weight.

A year later, in January , the Senate recognized that the situation at thesilver mint was “so bad that it could not be worse, and that it would be reducedto absolutely nothing unless immediate action was taken.”¹⁴³ It delegated respon-sibility for reform to a new high-level commission, this time excluding the ac-count officials and the masters for gold. The reforms adopted by this commis-sion amount to a retrenchment. The weight of the silver coinage went from £.

¹³⁸One of the other candidates, Turra of Venice, worked in the mint during the weeks and thenworked for the Great Council on Sundays.¹³⁹ Nov. : Cap. Broche, .¹⁴⁰ Dec. : ASV, SM, R. , f. .¹⁴¹ Jan. []: Cap. Broche, ‒.¹⁴² Jan. []: Cap. Broche, ‒.¹⁴³ Jan. []: ASV, SM, R. , f. v.


per mark to £., a reduction of . percent from three years earlier.¹⁴⁴ Thisdebasement was softened somewhat by the stipulation that the lowest accept-able weight not be changed, only the al marco weight of the coinage as a whole.

An even more extreme measure was the lowering of the fineness of de bullasilver coins and ingots from a peggio of (.% fine), where it had been fixedsince at least , to a peggio of (.% fine).¹⁴⁵ This debasement of fine-ness was contested in the commission but was carried by fifteen votes to ten. Inan even more radical departure from past practice, silver would no longer needto be refined in the mint before it was coined. A new assayer was to be installedin the mint to test incoming silver by cupellation; if he found it to be sufficientlyfine, it could be minted without further refining. This procedure was justified asa way to save expenditures at the mint by reducing the size of the refinery. Mintexpenses were to be further reduced by making grossi from three-quarters of allbullion, rather than coining half of it into grossi and half into soldini. Onemintmaster was to be eliminated by attrition, with his perks as well as salary go-ing to the state. The newly created scribe of the refinery was to be replaced bythe weigher working with one of the other scribes, and two of the eight appren-tices at the refinery were eliminated.

Almost immediately after these debasements, Venice was flooded with coun-terfeit, clipped, and foreign coins, especially friesachers. Bankers and brokers soldgood Venetian coins only at a premium, and bank money was no longer convert-ible to specie at par.¹⁴⁶ Officials within Venice and on the Terraferma were pro-hibited from accepting the inferior coinages and were charged with confiscatingthose found at the tables of bankers and moneychangers in their domains.¹⁴⁷ Aproposal in June to allow individuals to bring clipped and broken Venetiancoins to the mint to be reminted at state expense on a weight-for-weight basiswas narrowly defeated in the Senate on the fourth ballot.¹⁴⁸

The following March, state officials were instructed to examine all coinsthey received and take those minted before the debasement to the mint,where they would get back the same amount of silver in coins of the new weightand fineness.¹⁴⁹ These offices would have come out ahead in the face value of

¹⁴⁴ Feb. []: Cap. Broche, ‒; first part also: Papadopoli, :‒, #. The act gives thepresent cut at £., but it had actually been lowered to £. in .¹⁴⁵See below, Chap. , for these terms.¹⁴⁶Mueller, “Role of Bank Money” ‒.¹⁴⁷ May : ASV, SM, R. , f. .; an exception was made for the use of friesachers inFriuli and Istria, where they had long circulated.¹⁴⁸ June : ASV, SM, R. , f.‒v.¹⁴⁹ Mar. : Cap. Broche, ‒.


their receipts, but the mint would have had to underwrite the cost of the re-coinage. This expense was justified as a measure to counter the rise of the ducatto £., which was said to be harmful to the general populace.¹⁵⁰What was be-ing called in, however, was not only the clipped and worn older coins in circu-lation but also finer and heavier ones made before the debasement; the actualeffect of these exchanges, if any, would have been to lower the silver contentof the circulating currency and raise the rate of the ducat against the moneta.A proposal to extend to all citizens the option of exchanging their coins on aweight-for-weight basis was again defeated. The following year, the Senate re-scinded the exchange order, citing its success in bringing down the course of theducat to £., and decided that henceforth whatever old coins came into stateoffices would be paid out on the debt on state bonds. For the next couple ofyears, a somewhat reduced version of the reform commission (lacking the “util-ity” advisors as well as the masters for silver) continued to oversee the operationof the silver mint.¹⁵¹

The silver mint was left alone until July , when the Senate passed leg-islation that, in effect, repealed all the recent reforms concerning the sale of sil-ver and went back to the situation in the late fourteenth century.¹⁵² It also cre-ated two new silver denominations for Venice (a half grosso and a double grosso)and coinages for Brescia and Bergamo. With this legislation, it acknowledged thatthe problems of the silver market in Venice went beyond the internal proceduresfor refining and minting and that relief would only come through changes in theeconomic, political, and military situation of Venice and Europe.

¹⁵⁰The actual rates for the ducat cited in other documents range from £. to £. through-out this decade: Lane and Mueller, Coins and Moneys of Account, ‒.¹⁵¹ Mar. : Cap. Broche, ‒. Oct. : ibid., . Nov. : ibid., ‒. Dec.: ibid., .¹⁵² July : Cap. Broche, ‒.

The �ecca in the Life of �edieval �enice

The Setting of �int Policy

For a medieval state, minting had two distinct, and often opposing, func-tions: to provide a medium of exchange for its citizens and to provide incometo the fisc from the profits of the minting process. The prestige and renown ofthe rulers were also a concern of minters; coinage was the one emanation of offi-

cial authority that virtually every subject would experience in a personal andphysical way.

The setting of policies to govern the activity of the mint was one of theprincipal activities of the Venetian republic in the later Middle Ages; during thecrisis months of the Black Death, it was virtually the only item of state businesswhich could draw legislators to the Ducal Palace (see above, Chap. ). The suc-cess of Venetian overseas trade, upon which rested much of the wealth of its cit-izens before the fifteenth century, depended in a very direct way on the avail-ability of a dependable supply of coins of consistent quality. Moreover, as vastamounts of bullion passed through the mint, the state had the opportunity torealize a handsome seigniorage, or profit, which could fund the ever growingbureaucracy and avert the need for direct taxation.

Coining in medieval Italy was greatly dependent on a market system of sup-ply and demand for bullion and on direct competition among minters. Suppli-ers of silver (and to a lesser extent gold) had a choice of mints to which to taketheir bullion, among which were Genoa, Florence, Lucca, Tyrol, Verona, and Aqui-leia. Each mint would turn the bullion into coins usable in various markets fora fee that was calculated to be competitive. Venice had the advantage of con-trolling the shipping on which a large amount of the commerce with the Eastwas conveyed, and it could prescribe the use of its own coinage in transactionsinvolving its fleet. However, if it priced its minting at a disadvantageous level, itwould discourage not only the use of its mint but also the use of its galleys.

A mercantile policy towards coinage would have favored setting mint chargesas low as possible and keeping the coins as fine and heavy as possible, in the inter-est of encouraging trade. On the other hand, a fiscal policy would have been onethat sought to profit as much as possible from the amount of bullion that wouldinevitably pass through Venice and avoid tapping other sources of revenue forthe growing number of officials and governors. In many medieval states the oppo-sition between mercantile and fiscal interests was clear and bitter, but in the Vene-tian republic the merchants were the governors, and loyalties were not so distinct.Certain individuals, such as bullion speculators, moneychangers, and bankers,would have specific interests in legislation concerning coinage and monetary pol-icy. Most other leaders of the Venetian state, however, would have benefited froma large, low-profit minting in their own commercial transactions (including silverimporting) but would have recognized the value to the state of significant mint-ing profit. A growing class of bureaucrats and landholders would become lesssympathetic to the mercantile strategies of coinage as the Middle Ages progressed.

Not only was there constant tension between mercantile and fiscal impulsesin mint legislation, but there was also a constant change in the circumstances ofbullion supply and demand. In some periods, chiefly the thirteenth century forsilver and the mid-fourteenth for gold, bullion seemed to flood Venice, and thechief concern was to organize the mint to best take advantage of the flow. Atother periods the supply seemed to dry up, most notably at the beginning of thefifteenth century, and no amount of subsidy of coinage seemed sufficient to keepthe mint in steady operation. The relative supply of gold and silver, and conse-quently their relative price, was the subject of continuous and often dramaticshifts. Even if coinages in the two metals were not in fixed relationships, modi-fications in mint policy needed to be made to keep the production of coinagein both metals at a relatively steady pace.

Another factor that needed to be addressed was the seemingly inevitable op-eration of inflation in the price of silver. The general history of medieval coin-age is the story of the gradual debasement of the penny and the pound of

pennies in terms of the amount of silver in them.¹ Whether this was the re-sult of inevitable laws of economics, a response to growing demand for limitedamounts of bullion, or the working of the competition between newly mintedcoins and lighter worn ones in circulation, no mint could ignore the phenome-non and remain solvent. The standards of a given coin would have to be gradu-

The Zecca in Medieval Venice

¹Spufford, Money and Its Use, ‒.

ally altered, or its value in a system of account allowed to float, or the state wouldhave to subsidize the minting of an undervalued coin.²

Another issue that needed to be decided by the Venetian government wasthe relationship between trade coins and the local coinage. The grosso was prob-ably originally intended primarily for use abroad, and the ducat was even morespecifically a trade coin. The internal economy of Venice, including the salariesof most artisans and many state employees, used the petty coinage, or moneta,which was based originally on the penny or piccolo, and later on the grosso, thenthe soldino and (for brief periods) the mezzanino. The relationship of thesepetty coinages to the trade ones was the source of potential profit or hardshipfor various segments of the populace. Even the quantity of each denominationminted was a political issue; the lower-denomination coinage required more laborfor a given monetary unit than the grosso and ducat, so its minting often de-manded a subsidy by the state or at least the forgoing of potential profit.

The chief policy options centered around control of the bullion market andthe setting of standards for coin denominations. At the same time as it wishedto encourage bullion to come into Venice and go through the mint and onto itsgalleys, the Venetian state sought to maintain full information on all quantitiesof bullion within the city and all sales of it. This was accomplished through theinstitution of a series of governmental offices and regulations, which are dis-cussed in the next chapter. At various periods, the government set the amountthat would be paid for bullion by the mint; at other times it allowed the mintto compete in a free market. The most extreme form of intervention in thesilver market was with the enactment of the quinto in the early fourteenth cen-tury, whereby one-fifth of all silver brought into Venice had to be taken to themint and coined at an artificially low price. The vicissitudes of the silver mar-ket through succeeding decades resulted in the alteration and eventual elimina-tion of the quinto.

Venetian coin standards were a matter of international importance; the stan-dard of the ducat, based originally on that of the Florentine florin, became thebasis of many coinages and systems of account in Europe and the eastern Medi-terranean. The standards of the grosso were defended even when they were nolonger profitable in fiscal or commercial terms. On the other hand, the soldino,the basis of the local monetary system, was frequently debased after its intro-

The Setting of Mint Policy

²For the example of how Florence dealt with this situation, see Richard A. Goldthwaite andGiulio Mandich, Studi sulla moneta fiorentina (secoli XIII–XVI) (Florence, ), ‒.

duction in the early fourteenth century. The choice whether to make the soldinoof the same fine silver as the grosso or of a baser alloy was clearly the source ofmuch friction and debate. The creation of the highly overvalued tornesello wasan act that benefited the Venetian treasury at the expense of Greek colonials,including sizable numbers of Venetians in Crete.

These monetary policy decisions were usually the subject of public debateand decision in the legislative councils of the republic. While many of the speci-fics were technical and the anticipated results speculative, these issues had to beresolved in a way that satisfied the needs of the state and of those individuals andgroups with a significant voice in the government. Although the sources do notillustrate the specifics of many of the contests involving mint policy, they do atleast allow us to understand the general mechanisms whereby it was achieved.³

Medieval Venice had a system of legislative and judicial bodies of varioussizes, whose relationship was hierarchical rather than one of checks and bal-ances.⁴ By the end of the thirteenth century, the principal organ of governancewas the Great Council (Maggior Consiglio).⁵ The other legislative bodies werein essence subcommittees of the Great Council; their members were chosen byit, and it held the ultimate authority to delegate responsibilities and overridedecisions of the lesser councils. It also selected the administrative and judicialofficials of the state and held the power to reverse or modify any of their actions.Membership in the Great Council was elective until the end of the thirteenthcentury, but with the Serrata of the last few years of the century it became theright of all adult male members of the nobility.⁶ In fact, membership in thecouncil was seen as the ultimate definition of noble status. Along with this hered-itary limitation on membership and expansion of numbers expected to attend


³See, in general, Giorgetta Bonfiglio Dosio, “Controllo statale e amministrazione della zeccaveneziana fra XIII e prima metà del XVI secolo,” Nuova rivista storica (): ‒.⁴See, in general, Maranini, Costituzione. For a survey of archival sources for the government ofmedieval Venice, see Elisabeth Crouzet-Pavan, “Sopra le acque salse”: Espaces, pouvoir et société à Venise àla fin du Moyen Âge, École Française de Rome, Collection, , vols. (Rome, ), :‒.⁵Maranini, Costituzione, :‒ and :‒.⁶Ibid., :‒; Cessi, Storia della Repubblica, ‒; Margarete Merores, “Der grosse Rat vonVenedig und die sogenannte Serrata vom Jahre ,” Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschafts-geschichte (): ‒; Lane, “Enlargement of the Great Council,” ‒, reprinted in hisStudies in Venetian Social and Economic History, ed. Kohl and Mueller.

its deliberations came a movement away from direct decision making and a grow-ing tendency to delegate responsibility for detailed legislation to other councils.The election of the ever growing list of officials took increasing amounts of thetime of the Great Council. The registers of the Great Council record only thoseacts that were passed into law. No failed or tabled proposals are included. Noris there usually a record of who proposed the legislation or what the final voteon it was.

The term Senate is actually a name given in the Renaissance to the organ ofVenetian government known in the medieval period as the Consilium Rogatorumin Latin or the Pregadi in the vernacular.⁷ Its origin was in the early part of thethirteenth century, possibly in . Its membership consisted of sixty memberselected by the Great Council, plus various officials who participated ex officioand others added as deemed necessary. By the early fifteenth century, its mem-bership was more than one hundred. Its competence was originally limited tolegislation relating to commerce and navigation, but few matters that were ofimportance to medieval Venice could not be construed as related to these con-cerns, and its deliberations touched on an ever wider range of legislation as thethirteenth and fourteenth centuries progressed. The records of the Senate, calledthe Misti for this period, often preserve a fuller record of deliberations than theregisters of the Great Council. The legislation is usually preceded by the name,or at least the office, of the individuals proposing the legislation and often bythe number of votes for, against, and in abstention. Proposed legislation thatwas defeated is also occasionally included in the Misti.

The origins of the Council of Forty are uncertain; it certainly existed by and may have started half a century earlier.⁸The members of the Forty werechosen by the Great Council, and they elected their own three heads. The dogeand his six counselors also participated in their deliberations, though with some-what limited prerogatives. The Forty exercised judicial as well as legislative com-petences; it was the primary venue for the gravest crimes and the final appellatecourt for trials in subjected lands. The Forty sat with the Senate in its deliber-ations and in the course of the fourteenth century ceded most of its legislativecompetence to the larger body. The medieval registers of the Forty regularly givethe names of those presenting legislation; the votes for, against, and in absten-tion; and, occasionally, rejected proposals. Unfortunately, for the fourteenth cen-


⁷Enrico Besta, Il senato veneziano (origine, costituzione, attribuzioni e riti), Miscellanea di storia veneta, dser., (Venice, ), ‒; Maranini, Costituzione, :‒ and :‒; Cessi, Storia della Repub-blica, ‒.⁸Maranini, Costituzione, :‒ and :‒; DQ , :vi–xxii; Cessi, Storia della Repubblica, .

tury the records of the Forty survive in only a few fragments, most notably forthe years around midcentury.⁹ In the early sixteenth century the diarist MarinSanudo copied selected legislation from the now missing registers.¹⁰ Beyond that,the medieval legislation of the Forty can be reconstructed only from occasionalcopies and references in the registers of the other councils and in the capitular-ies, the manuals in which were recorded all the legislation relevant to a particu-lar office. From the three surviving capitularies relating to the mint, and thoseof other officials whose responsibilities touched on the actions of the mint, muchof the medieval legislation of the Forty relating to bullion and coinage can bereconstructed. However, some of it is still unknown, and other acts cannot bedated with precision.¹¹

The doge was the titular head of the Venetian government; his election forlife was effected by an extraordinarily complicated procedure in the Great Coun-cil. He presided at the meetings of all of the major councils, and his nameappeared on all the coins of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. However,he had little personal power, either in legislation or in administration.¹² He actedalmost always in conjunction with his counselors, six men representing the ses-tiers into which the city was divided. The doge and counselors were often joinedin their actions by the heads of the Forty, in an executive committee called theSignoria. The Signoria, in turn, sometimes met with other officials such as thestate provisioners and the state advocates to form ad hoc bodies that would be-come known as the Minor Council and the Full College, though the terminol-ogy was not consistent before the end of the fourteenth century. One of the pri-mary duties of the Signoria was to settle jurisdictional disputes between thevarious officials of the state. Its most specific input into minting policy was theprerogative traditionally accorded it to set the imagery and legends of new issuesof coinage.


⁹DQ , :‒; :‒; :‒, ‒. MS registers exist for fragmentary periods from through , after which they are lacking until .¹⁰Preserved in the ASV as XL R. bis.¹¹The Council of Ten, instituted to deal with the Tiepolo-Querini conspiracy at the beginningof the fourteenth century, was to have great authority over the mint in the later fifteenth cen-tury. In the period under discussion here, however, the Ten had no jurisdiction over any mattersconcerning coinage or the mint: Ferruccio Zago, ed., Consiglio dei Dieci: Deliberazioni miste, FSV, stsec., vols. (Venice, ‒); Maranini, Costituzione, :‒.¹²Lane and Mueller credit certain doges with taking a leadership role in monetary innovation,especially the members of the Dandolo clan: Coins and Moneys of Account, ‒.

Most of the thirteenth-century legislation concerning the regulation oftrade in gold and silver seems to have been passed by the Great Council, thoughsome of the crucial acts originated in the Forty. The legislation of this periodis known mainly from the registers of the Great Council edited in , whichfor the most part do not identify the body initiating or passing a given act. How-ever, the text of one of the earliest acts in the compilation, that of whichexempted importers of silver from the customary duty if they sold the bullionto the mint, specifies that the act was “passed in the Great Council” by theForty.¹³ An act of which insisted that quantities of gold greater than marksbe refined and sold by auction is also specified to be an act of the Forty.¹⁴ Otheracts of the period are identified only as acts of the Great Council, includingthose that set up the offices of cast gold and silver, set the fineness for silver iningots and in coins, and set the procedures for the sale of gold and silver bul-lion.¹⁵ The authorization for the inception of the ducat in was an act ofthe Forty (see above, Chap. ). At the end of the thirteenth century, the GreatCouncil appears to have continued to be the body that enacted the legislationcontrolling the sale of precious metal. Laws concerning the import, refining, andauction of silver originated there.¹⁶

In the years following its redefinition through the Serrata at the end of thethirteenth century, the Great Council increasingly delegated to other bodies thesetting of policy for the control of the bullion market. An act of the year

prescribing the official assay of auctioned silver is identified as an act of theForty.¹⁷ Acts of and concerning the assay of gold for sale are also prob-ably from the Council of Forty, as they are not to be found in the registers ofthe Great Council or the rubrics of the Senate.¹⁸The Great Council at this time


¹³ Sept. : DMC, :‒; PMV, , #.¹⁴ Oct. : DMC, :; PMV, , #.¹⁵ Dec. : Monticolo and Besta, Capitolari, :‒, #, c. ; June : DMC, :‒;PMV, ‒, #; Oct. : DMC, :, #.¹⁶E.g., Sept. : DMC, :, #, and PMV, ‒, #; July : DMC, :, #, andPMV, , #; Apr. : DMC, :‒, #, and Papadopoli, :, #.¹⁷PMV, ‒, #; the vernacular transcription of the act in the capitulary of the vice-lords ofthe German fondaco identifies it as an act of the Great Council, probably because the directiveto add this in the capitulary came from there: Thomas, Capitolare, , c. .¹⁸ Sept. : Thomas, Capitolare, , c. ; undated act of about Jan. , copied in a later handin ASV, MC Comunis, II, f. v, but lacking in MC Magnus and Socius and AC Bifrons and

authorized the doge, his counselors, and the state provisioners to allow gold thatwas too base to be assayed to be exported from Venice, a technical question thatcould not be taken up by a large body but was apparently too important to beleft to officials.¹⁹

Around January , the doge, counselors, heads of the Forty, and stateprovisioners appear to have delegated to the Senate the responsibility for settingthe import duties on silver and gold bullion and on silver coins.²⁰ A duty of

shillings per hundredweight on imported silver was set at this time and was con-firmed regularly in the Senate.²¹ Changes and exceptions to the duties on im-ported gold and silver became the exclusive province of the Senate through theMiddle Ages. Likewise, legislation relating to the export of precious metals wasalso the responsibility of the Senate; it made frequent regulations on the freightcharges for such goods and set limitations for carrying them in unarmed galleys.All these actions were clearly within the purview of the Senate as the body thatdealt with foreign trade and international affairs.

While the import of gold and silver could be considered primarily a matterof foreign policy, the sale, refining, and manufacture of the bullion within Venicetouched far more aspects of the domestic life, including the wealth of individu-als and banks and the finances of the state. In extensive legislation governingthe sale of gold and silver was promulgated by the doge, counselors, state provi-sioners, and gold estimators. It was read in the Great Council and recorded in itsregisters, apparently without a vote. This legislation included the provision thatit be in effect for one year, at the end of which time it could be revised as wishedby the doge, the counselors, the Senate, and the Forty; in the meantime it couldbe altered only by the Forty.²² This appears to have a been a case of an issuedeemed so vital and complex that, rather than seeking a solution through debate,


Magnus. The first part follows the text of June (DMC, :‒), but the section begin-ning “Item quod sicut ipsi . . .” is new.¹⁹ Aug. : ASV, MC Magnus, f. v.²⁰This legislation is known only from the indexes of the lost Senate Register : ASV, SM,Indice , f. , where it is located at R. , ff. ‒; cf. Cessi et al., Deliberazioni, :, #.²¹E.g., June : ASV, SM, R. , f. , which extends the duty for four years.²² Mar. : most of the provisions are published in PMV, ‒, #; the entire act is inASV, MC Presbiter, ff. v–v. These regulations were confirmed twenty years later by theSenate; certain provisions were canceled as no longer applicable in and , but the restwere apparently still valid then: confirmation of “ordines auri et argenti soliti confirmari deanno in annum”— Oct. : ASV, SM, R. , f. v; judgment on jurisdictions of acts “captiin maiori consilio in et subsequenter confirmati in consilio Rogatorum et XL”— Nov.: ASV, CN, R. , f. , #; cancellations— May and Nov. : ASV, MC Pres-biter, ff. v–.

a set of regulations was imposed by the leaders of the state for a year’s trial period,after which time it was subject to the control of the larger councils.

The question of which of the councils would set policy for the bullion tradewas not soon settled. In the Great Council confirmed a ruling by the OldJustices (Iusticii Veteres) that all gold and silver be weighed by the mark for sale.²³The next year, the Forty decreed that coins or bullion could not be sold for creditlonger than one week in duration.²⁴The Senate in this period confirmed unspeci-fied regulations concerning the gold estimators.²⁵ A decade later specific actionwas taken to define the respective responsibility of the Forty and the Senate inrelation to the sale of bullion within Venice. In , the Great Council dele-gated the responsibilities of the Office of Clipped Grossi to the Gold Office; itgave full jurisdiction over matters concerning the expanded Gold Office to theForty.²⁶Through the rest of the century, the Forty passed all the legislation thatregulated the Gold Office and its successors the Office of Gold Estimators andSilver Office.²⁷

At this time, the Mediterranean world was experiencing great fluctuationsin the relative values of gold and silver, whose causes and effects are not wellunderstood today and were presumably just as problematic at the time.²⁸ Whatmust have been clear was that the policies adopted by the Venetian state towardsthe trade in precious metals were more than simple regulations of a market andofficials; they would determine the quantities of gold and silver brought toVenice, the quantity and acceptability of the products of its mint, and ultimatelythe conditions under which its merchants would engage in the trade that was thebasis of its wealth. Such policies could not be arrived at in a haphazard manneror by individuals who did not have some understanding of the possible resultsof their decisions.

In July , the Great Council transferred responsibility for matters con-cerning silver and coinage from the Forty to the Senate.²⁹ A week later, a panel


²³ Sept. : MC Clericus, f. .²⁴CMA, ff. v–v.²⁵Cessi et al., Deliberazioni, :, # (around Feb. ) and :, # (around May ).²⁶ Nov. : PMV, ‒, #; Papadopoli, :, #.²⁷Exceptions occurred later in the century when the Senate, in , first accepted and thenrevoked the proposals of the advisors on income and expenditure to combine the Office ofGold Estimators and the Silver Office ( May : ASV, SM, R. , f. v, and Nov. :SM, R. , f. v) and then altered their salaries as part of a revision of all officials’ salaries fol-lowing the War of Chioggia— Sept. : SM, R. , f. –v.²⁸Cf. Lane and Mueller, Coins and Moneys of Account, ‒.²⁹ July : ASV, AC Brutus, f. .

of advisors on gold and silver made recommendations that were enacted by theSenate; the only provision that is known is one fixing three days as the maximumtime for the sale of silver after it had been presented.³⁰ This legislation proba-bly also included the introduction of the quinto and the inception of the sol-dino and mezzanino, as these phenomena are documented within the year fol-lowing the act (see above, Chap. ). In the Senate confirmed the generalregulations on gold and silver of and set a provision that appeals regardingit could be granted only by two-thirds of the Senate (as opposed to the earlierprocedure of majorities in the Great Council and the Forty).³¹

Nevertheless, the Forty continued to have a hand in the regulation of preciousmetals within the city. In October , in response to recommendations of a com-mittee of advisors, the Forty promulgated requirements for the silver worked byartisan goldsmiths and in December modified those regulations.³² In itstrengthened the fifty-year-old law requiring the selling of silver only at the Rialtoand decreed that pardons could be granted only by thirty-five of its memberstogether with its three heads and all six counselors.³³ In the Forty specifiedprocedures for silver brought to the Fondaco dei Tedeschi by German merchants.³⁴

It was in the operation of the mint itself that the Forty exercised the great-est authority in monetary matters in this period. The origin of most of the detailsof mint function spelled out in the capitulary of mintmasters edited in isnot specified; as they are not found in the registers of the Great Council editedfour years later, it is probable that they originated elsewhere, most likely in theForty.³⁵The most direct intervention of the Forty in the life of the mint at thistime was clearly the team of three members of the council who had the respon-sibility of visiting the mint every week to oversee its operations; this provisionwas extended to the gold mint when it opened in , and such a team is doc-umented a half century later.³⁶ In other matters, such as the quantity of pennies


³⁰ July : Cessi et al., Deliberazioni, :, #; July : Cessi et al., Deliberazioni, :,#.³¹ Oct. : ASV, SM, R. , f. v.³² Oct. : CMA, ff. ‒v, one provision of this is published in NMC, , #; Dec.: CMA, ff. v–.³³NMC, ‒, #.³⁴Thomas, Capitolare, ‒, #.³⁵Papadopoli, :‒, #; Stahl, “Thirteenth Century,” ‒. It is, however, possible thatthese provisions were considered too technical and detailed to be copied into the council regis-ters, and their inclusion in the recently edited capitulary may have been deemed adequate fortheir preservation.³⁶CMM, c. : Papadopoli, :; CMO, c. : PMV, ‒, #; Mar. : CMO, f. , c. .

to be struck, the number of spare dies to be kept, and the rebuilding of theburned-out workshop in , the Forty directed the day-to-day operations ofthe mint in the late thirteenth century.³⁷

The supremacy of the Forty in the administration of the mint was unchal-lenged in the first decades of the Trecento; it originated legislation on the pur-chase of bullion, the size of the mint staff, and the number of coins to pro-duce.³⁸ Even the act of the Great Council of which gave the authority to theSenate in matters of coinage which it wanted to deal with appears to have hadno effect on this prerogative of the Forty; no legislation was passed in the Sen-ate concerning the administration of the mint until an additional delegation ofjurisdiction by the Great Council three decades later.³⁹ In the s the Fortyalso took responsibility for the use of coinage within the city, in acts that set thevalue of the ducat in circulation, banned foreign pennies, and authorized thepolice to torture suspected counterfeiters and clippers.⁴⁰

As the importation of precious metal and its sale and use in coinage becameincreasingly vital to the economy of Trecento Venice, its regulation became toocomplicated and too controversial to be dealt with in the existing councils. Bythe middle of the century it became the practice to elect a panel of expert advi-sors (L: sapientes; V: savi) to investigate the issues and report back to the appro-priate council with recommendations for action.⁴¹ Nothing is known about theearliest such panel concerned with monetary policy: the indexes of the Senatefor simply tell us that there were provisions made by the advisors for goldand silver.⁴² The functioning of the panels of advisors is well documentedbeginning in the early s, the period from which the earliest registers of theForty are extant.

In the succeeding decades, most of the major legislation that concerned bul-lion policy, coins standards, and the procedures of the mint originated in teamsof advisors selected expressly for that purpose. Often the activity of these teamscrossed the lines of a specific council. In January , in order to deal with the


³⁷CMM, c. a, , .³⁸ Aug. : ASV, MC Commune II, f. v [in later hand, identified as an act of the Fortyand not found in other copies of the acts of the Great Council from this period]; May :NMC, ‒, #.³⁹ July : PMV, , #, and Papadopoli, :‒, #.⁴⁰ Sept. : NMC, ‒, #; Feb. []: ibid., ‒, #; Mar. : ibid., ,#; Mar. : ibid., ‒, #.⁴¹See Besta, Senato, ‒.⁴² July : Cessi et al., Deliberazioni, :, #—the date is known from a confirmation thefollowing year: ibid., :, #.

harmful export of ducats, the Forty established three concurrent panels of advi-sors, each to be elected by slates of nominators in the Forty and the Signoriaacting as a third slate.⁴³ These three panels were to report their recommenda-tions first to the Signoria and then to the Senate for action. The next day theForty set up an additional panel to look into the question of clipped coins, anda month later it passed its own legislation on the panel’s recommendations.⁴⁴The more significant issue of the continued export of coins saw no immediatesolution; if the three panels of advisors proposed any solutions, these do notsurvive. In September a new committee, this time a single panel of five mem-bers, was established in the Forty. This new panel was to report back to the Forty,not to the Senate, as had been the charge of the previous three panels; the panelwas given the added responsibility of drafting legislation controlling banks.⁴⁵

In October , the Great Council decreed that the issues of money andbanking, which had been the concern of the Forty, were now to be decided inthe Senate and that the panel of advisors was to report its recommendations tothe Senate.⁴⁶ This legislation differed from the delegation of jurisdiction inthat it mandated the action of the Senate on these issues, rather than saying thatthe Senate could decide them when it wished. This transfer of responsibility overmonetary policy was in keeping with other increases in the jurisdiction of theSenate; in the same period it took over the administration of the German fon-daco and the arsenal.⁴⁷ From this time on, all changes in the standards of coinswere made in the Senate rather than in the Forty, as had been the case since atleast the beginning of the century. The sale of bullion within the city also cameunder the jurisdiction of the Senate, which had long passed legislation on itsimport and export. The offices of the silver officials and gold estimators at theRialto also seem to have come under the jurisdiction of the Senate in this period,though their salaries and election continued to be decided in the Forty for therest of the century. The jurisdiction of the Senate over other aspects of monetarypolicy was phased in through the decade following . The Forty set up teamsof advisors to devise strategies for controlling the export of gold and silver andto set the standards of a new soldino in , but the legislation that resultedfrom the investigation of these panels was proposed to the Senate for approval.⁴⁸


⁴³ Jan. []: PMV, ‒, #.⁴⁴ Jan. []: ASV, XL, Parti, R. bis (Sanudo), f. v.; Feb. []: PMV, ‒, #.⁴⁵ Sept. : PMV, ‒, #. Oct. : PMV, , #.⁴⁶ Oct. : PMV, , #.⁴⁷ASV, SM, R. , ff. ‒v.⁴⁸ Nov. : DQ , :, #‒, and PMV, , #. May : PMV, ‒, #. Oct.: DQ , :‒, #. Sept. : PMV, ‒, #. Dec. : PMV, ‒, #.

The actual supervising of the mint and procedures of the mintmasters re-mained with the Forty, though it could not always have been easy to distinguishthis responsibility from the setting of monetary policy. In the decades that fol-lowed , the Forty passed legislation setting the rate of pay for free silver atthe mint, allocating the amount of the quinto to be used for various denomi-nations, and revising all procedures for the assay and production of gold coins.⁴⁹In July , the Forty passed a comprehensive act regulating the refining andminting of gold designed to keep the mintmasters under the control of otherofficials.⁵⁰ The last power held by the Forty in the supervision of the mint wasits election of the officials, which it lost by the close of the century. The jurisdic-tion of the Forty in matters of trials and pardons continued to involve the offi-

cials and employees of the mint in the fifteenth century, as they did all Venetians.The Senate eventually appointed its own panels of advisors to deal with

monetary issues. In it reacted to a sudden change in the price of silver byappointing a panel of three advisors to recommend policies; they were selectedby two slates of nominators in the Senate, with the Signoria acting as the thirdslate.⁵¹ The earlier panels of advisors elected by the Forty had shown a greatcontinuity in membership from panel to panel, but this election in the Senatebrought a complete change in personnel (see below, App. A, table A.). None ofthe men chosen by the Senate at this time were on later panels, but by a con-tinuity of service was introduced into the Senate panels of monetary advisorswhich would last into the fourteenth century.

In times of emergency, the Senate established temporary “colleges” to whichit delegated not only the responsibility for formulating proposals but also theability to adopt legislation as if it had been passed by the whole Senate. In ,at the end of the almost catastrophic War of Chioggia, the Senate, on the sug-gestion of the advisors for coinage, delegated the authority to ban foreign coins,to choose the designs of new Venetian coins, and to choose two overseers of themint to a college consisting of the doge, counselors, heads of the Forty, advisors


⁴⁹ Aug. : ASV, XL, Parti, R. , f. . July : ASV, Ufficiali alle Rason Nuove, R. Capitolare, ff. ‒, part copied in CMO, ff. v–, cc. ‒.⁵⁰This act is known from modifications made in the Senate on May (ASV, SM, R. ,f. ); provisions copied into the capitulary of the account officials (Ufficiali alle Rason Nuove,R. , ff. v–); and vernacular translation in CMO, ff. v–, #‒. The Senate version givesthe date as July , the capitulary of accounts as July , and the capitulary of mint-masters as July . The date is clearly wrong (as it postdates the Senate’s modifica-tions), and the date from the Misti is to be preferred over that copied later into the capitularyof mintmasters.⁵¹ Aug. : PMV, ‒, #.

for coinage, and advisors for the war.⁵² The next year, this same college changedsome of the procedures for the selling of bullion within Venice.⁵³

One of the greatest emergencies Venice faced in the later Middle Ages, par-ticularly in terms of monetary policy, was brought about by the curtailment ofthe flow of bullion into the city and its mint in the early fifteenth century. Theusual procedures for finding a solution were tried in : the Senate elected apanel of three advisors and two months later passed a lengthy series of resolu-tions on their recommendation reforming the practices relating to the sale andminting of gold.⁵⁴ In January , the Senate decreed that the mint was a fac-tor of such supreme importance to the state that the decisions governing it couldnot be left to those with no practical experience in it.⁵⁵ It established a collegeto legislate on matters relating to gold coinage comprising the doge, counselors,heads of the Forty, council advisors, advisors of state revenues (sapientes per recu-perandum pecuniam), advisors on orders, the state advocates, the account officials,and the three advisors on the mint. Decisions made by a majority, that is, twenty-eight members of this college, would have the force of law as if passed in theSenate itself. The reform of the silver mint followed a similar pattern. In ,the Senate noted that earlier reforms had failed to attract silver to the mint, andit established a new college to which it delegated the power to legislate; the newcollege consisted of virtually the same officials as those for the gold mint threeyears earlier.⁵⁶ In effect, by the end of the period under study here, the decisionsthat governed the mint were no longer made in the Senate but in a number ofelite colleges to which it delegated its authority.

The policies adopted in relation to the import of bullion, its sale withinVenice, the procedures of the mint, and the standards of coins were of great im-portance to the lives of Venetians, whatever their social status or economic spe-cialization. Those whose livelihood was most tied into trade or banking had, ofcourse, the greatest stake in these decisions. It is worthwhile to take the timehere to investigate whether any of the policies adopted in the period under study


⁵² May : PMV, ‒, #.⁵³ Aug. : PMV, ‒, #.⁵⁴ Feb. []: ASV, SM, R. , f. . Apr. : SM, R. , ff. v–v.⁵⁵ Jan. []: SM, R. , f. v.⁵⁶ Dec. : ASV, SM, R. , f. . The advisors for war held the spot on this college formerlyallotted to the advisors on state finances.

can be identified with any economic or political groups within Venetian societyand whether the adoption of any specific policies can be seen as the victory ofsuch a group.

The primary obstacle to such an investigation is the lack of the voice of anyof the groups below the nobility. All the legislation extant from the periodemanated from councils in which only nobles participated. The rich and com-plex chronicle tradition of medieval Venice is virtually all from a noble per-spective and, besides, has little to say about any internal aspects of Venetianpolitical life. Members of the popular and citizen classes, as well as the manyforeigners residing within the city, are documented in pardons, court records,wills, and notarized transactions, but little in these can be used to reconstructthe interests of these groups in the policies of the councils.⁵⁷ This is not to saythat the lower classes did not have an interest in the monetary policies of Venice.A debasement of the moneta currency in which artisans and retail merchantswere paid was seldom to their benefit, especially if the pure silver and gold cur-rency were held constant. What the non-noble classes lacked was their own voicein formulating such policies; the most they could hope for was some sympathyand support among the nobles who held all the formal political power.

Even within the nobility, it is difficult to discern political groups or factionswhose interests are clearly allied with particular legislation on monetary issues.The great conflicts of the Trecento (the Querini-Tiepolo conspiracy, MarinFalier’s removal and execution) appear in the narrative sources as simply theconflicts and conspiracies of individuals or, at most, families. There is no diaristof the Trecento to give the kinds of off-the-record insights into the actual strug-gles beneath official records which Marin Sanudo provides for the early Cinque-cento.⁵⁸

In examining the changes in legislative jurisdiction over the mint, it is nec-essary to avoid seeing the various councils as independent organisms in somesort of contest for power. The Great Council was the ultimate source of all po-litical power, certainly in principle and, as far as can be determined, in practiceas well. The members of the Senate and the Forty were elected within the GreatCouncil, as were all the other officials of the republic, by electoral proceduresthat were designed to protect against the control by party or faction. In the lackof any indication that the various councils and colleges of officials were op-posed to one another on policy matters and contested jurisdiction over them, it


⁵⁷See the survey of such attempts in Romano, Patricians and Polopani, ‒.⁵⁸See, for examples, Robert Finlay, Politics in Renaissance Venice (London, ), ‒.

is best to take at face value the official assertions that jurisdiction was given tocertain councils in policy matters because they were best equipped to investigateand decide these issues.⁵⁹ Nor is there any way to determine factions and par-ties from the votes within the councils. Even though the number of votes forand against a given proposition is frequently known and losing proposals areoccasionally preserved, there is no way to know which individuals or familiesvoted a certain way.

The only individuals whose positions on policies can be known are thosewho proposed legislation. The advisors who were elected to propose legislationon monetary policies represent a limited group of nobles whose opinions on suchmatters can often be followed over a period of time. Through an analysis of theirpositions on a series of laws and their personal histories and family backgrounds,it is possible to investigate the role that politics played in the formulation ofpolicies that governed the mint.

The advisors were not necessarily members of the councils that elected themor to which they proposed legislation. Most of the extant authorizations say thatthe advisors can be drawn from any office except a few specified ones: these varybut usually include the Procurators of San Marco, patron of the arsenal, palacejudges, and market consuls.⁶⁰ Often it was specified that only one advisor couldbe elected from any office and no more than one per family. The individualswould not lose their offices while serving as advisors, or the income deriving fromthem. An authorization of specified that no one with an interest in a bankcould be elected an advisor, but this was not typical; it also provided a fine of ducats for anyone who refused election.⁶¹

The authorizations do not specify that the advisors be nobles, though onedocument refers to them as zenhomeni (i.e., gentiluomini) and one as nobiles.⁶² Allthose known are of families documented as noble.⁶³They range in family statusfrom members of the reputedly oldest noble families (including both the “long”and “short” families) to those admitted to the Great Council only after the Ser-


⁵⁹This was not the case with officials of the various bureaucracies who received fines and other“utilities” for their activities; competition for jurisdiction was strong between such offices andfrequently had to be settled by the councils.⁶⁰E.g., Oct. : DQ , :, #, and Oct. : DQ , :‒, #.⁶¹ Feb. []: SM, R. , f. .⁶² Jan. []: ASV, XL, Parti, R. bis (Sanudo), f. . Oct. : DQ , :, #.⁶³The documented teams of advisors are listed chronologically in App. A, table A., below.Individual biographies and family information can be found in Stahl, “Prosopography.” SeeStahl, “Office-holding,” for the general composition of the various offices related to the mint,and below, Chap. , for details on the designation of noble families as “long” and “short.”

rata (Dente, Garzoni, Girardi, Memmo). Fifteen of the fifty-three known advi-sors were from long families (%) and ten from short families (%). There isno clear tendency over time in the proportion of these families on the panels,though individual panels show disparities; for example, Panel XI of withfive members, all from long or short families, and Panel XIV from three yearslater only one of whose six members was of such a prestigious family. Thoughindividuals from the oldest of families accounted for almost half the total menwho served as advisors for monetary policy, they account for only three (Gio-vanni Grimani, Andrea Donato, and Benedetto Soranzo) of the eight men whoserved on three or more panels; the service of some of the men from prestigiousfamilies may have been more honorific than substantive.

The level of wealth of the advisors appears to be well above the median ofthe nobility. Eleven of them can be identified with individuals on the estimo of; two of these were in the top decile of assessments, three in the seconddecile, three in the third decile, one in the fourth decile, and two in the sixthdecile. This measure is even more significant when it is considered that the estimolists include only those individuals with the highest assessed wealth. The parishesof thirteen of these advisors are known (see map ). Of them, almost half livedin the sestier of Castello, to the east of the Piazza San Marco. and three of theselived in the parish of San Giovanni Nuovo. Three more lived in San Polo, threein Cannaregio, and only one in the sestier of San Marco, which was home to alarge group of mintmasters, weighers, and silver officials.⁶⁴

None of the advisors went on to become doge, but eight of the fifty-threeare known to have held the office of counselor to the doge, two served as Procu-rators of San Marco, and four were heads of the Forty; eight are included in listsof electors of a doge. Three may have also served as mintmaster (Pietro Con-tarini, Nicolò Venier, and Filippo Barbarigo), but as they were of large familiesand had common Christian names, the identifications are not secure. Only Fran-cesco Vielmo is known to have been a mint weigher; two other advisors appearto have been silver officials and two gold estimators. Some are known to haveserved in other offices, but mostly they are known for legislative rather than admin-istrative activities. Six of them are known to have been moneychangers or bankers.

There are twenty-five separate documented panels of advisors on monetary


⁶⁴This accords with the geographical distribution of wealth in the estimo, where the areaaround the Rialto was the residence of far more wealthy individuals than was that around SanMarco: Donald E. Queller, “The Venetian Family and the Estimo of ,” in Law, Custom, and theSocial Fabric of Medieval Europe: Essays in Honor of Bryce Lyon, ed. B. Bacharach and D. Nichols (Kala-mazoo, Mich., ), ‒.

policy in the period ‒, ranging in membership from three to seven indi-viduals; they are listed in Appendix A, table A., below. In order to get a pictureof the way in which personal and political agendas of advisors influenced thedrafting and disposition of legislation, we will examine the activities of advisorsfor monetary regulations of four periods: from to , when the BlackDeath impelled the restructuring of the mint; from to , when a publicclash between moneychangers and silver officials spilled over into the Senate;during the crucial War of Chioggia in , when the mint, like all other aspectsof Venetian life, had to adjust to a war emergency; and from to , whenthe mint was reformed to help counter the effects of the bullion famine.

Panel V, of ‒, is the first whose recommendations were not madeunanimously and for which rejected resolutions are extant. Giovanni Grimani hadserved before, and Michele Duodo and Donato Onoradi would continue to servefor more than a decade each. Five of their recommendations, which regulatedthe profit and accounting of the silver mint, were made unanimously.⁶⁵ Theydiffered on the question of whether the mintmasters could hire mint employeesafter hours; Onoradi wanted such practice banned under all conditions, whileDuodo’s proposal to allow it after mint hours carried.⁶⁶ Duodo and Onoradijoined together on two successful proposals on the reelection of mintmastersand weighers of silver which would have required those who earned the least profitto step down every two years, against the proposal of Grimani, which called forannual scrutiny but would have allowed all to continue in office.⁶⁷ The panelcontinued to function without opposing recommendations through December,when it dealt with accounts and elections for the gold mint. The differencesexpressed in the resolutions by this panel show slight variances in attitude towardsmint officials but cannot really be seen as expressing major policy orientations.

In Panel VI, of , a difference in monetary policy can be seen among theadvisors. On this, two members of the previous panel were reelected, and theplace of Grimani was taken by Andrea Gabriel, a moneychanger and a specula-tor in bullion.⁶⁸ The major business of the panel was to recommend standardsfor a new soldino, to replace the mezzanino of as the basis for the pettycurrency. As in , the basic choice was between a coin of pure silver (like the


⁶⁵ Oct. : DQ , :‒, #‒.⁶⁶DQ , :‒, #‒.⁶⁷DQ , :‒, #‒.⁶⁸He twice got in trouble with the silver officials and in was prosecuted for falsifyingreceipts from the sale of gold and was banned from being a moneychanger or buying or sellingbullion.

grosso and mezzanino) and one of alloy, as had been the earlier soldino that hadformed the basis of the petty system for the decade before . On March, Gabriel proposed a soldino of five parts silver to three parts copper; he wasjoined in his motion by two of the counselors.⁶⁹ Duodo and Onoradi proposeda coin of pure silver, which would end up with percent less silver total. Thethree each proposed a different price for free silver brought to the mint: Ono-radi suggested £., Duodo £., and Gabriel £.. The proposal of Ono-radi would have brought in a mint profit of . percent on free silver, that ofDuodo percent, and that of Gabriel percent.⁷⁰ The Forty at first favoredGabriel’s proposal with eighteen votes, versus seven for that of Onoradi and fivefor that of Duodo. Duodo joined with the doge and a counselor to proposetabling the decision; on the fourth vote the motion to table won out over theproposal of Gabriel by one vote.

A week later, Duodo joined Onoradi in an amended proposal, and this car-ried against Gabriel’s twenty-six to nine.⁷¹ It can only be speculated what causedthe shift in sentiment of the Forty away from Gabriel’s alloyed soldino to thefine one of Duodo and Onoradi, which would bring significantly less profit tothe mint. It may be significant that the preambles to all the proposals speak ofthe needs of the merchants in Romania; an alloy coinage (and a hugely profitableone) was produced specifically for these regions in July of the same year withthe introduction of the tornesello, which replaced the soldino in circulation inVenetian Greece.⁷² It may be that the plans for such a coinage were developedwhile the soldino legislation was tabled, and the arguments for a fine alloy forthe petty coinage of Venice itself gained support. The proposal for the torne-sello was presented by the doge, counselors, and heads of the Forty on the sameday that this panel of advisors was extended; it may be that such an importantinnovation was deemed best to derive from the highest of sources.⁷³

In February , this same panel made recommendations concerning thecirculation of counterfeit coins and the sale of silver.⁷⁴ Three of these provi-


⁶⁹ Mar. : DQ , :‒, #. See below, Chap. , for calculations concerning these proposedissues.⁷⁰It is specified that these payments are “de ipsamet moneta,” so the grosso expressed here mustbe an accounting term for piccoli or ³²⁄¹² of the soldini to be produced. Onoradi: pay back (³²⁄¹² × . × ) of the soldini cut from a mark; Duodo: pay back of the same soldini; Gabriel: pay back of the . soldini cut from a mark of silver.⁷¹ Apr. : DQ , :‒, #.⁷²Stahl, Tornesello, ‒.⁷³ July : DQ , :, # and #.⁷⁴ Feb. []: DQ , :‒, #‒; canceled in MS: ASV, XL, Parti, R. , f. ‒v.

sions were severe on moneychangers and were passed by easy margins; their au-thorship is not given. Two resolutions were passed by narrow margins; one wasintroduced by Onoradi and Gabriel, and the second one may have been as well.The first of these gave some relief to silver speculators by forbidding the silverofficials to require those who presented bullion to reveal its source, and the sec-ond gave severe penalties to moneychangers who participated in the illicit saleof bullion; both were to be in effect for one year, and both were canceled twodecades later as no longer valid.

The proposals of the individuals of Panel VI and the votes taken on themby the Forty illustrate that there were, indeed, policies that were favored by cer-tain groups; moneychangers certainly supported provisions to their professionaladvantage. However, the votes taken on the important decisions show that thepositions of advisors and of members of the council could be changed over timeand that compromises were worked out, as the one-year provisions on the saleof silver appear to be.

Another example of the political issues implicit in the proposals of legis-lation comes from the monetary debates of ‒. These took place in thewake of the de Bora affair, a highly publicized dispute between the silver officialsof the Rialto and one family of moneychangers whom they accused of con-trolling the silver auctions (see below, Chap. ). In November , the Fortyincreased the number of furnaces producing torneselli from two to three andset up a panel of five advisors to devise policies to attract more silver to Veniceand to keep artisans working on gold leaf and thread from deserting the city.⁷⁵All five men elected to Panel XI were members of long or short families; onlyone (Giovanni Grimani) had served on a panel for monetary policy before.⁷⁶The next month, Michele Duodo, who was then a head of the Forty, proposedto add yet another furnace for torneselli; his proposal was referred to the advi-sors.⁷⁷ On January there was a challenge to a fine by the silver officials basedon an otherwise unknown law from twenty-five years before; the Forty chargedthe panel of advisors with investigating the validity of the old legislation.⁷⁸Theappointment of this panel of old-family aristocrats appears to have failed; it isnot known to have proposed any legislation.


⁷⁵ Nov. : DQ , :‒, #‒.⁷⁶Three additional names were proposed and are crossed out in the MS; one was of an individ-ual from a long family (Giustinian) and one from a short one (Venier); the third was NicolòOrio.⁷⁷ Dec. : DQ , :, #; PMV, , #.⁷⁸ Jan. []: DQ , :‒, #.

By May a new panel of five advisors on monetary affairs was in place;Giovanni Grimani, the veteran of two decades of panels, remained, as did NicolòLoredan. The other three of the members of long families were not reelected,and their places were taken by Giovanni Darpin and Michele Duodo, both vet-eran advisors from less prestigious families, as well as Pietro Morosini, of a longfamily, who joined once in a recommendation but otherwise made no contribu-tion. This new Panel XII unanimously recommended legislation aimed at keep-ing artisans of gold leaf and thread from working outside Venice; this was ap-proved by a strong margin.⁷⁹

At the same time, Giovanni Darpin and Nicolò Loredan made three pro-posals aimed at opening up competition in the auctioning of silver and decreas-ing the role of moneychangers in the process. The first measure transferred theauthority for breaking up monopolistic bidding from the silver officials, whoseactions against the de Bora had resulted in humiliation, to the state provision-ers and contraband officials.⁸⁰ The proposal passed the Senate with thirty-threevotes in favor, fourteen opposed, and eleven abstentions. The same two advisorsthen reiterated the traditional requirement that auctioned silver be paid for incoin at the table of the silver officials and removed legal protection from sellerswho settled their transactions away from the table. This provision failed on threeballots, as did a proposal prohibiting moneychangers from speculating byadvancing funds to purchasers of silver.

In October three members of this panel gave further recommendations onbullion policy.⁸¹ Grimani, Darpin, and Duodo presented a series of resolutionsto curb the circulation of counterfeit ducats through the supervision of Ger-mans at the fondaco and of moneychangers by the gold estimators; these passedwith little opposition. Michele Duodo also made a series of proposals on hisown. One sought to grant to the silver officials joint jurisdiction with the stateprovisioners and contraband officials over the silver auctions; this received a plu-rality on the first ballot but lost on the second. Another of Duodo’s proposals,which took away from the silver officials the right to fine moneychangers forconcealing their silver, resulted in a deadlock after four votes but was carriedeasily a month later. The third, which required buyers of silver to pay for it atthe office of the silver officials with actual coinage (pecunia numerata) rather than


⁷⁹ May : PMV, ‒, #‒, and ASV, SM, R. , f. v.⁸⁰It was probably at this juncture that the advisor Grimani made a speech in the Senate sup-porting this resolution which led to his verbal assault by a silver official at the Rialto a few dayslater: July : ASV, AC Raspe, R. /, fasc. , f. v.⁸¹ Oct. : PMV, ‒, #.

bank money, appears to have been a compromise on the stricter antibanker leg-islation proposed by Darpin and Loredan five months earlier; it passed despitean attempt by two of the counselors to have it tabled for two more weeks. Thefinal act of this panel of advisors was the recommendation of Duodo the nextmonth that fines for the secret sale of bullion not be forgiven; a penalty was tobe levied on anyone who proposed or voted for such a grazia; after five ballots thismeasure passed by a small margin.⁸²

In the legislation of this panel, Duodo can be seen as a mediating force,drafting legislation acceptable to supporters of the silver officials and the mon-eychangers and initiating action to deal with the problem of collusive biddingin the silver auctions. In a climate of dissension and partisan strife, the advisors,especially Michele Duodo, led the Senate to a series of compromises that gaveconcessions to all the interested parties and allowed vitally important legislationto be enacted.

In , Panel XVI was created to deal with the monetary emergencies ofthe War of Chioggia. In April, the salaries of all Venetian officials were suspendedfor the duration of the war, and this money was turned over to the state to meetexpenses; probably around this time the team of advisors was charged with devis-ing monetary policy to provide additional income for the war expenses.⁸³ Thispanel included the prominent banker Pietro Benedetto as well as Benedetto So-ranzo and Andrea Donato, who was probably the individual of that name whowas in the top decile of assessments listed in the estimo of the same year (Bene-detto was in the second decile and Soranzo in the sixth). The constitution ofthis panel seems to reflect a willingness to let the monetary policy in this timeof fiscal crisis be devised by those whose personal wealth most depended on it.This may have been a concession to those who were financing the war, or it mayhave been an effort to get advice from those with the most sophisticated under-standing of monetary questions.

On May, Nicolò Gabriel, one of the heads of the Forty, proposed a debase-ment of the soldino by more than percent, with no change in the mint pricefor silver of the quinto, thereby giving the mint that much added profit on the


⁸² Nov. : PMV, , #.⁸³The panel’s authorization was renewed on Apr. : PMV, ‒, #. The original autho-rization is not extant, nor is the original text of the Apr. suspension of salaries, known fromthe Capitolare dalle Broche: Cap. Broche, ‒ (cf. Cap. Broche, xiv n. ); these acts may have beenrecorded in a register of the Senato Secreta (containing wartime regulations not made public)which followed the extant register L (= D), which covers ‒.

minting of captive silver.⁸⁴ The panel of advisors proposed an even more radi-cal change in the money. The grosso, which had not been minted for two decades,would be revived at percent less weight than previously and at a much increasedofficial tariff in terms of the soldino-based petty coinage: pennies rather than pennies. Donato and Soranzo proposed a debasement of the soldino of .percent, while the banker Benedetto proposed one of . percent; the price ofsilver of the quinto was to remain unchanged in these proposals as well. Gabriel’sproposal received only six votes; Donato and Soranzo’s gained over that ofBenedetto in the course of five ballots to pass the next day with sixty votes aye,seventeen nay, and twenty-five abstentions.⁸⁵

Most of the other provisions passed on the recommendation of this panelwere reforms aimed at encouraging silver to be brought to the mint, curbing theclipping of coins, and ensuring the circulation of Venetian coins in the colonies.The penny, which was increasingly becoming a fiduciary coinage, was debased.A major victory for bankers did emanate from this legislation: a provision re-scinded the requirement of that purchases of silver be paid in coin andallowed the use of bank money for such transactions; it passed with little oppo-sition. A special college, including the advisors on coinage, was established toimplement these changes and select two nobles who would oversee the work andaccounts of the mintmasters. Provisions introduced by the banker Benedettoalone allowed moneychangers at San Marco to operate on Sundays and holidaysfor the benefit of pilgrims and instructed the gold estimators to check theirscales periodically and impose modest fines on those that were inaccurate.

The mutation that passed ended up with the least physical debasement ofthe petty coinage among those proposed and would have caused the least harmto wage earners paid in this currency. The effect of the debasement and upwardsvaluation of the grosso is harder to gauge, since the grosso coin had not beenminted for so long. Merchants whose trading partners would not accept the new,lighter grosso might experience some loss, but at least they would be assured ofa steady supply of newly minted coins to use for trade. The bankers achievedlegal sanction for speculation in the silver market, which had been a point ofcontention for many years. This concession may have been an exchange for theacquiescence of the bankers to a more moderate debasement of the coinage thanthat proposed by their representative, Pietro Benedetto.


⁸⁴ May : PMV, ‒, #. The price of silver was quoted in terms of the old grosso ofaccount of pennies, not the new real coin worth pennies.⁸⁵ May : PMV, ‒, #.

In , the doge’s counselors proposed to the Senate the creation of a panelof advisors for the reform of the gold and silver mint; bankers were specificallyexcluded from participation.⁸⁶ Three men were elected, but the name of Gio-vanni di Garzoni was canceled because “he didn’t come on time” and that ofMarco da Molin because he was a member of the Council of Ten. FrancescoGirardi was the only elected advisor who accepted. In January the authorizationof this Panel XXII of mint advisors was extended through April, but it is notknown who joined Girardi on the panel.⁸⁷ No significant legislation was forth-coming from this panel.

Two years later, in February , a different team of counselors and headsof the Forty proposed the creation of another panel of mint advisors with leg-islation having the exact same wording as in , both in the preamble and inthe qualifications and terms of service; the same three men were elected: di Gar-zoni, Girardi, and da Molin.⁸⁸ Giovanni di Garzoni had served on Panel XXI in; he had been made a noble in and was in the middle of a career of highstate offices.⁸⁹ Francesco Girardi was a cloth merchant who had also been ad-mitted to the Great Council in , probably for contributions to the state dur-ing the War of Chioggia; his career included service as a counselor. Da Molinwas of an old family and was near the beginning of a service career that includedmembership in the Council of Ten and the council advisors. This was a panel ofthree wealthy and powerful men with a strong record of state service. All threewould be among the final panel of forty-one electors who made Francesco Fos-cari doge in in one of the most crucial elections in Venetian history.

Panel XXIII made its report in April with a series of reforms for thegold mint and for the trade in gold which take ten folio pages in the Misti ofthe Senate.⁹⁰The first act was introduced by two counselors and one head of theForty; it rescinded the provision in the authorization of the panel which allowedthe interested mintmasters and gold estimators to be present for the debate.Then the advisors gave their recommendations; di Garzoni gave his own pro-posal, and da Molin and Girardi jointly presented an alternative. The proposal


⁸⁶ Sept. : ASV, SM, R. , f. .⁸⁷ Jan. []: ASV, SM, R. , f. .⁸⁸ Feb. []: ASV, SM, R. , f. .⁸⁹See Stahl, “Prosopography.”Three members of the de Garzoni family appear on the estimo of as nobles, including Bandin de Garzoni, who appears as one of the four most highlyassessed nobles on the list, but this is no doubt a reflection of the fact that the extant text ofthe estimo was redacted in later times and assigns noble status to families that had not yetachieved it. See Mueller, Venetian Money Market, ‒, for the composition of the estimo.⁹⁰ Apr. : ASV, SM, R. , ff. v–v.

of di Garzoni was radical; rather than have the mint buy gold at whatever fine-ness it was offered and refine it to the purity needed for ducats, the mint wouldprovide the facilities for the merchants to refine their own gold and would buyit only when it was the proper fineness. This would eliminate the possibility ofdiscrepancies between the amount of gold sold to the mint and the quantity thatwas actually coined. To supervise this process a new official, an inquisitor, wouldbe elected who would oversee all aspects of the procedure and keep his ownaccounts. This proposal, which would have weakened the state’s control over themovement of bullion within the city and turned over a part of the minting pro-cedure to private hands, received only votes of the members of the Sen-ate who had voted on the provision to ban the mintmasters from the debate.

The legislation proposed by da Molin and Girardi, which passed by an un-recorded margin, demonstrates the difficulties that privatization of refining wasintended to avoid. The number of gold estimators was raised, and explicit pro-cedures were detailed as to how to decide disagreements among them. The ac-count officials were designated as an additional control on both the mintmastersand the gold estimators, checking gold between its estimation and casting, check-ing refined ingots, and checking struck ducats.

After about a year of participating in this arrangement, the account officialscame to the counselors and reported that the system for the refining of gold wasunworkable.⁹¹ The counselors proposed that the doge, counselors, heads of theForty, and council advisors appoint three advisors to recommend changes; thiswas passed unanimously by the Senate with the provision that the account offi-

cials could offer proposals as well as the advisors. Giovanni di Garzoni andFrancesco Girardi were reelected as advisors. The third member of the panel wasScipione Bon, who had served as an account official in and was of an oldfamily that had produced two earlier mint advisors as well as several mint offi-

cials. In January the Senate delegated the consideration of reforms to a col-lege consisting of the doge, counselors, heads of the Forty, council advisors,budget advisors, order advisors, state advocates, account officials, and the threemint advisors.⁹²

Again, the recommendations were split, this time with each mint advisormaking a separate report.⁹³ Giovanni di Garzoni modified his previous pro-posal, letting the mintmasters do the actual refining of merchants’ gold but giv-ing the merchants the ashes and cauldrons to extract the flux themselves. The


⁹¹ Oct. : ASV, SM, R. , f. .⁹² Jan. []: ASV, SM, R. , f. v.⁹³ Jan. []: ASV, SM, R. , ff. v–v.

account officials would examine the ducats once a week, but Garzoni made noprovision for further controls by the gold estimators. The effect of this resolu-tion would have been to strengthen the position of the mintmasters. This pro-posal received eleven votes on the first ballot of the twenty-eight-man college.Francesco Girardi proposed to solve the problems by adding two additional mint-masters for gold, who would generally shadow the two working ones and keepseparate accounts; a corollary proposal would have given the gold estimators lessscrutiny by the merchants when inspecting gold. These proposals of Girardi,which show suspicion of the mintmasters and trust for the estimators, receivedonly four votes of the twenty-five members of the college present.

The proposals that passed were those put forward by Scipione Bon, the for-mer account official; on two of the sections he was joined as proposer by Ber-nardo Bembo, who was currently an account official. Not surprisingly, certainof their proposals gave added power to the account officials, especially provi-sions that kept the mintmasters from making payments for supplies without thepermission of the account officials and which gave these officials one-quarter ofthe fines levied on mintmasters who did not file their accounts properly. Bon’sprocedure on the refining of merchants’ gold was similar to that of Garzoni butincluded a step of sending the ingots to the Rialto to be checked by the goldestimators; it passed with eighteen votes on the second ballot. Not all of Bon’sresolutions were carried; a proposal that would have expedited the mint’s re-coinage of the gold coins of other mints failed by a vote of seventeen to eleven.

The controversies revealed by the positions of the advisors for the legisla-tion of , then, point mainly to the competitions among various state bureau-cracies, especially the efforts of the mintmasters, the gold estimators, and theaccount officials to have the strongest voice in the determination of the finenessof gold bullion sold to the mint. The results of the balloting in the select col-lege that made the regulations indicate a victory for the account officials, led bythe advisor Scipione Bon, formerly one of their number.

This survey of the politics underlying the changes in mint policy in thefourteenth century and early fifteenth has identified some of the groups whohad an interest in such legislation: merchants trading with the East, Venetiansspeculating in gold and silver, moneychangers and bankers, salaried workers whoreceived wages in a given coinage, holders of various offices who might benefitfrom fines and additional powers, the mintmasters and weighers. In most cases,the documents give only decisions; in the cases in which they give the names ofpeople making conflicting proposals we have only scattered and impressionisticdata to tie the names with a group that might have a position.


It does appear, however, that different interests were represented in the adop-tion of various monetary policies. At some periods the voices of bankers pre-dominated; at others they were explicitly excluded from panels of advisors. Somepanels of advisors comprised only members of the old, elite families; membersof wealthy families recently admitted to the nobility dominated others. The over-all pattern remained the same: a problem was identified, individuals were chargedwith proposing solutions, and a council voted on the proposals. In a series ofvotes, compromise measures were introduced which gave benefits to powerfulgroups while allowing the passage of legislation to address an underlying problem.

There is no evidence of defined factional groups underlying the competinginterests, but what has been examined here represents only a small segment ofthe political process of the day. Once further information is assembled on moreissues and individuals, we may be able to form a more comprehensive view ofthe politics underlying the legislation of the Venetian councils. What is evidentnow is that decisions reflecting the interests of the politically active members ofthe noble class were enacted following a process of fact-finding, alternative pro-posals, and compromises.


Government Control of the Bullion �arket

The control of the bullion market in Venice was necessary to ensure that themint had sufficient quantities of metal for coinage. It was also of direct im-portance to all aspects of Venetian commercial life. Merchants needed access toa well-regulated supply of gold and silver of known quality as the basis for pur-chases in the East, whether such bullion was to be carried as ingots of certifiedfineness or cut and stamped into coins of controlled weight as well as fineness.Gold and silver were usually subject to import duties, so the control of the mar-ket was as much a concern for state finances as for merchant activity. The highvalue per volume of silver and gold made their sale and working especially liableto fraud and deceit. Technical difficulty in detecting adulteration in alloys of bothmetals made the state more dependent on the expertise of a limited number of in-dividuals than in the regulation of shipbuilding, salt exploitation, or the cloth trade.

The principal mechanism whereby the Venetian state supervised the bullionmarket was the same as for most aspects of the economy: the creation of officeswhose holders had the responsibility to monitor prescribed activities and aneconomic incentive to find and prosecute wrongdoers. To prevent these officialsfrom abusing their powers or ignoring their responsibilities, they were chosen byelection in the councils on a regular basis; sometimes they were barred fromreelection to an office. Nevertheless, these officials often did become establishedin their offices and, like bureaucrats in all ages, fought to protect their privilegesin extended interagency competitions for jurisdictions.

An example of how the system of officials was used to enforce regulationscan be seen in an act of the Senate in forbidding one person to act as a bro-ker for another in the purchase of silver.¹ A fine was set at one-half the value of

¹ Dec. : PMV, ‒, #.

silver sold in contravention to the regulation, with no opportunity for a pardon(grazia) of the fine; a penalty of £, was even set against anyone introducinga motion for such a pardon. The fine was to be divided three ways: the accuserto receive one-third, the silver officials one-third, and the state treasury one-third. Participants in such illegal conspiracies would be forgiven their fine andreceive one-third of the total collected if they reported the activity to the silverofficials. The silver officials were given specific instructions as to how they couldbring charges; in this case it was to be by either accusation or inquisition as de-cided by a majority of them.

Unlike such rival minters as Hungary and Serbia, medieval Venice had nomines whose bullion would come to the state mint as a matter of course. Instead,the mint mainly coined the metal of merchants from abroad, who brought goldand silver to Venice either to spend there on products from the East or to carrywith them on their own commercial voyages. Bullion was also sold to the mintby Venetian citizens, many of whom appear to have speculated in the market forprecious metals. Foreign coins, worn and clipped coins, and counterfeit coinswere also brought to the mint for transformation into new Venetian coinage.In almost all these cases, a percentage of the metal was held back by the mint,partly to pay the expenses of minting (brassage) and partly as profit to the state(seigniorage).

Although most silver and gold came to Venice commercially from abroad,there were a couple of potential domestic sources of mint bullion. In the con-cession of setting up the semiautonomous government of Crete, Doge PietroZiani reserved to the Venetian state any silver or alluvial gold that might be foundon the island.² A pact in between Venice and Florentine proprietors of acopper mine provided that all ore not sent to Flanders by land be sent to Venice,where it was to be refined.³ After the acquisition of lands on the mainland, Venicemade an agreement with a German Henry of Heslingen to allow him to exploita silver mine in Venetian territory near Belluno in exchange for one-tenth of theore found there.⁴ These few isolated examples, none of which is known actuallyto have yielded results, only serve to reinforce how dependent Venice was onimportation by merchants for its sources of bullion.

Government Control of the Bullion Market

²Sept. : Tafel and Thomas, Urkunden, : , #.³ Apr. : LCR, :, #.⁴ Apr. : ASV, SM, R. , f. ; a facsimile of this document is in Cessi, Storia della Repub-

Like most other commodities imported into Venice, gold and silver weresubject to an import duty (dazio) collected by the Office of Extraordinaries. Toattract bullion to the mint, in those who brought silver to the mint wereexempted from the duty on it.⁵ By a duty of . percent was in effect forimporters of silver; exemptions were made in that year for all merchants exceptGermans and then limited to Lucchesi and Hungarians.⁶ The duty stood at .percent in .⁷ It was then lowered to . percent, presumably to encouragetrade, but the loss to the state was so great that the old rate was restored a decadelater.⁸ The rate of . percent duty on silver imports was, however, eventuallyestablished and was confirmed regularly through , when it was made perma-nent.⁹ There is no later mention of such a duty, but it was not canceled in theregisters of the Senate, which were reviewed several times in the course of thefourteenth century and invalid acts canceled. By , however, the duty on sil-ver was at £. per mark (about %) and was reduced to £. to encourageimports.¹⁰ A special duty of percent on gold and silver imported by sea from“outside the Gulf ” (beyond the Adriatic) was in effect in the late fourteenthcentury; it was lowered to percent in and eliminated entirely in .¹¹

Most bullion sold or minted in Venice was brought there by merchants re-ferred to as Germans (L: teutonici; V: todeschi). At the beginning of the thirteenthcentury, a German named Bernard appears to have had a monopoly on the sup-ply of silver to Venice from the German Alps, Hungary, and Transylvania.¹² Hiswill of included a patrimony worth about £,, second only to that ofthe doge, and a house previously belonging to a former doge and alongside thatof the current one. The Venetian merchant manual known as the Zibaldone daCanal, dating from the early fourteenth century, introduces instructions for cal-


blica, pl. , following p. . Later mining on the Venetian Terraferma is reviewed by PhilippeBraunstein, “Les entreprises minières en Vénétie au XVe sièle,” Mélanges d’archéologie et d’histoire del’École Française de Rome (): ‒.⁵ Sept. : DMC, :‒, and PMV, , #; this was canceled around as no longervalid: ASV, AC Fractus, f. .⁶ July : DMC, :, and PMV, , #; Sept. : DMC, :; PMV, , #.⁷ Apr. : DMC, :‒, #; PMV, ‒, #.⁸ May : DMC, :, #; PMV, , #; Papadopoli, :.⁹E.g., Jan. []: Cessi et al., Deliberazioni, :, #; July : ibid., :, #; July :Thomas, Capitolare, , #, and ASV, SM, R. , f. .¹⁰ Jan. []: Cap. Broche, ‒.¹¹ Jan. []: PMV, , # as ; June : ASV, SM, R. , f. .¹²Stromer, Bernardus Teotonicus, ‒.

culating bullion amounts by saying that Venetian moneychangers buy unrefinedsilver coming from Germany and Hungary.¹³

Specific information on the origins of a few of the fourteenth-century im-porters is known from pardons for fines for infractions of bullion regulations;these are especially rich for the s, just after the initiation of new procedures.Among the German sellers of silver were Rigus of Vienna in , Athemano in, Christian of Vienna in , and three merchants of Regensburg later thesame year, Conrad of Vienna in , Henry of Augsburg in , and Henry ofSalchemburg (Salzburg?) in .¹⁴ Conrad of Rastatt and Johannes and Theo-dore of Poland were included among the “German” importers of silver.¹⁵ Eventhough they were not merchants, the teutonici Lovecher and Rambret of Carinthia,soldiers in service to the count of Gorizia, were held to the same regulations andfined for bringing marks of silver into Venice in to buy cloth to make uni-forms.¹⁶ A certain Tunfred of Rheinberg brought about marks of gold to therefinery at the Rialto according to regulations, only to have the crucible burstand some of his bullion disappear; he was reimbursed for his loss.¹⁷ One docu-ment refers to Jewish merchants importing bullion: in Joshua of “Cerigo inAlemania” (probably Zähringen) along with three partners came to Venice on aFriday and failed to present £ worth of silver to the authorities as prescribedon the following day because it was their sabbath.¹⁸

An example of the role of Germans in the import of bullion to Venice canbe seen in the activity of the Regensburg merchant Matthäus Runtinger in thelate fourteenth century. In he brought marks (about . kg) of gold and marks (. kg) of silver to Venice and took back saffron, coral, and pepperfor clients in Bavaria, Frankfurt, Prague, and Vienna.¹⁹ Twelve years later he


¹³Alfredo Stussi, ed., Zibaldone da Canal: Manoscritto mercantile del sec. XIV, FSV, th sec. (Venice,), .¹⁴Henry Simonsfeld, Der Fondaco dei Tedeschi in Venedig und die deutsch-venetianischen Handelsbeziehungen, vols. (Stuttgart, ), :, #; , #; , #‒; , #; Oct. : ASV, GR, R. ,f. ; Jan. []: GR, R. , f. v; Apr. : GR, R. , f. .¹⁵Simonsfeld, Fondaco, :, #; , #.¹⁶ Aug. : ASV, AC, Neptunus, f. .¹⁷ May : ASV, SN, Sentenze, R. , ff. v–.¹⁸Simonsfeld, Fondaco, :, #.¹⁹Franz Bastian, ed., Das Runtingerbuch ‒ und verwandes Material zum regensburger-südostdeutschenHandel und Münzwesen, Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Historische Kommission,Deutsche Handelsakten des Mittelalaters und der Neuzeit, ‒. vols. (Regensburg, Germany,‒), :.

brought ½ marks ( kg) of silver, and in he sent two pieces of silver,one weighing marks ( kg) and one more than (almost kg).²⁰ In a two-year span in the same period, Hilpolt Kress of Nuremberg sold ½ marks (.kg) of gold and about marks ( kg) of silver in Venice.²¹

Merchants from other parts of Italy also brought bullion to Venice. In thewake of a conflict with the Florentine banking house of the Frescobaldi, Tyroleanmerchants of northern Italy sold more than marks ( kg) of gold in Venicein .²² Among the merchants fined for infractions of the bullion import reg-ulations of the s were men from Perugia, Milan, Verona, Ravenna, Parma,Florence, and Reggio.²³ In his merchant manual composed around the s, theFlorentine Francesco Pegolotti gave his countrymen advice on selling silver atthe Venetian zecca.²⁴ He warned them to report the imported bullion to the sil-ver officials within three days and, if they wished it coined, to sell it directly tothe mint within a week; he told them to anticipate a wait of fifteen to twentydays to receive their grossi.

There were other sources of bullion, especially to the east. Starting in thelate thirteenth century, Ragusa (Dubrovnik) became a major source of silver,particularly that from the rich mines in Serbia.²⁵ Legislation of on proce-dures for imported silver specified that Ragusans as well as Lombards would besubject to the same regulations as Germans.²⁶ Ragusan merchants claimed igno-rance of the complex Venetian bullion regulations in their pleas for pardons inthe early fourteenth century, which may be an indication that their activity wassporadic.²⁷ In one period, at least, bullion arriving from the East was a major


²⁰Ibid., ‒ and .²¹Philippe Braunstein, “Relations d’affaires entre nurembergeois et vénitiens à al fin du XIVesiècle,” Mélanges d’archéologie et d’histoire de l’École Française de Rome, (), ‒; Wolfgang vonStromer, Oberdeutsche Hochfinanz, ‒, Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschafts-geschichte, Beihefte ‒ (Wiesbaden, ), ‒.²²Josef Riedmann, Die Beziehungen der Grafen und Landesfürsten von Tirol zu Italien bis zum Jahre (Vienna, ), ‒. This gold was apparently only about carats fine, as it sold for about ducats per Venetian mark.²³ July : ASV, GR, R. , f. v; May : GR, R. , f. v; Mar. : GR, R. , f. v; Jan. []: SM, R. , f. v; Feb. []: SM, R. , f. ; Nov. : SM, R. , f. v; Dec. : SM, R. , f. v.²⁴Pegolotti, Pratica, ‒.²⁵Barisa Krekic, Dubrovnik (Raguse) et le levant au Moyen Âge, École Pratique des Hautes Études, VIeSection, Documents et recherches, (Paris, ), , #. This bullion was sometimes soldindirectly, as in a sale in by a Florentine agent and one in sent via Ancona: SusanMosher Stuard, “The Adriatic Trade in Silver, c.,” Studi veneziani ‒ (‒): .²⁶Lane and Mueller, Coins and Moneys of Account, , c. .²⁷ Nov. : ASV, MC, Civicus, f. ; Feb. : GR, R. , f. ; Feb. []: GR, R. ,

source of supply. By , a flood of gold had arrived at Venice, necessitating amajor expansion of the mint (see above, Chap. ). This gold came from manysources, as evidenced by a decision of the Forty to set up special provisions todeal with the gold coming in galleys at the same time that the regular procedureswere followed for supplying coins to Germans bearing bullion.²⁸ In the sameperiod, , a Venetian moneychanger, Andrea Gabriel, was prosecuted for hav-ing cast silver into ingots in the Aegean, forged the official stamp, and broughtit into Venice without declaring it all.²⁹

The market for silver in medieval Venice was not simply a matter of Ger-mans bringing in bullion, some of which was sold to the mint and then exportedeither as bullion or as Venetian coins. There was an active speculative market insilver among Venetians, one that the state continually sought to control. Thiswas done to keep the market open and honest for the sake of German and Vene-tian merchants and also to provide a profit for the state. The workings of thisspeculative market are illustrated in the investments of the estate of GiovanniStornado, a moneychanger and mintmaster who died in , probably as a re-sult of the plague.³⁰

In his will of , Stornado instructed his executors to invest the remain-der of his estate (after specific bequests) in the silver market. They were to buysilver each year just after the galleys departed, at which time low demand wouldproduce the lowest price, and sell it the next year just before the galleys sailed,when the demand and price would be highest. If these investments earned atotal of percent interest after three years, they were to be continued; other-wise the capital was to be invested in state bonds until his son came of age, atwhich point he would be given half the money as a stake in commercial invest-ments.

Most, if not all, of the four executors named by Stornado appear to havedied in the plague, and the will was executed by the Procurators of San Marco,


f. v. In , a patrician of Ragusa sent to a compatriot in Venice pounds of silver and asmall quantity of gold for sale there: Barisa Krekic, “Un mercante e diplomatico da Dubrovnika Venezia,” Studi veneziani (): .²⁸ Dec. : DQ , :, #.²⁹ Feb. []: ASV, GR, R. , f. v; this individual went on to serve as a mint advisor twicebefore being banned from moneychanging for additional infractions in .³⁰ASV, PSM, Comm. Misti, B. A. A discussion of this document, along with a transcriptionof the relevant part of Stornado’s will, is in Mueller, Procuratori di San Marco, ‒.

as was Venetian custom. They carried out the instructions in his will. Between November and January , they bought a total of about marks(. kg) of silver. Of this, marks was silver de bulla, which they bought at£. a mark for a total of about £,. The rest was of lesser fineness, forwhich they paid £. per mark. All of this bullion was probably paid for ingold ducats, at the rate of ducat equal to £..³¹

The executors took the marks of de bulla silver, which they had pur-chased for about £,, to the mint to be made into grosso coins. After a delayof four months they received from the mint newly coined silver grossi totaling£ s d gr d of grossi; that is, they received , grosso coins (plus changeworth ¹²⁄³² of a grosso). This means that the mint paid them back for their marks at a rate of about ⅓ grosso coins per mark. Grossi were then beingminted at ½ per mark, so the mint was keeping coins per mark, or about a percent fee. Each of the grosso coins, then, had cost them .d (£.), anagio of .d over the d account value of the grosso.

Three years later, between September and February , the executorssold these coins and the remaining silver bullion. For the bullion they got £.

per mark, a very modest profit of . percent over the £. they had paid forit. When they sold the newly minted grossi, they realized an agio that amountedto only .d per coin, well below that they had paid to the mint. In the end,instead of making a profit, the executors had in fact lost about . percent oftheir investment on this silver speculation.

The account book of the executors of the estate of Pietro Soranzo fromabout two decades later reflects the activity of Venetian merchants in the goldmarket.³² In November , eight months after Soranzo’s death, a galley arrivedfrom Tana on the Black Sea bearing about ½ marks (. kg) of gold belong-ing to him; there is no indication of how or why the gold was acquired or atwhat cost. The executors had to pay about £ freight fee (nabulum) on the goldand an additional £. to have it cast into an ingot and £. to have it checkedby the gold estimators, who declared it to be of ¾ carats fineness (%).³³The gold was then taken to the mint, and four months later, the mintmasterpaid the estate gold ducats plus change (a return of ducats per mark, or


³¹The ducat carried no agio in ‒: Lane and Mueller, Coins and Moneys of Account, .³²ASV, PSM, Misti, B. , quaderno , ff. and v.³³These fees are in accordance with the information in a mid-fourteenth-century Venetian mer-chant manual, which notes an expense of grosso per mark for refining gold and pennies permark to have it estimated: Tarifa zoè noticia dy pexi e mexure (Venice, ), ‒.

.%). In all, the freight and other fees, plus the mint profit, had amounted toabout . percent of the bullion value of the gold.³⁴

For the most part, the import of bullion from Italy or the East appears tohave been relatively unusual; the usual source was German merchants, at least inthe imprecise application of the term to anyone from north of the Alps. It isthen not surprising, then, that the first line of control of bullion import wascentered in the Fondaco dei Tedeschi (fig. ). The Fondaco dei Tedeschi wascentral to the Venetian control of all aspects of commerce involving merchantsfrom the north.³⁵ Upon arriving in the city, they were to go directly to this impos-ing building, located on the San Marco side of the Rialto bridge (the structure,as rebuilt in the sixteenth century, is now the central post office of Venice). Thefondaco served as lodging and storehouse for all German merchants in Venice;its directors, known as the Visdomini, or vice-lords, were in a perfect locationto monitor all their activities.³⁶

In the thirteenth century, all German merchants coming to the fondaco hadto declare all their gold and silver to the vice-lords within two days; if they failedto do this, they faced a fine of about percent of the value of the silver and percent of the value of the gold.³⁷The merchants could then offer the silver and,after , gold at the mint.³⁸The vice-lords of the fondaco then carried the gold(if not sold directly to the mint) themselves to the Rialto bridge for the publicauctions held there twice a day.³⁹ The same procedure was followed for silver atcertain periods, such as from mid-May to mid-August and other times whenmerchants had a great need for silver and the mint was banned from buying it.⁴⁰

By the end of the thirteenth century, the surveillance over imported bullion


³⁴The ducats were worth about £ at the current exchange rate of £. to the ducat: Laneand Mueller, Coins and Moneys of Account, .³⁵In general, see Simonsfeld, Fondaco.³⁶Giorgio Zordan, I visdomini di Venezia nel sec. XIII, Pubblicazioni della Facoltà di Giurisprudenzadell’Università di Padova, (Padua, ), ‒.³⁷ Apr. : DMC, :; PMV, . The fine was £ per mark for silver (which had a mint priceof about £. in : DMC, :‒) and £ per mark of gold (which had a mint price of£ per mark in : DMC, :‒, #).³⁸ Apr. : DMC, :; Apr. : DMC, :, #, and PMV, , #.³⁹ Dec. : DMC, :; Feb. []: PMV, ‒, #.⁴⁰ July : DMC, :, #, and PMV, , #.

was taken over by the gold and silver officials at the Rialto, and the role of thevice-lords of the fondaco was mainly to see that there was no interference withthe merchants before they could declare it to these officials. Merchants still hadto declare all their gold and silver upon arrival in Venice to the vice-lords or theirscribe. In due course, the Rialto officials would notify the vice-lords of all thebullion declared to them, and a discrepancy between the two amounts would re-sult in a fine of percent of the value of the undeclared bullion, one-third ofwhich fine went to the vice-lords.⁴¹To guard against such discrepancies, the Fortyordered in that the vice-lords put the Germans’ silver in sealed bags and havetheir own agents escort the merchants to the officials in person.⁴²

The silver brokers (L: misseta; V: meseta) played a key role in monitoring theactivities of Germans with silver for sale. Their main duty was to accompanyforeign merchants with silver and make sure they sold it at the prescribed place


⁴¹ Apr. : DMC, :‒, #, and PMV, ‒, #; Mar. : MC Presbiter, f. v.,and Thomas, Capitolare, ‒, #.⁴² Dec. : Lane and Mueller, Coins and Moneys of Account, ‒, #; May : Thomas,Capitolare, ‒, #.

Fig. . The Fondaco dei Tedeschi, or German Fondaco, just on the San Marco side ofthe Rialto Bridge. The building is recognizable by its double courtyard.

Source: Detail from woodcut by Jacopo de’ Barbari,


and in the correct manner; they were subject to personal fines if such procedureswere ignored.⁴³ One of them had to be present whenever a potential purchaserof bullion entered the room of a German merchant.⁴⁴ He was responsible forreporting to the vice-lords any suspicions of an illegal sale of bullion; if such asale went through, he could be fined and banned from serving in the future asa silver broker.⁴⁵ He was also responsible for reporting to the authorities anysuspected collusion among purchasers of silver to control the price.⁴⁶ Brokerswere categorized as “brokers of the fondaco,” “brokers of the Rialto,” or “sil-ver brokers.” In , the silver brokers were required to share their fee with thestate, as those of the other two categories had been obliged to do: for each pieceof silver weighed all agents had to turn over £., which represented half theirfee.⁴⁷

For a brief period in the s, the number of brokers for silver was lim-ited to ten men, who had to be elected by the doge and his council and approvedin the Forty every six months.⁴⁸ Two slates of these men are known from theextant fragment of the deliberations of the Forty in this period.⁴⁹The electionsrecorded take the form of a review (proba), an approval on the basis of an inquiryof performance. Of the ten current brokers in September , eight passed thereview, and two failed; four additional men were elected in the following year.

The fourteen known silver brokers of ‒ were of varied social back-grounds, but several appear to have been active as individuals in the silver trade.⁵⁰Two of these agents were members of the Quintavalle family, Catarino and hisson Francesco; both were moneychangers active in the silver trade on their own


⁴³ Dec. : NMC, ‒.⁴⁴ Oct. : Lane and Mueller, Coins and Moneys of Account, ‒, #.⁴⁵ Oct. : DMC, :, #; Mar. : ASV, MC, Presbiter, f. v.; Feb. []: DQ ,:‒, #.⁴⁶ Dec. : PMV, ‒, #.⁴⁷ Feb. []: ASV, SM, R. , f. .⁴⁸ Sept. : DQ , :, # (reference to nonextant law of Nov. establishing procedure); Mar. : DQ , :, #; Sept. : DQ , :‒, # (revocation of procedure).⁴⁹ Sept. : DQ , :, #; Mar. : DQ , :, #.⁵⁰Two appear not to have been noble: Nicoleto Rizzo and Pietro Sclavo were from families forwhom there is no record of noble status in the period; individuals with both family namesappear as non-nobles in the estimo of about . Nine were from families known as noble inthe Great Council and for whom all of the names in the estimo are listed as noble: BonaventuraAlberti, Ermolao Baffo, Marin de Equilo, Giovanni de Fano, Lorenzo Minio, Catarino andFrancesco Quintavalle, Simone Venier, Pietro Zulian; Cf. DMC, :‒, and Gino Luzzatto,ed., I prestiti della Repubblica di Venezia, DF, d ser., , pt. (Venice, ), ‒, #. Three hadfamily names held by both nobles and non-nobles: Leonardo Boldù, Ventura Bon, and MarcoRosso.

behalf.⁵¹ The Marco Rosso elected silver broker in September to replaceone of those who failed the inquiry may be the same as the moneychanger ofthat name who was attacked in by members of the de Bora family for threat-ening their monopoly on moneychanging in the Piazza San Marco and who lostan arm in the fighting.⁵² The non-noble Nicoleto Rizzo, who passed both in-quiries in and , had come to this office after having been expelled fromhis job as public refiner in the mint for switching silver samples before an assay.⁵³Pietro Sclavo, also a non-noble, appears to have been a longtime employee of theFondaco dei Tedeschi.⁵⁴

The chief control over the movement of bullion in Venice was exercised byofficials who had offices at the Rialto, that is, in the market on the side of the


⁵¹Catarino was the uncle of Donato Quintavalle, the moneychanger whose bank failed in ;they were involved jointly in a loan contract that year: May : ASV, GR, R. , f. ; seeMueller, Venetian Money Market, , and Stahl, “Prosopography,” under Donato Quintavalle forinformation on the background of the family. Francesco was fined in for not putting marks of silver in the mint as quinto; he was pardoned from the fine because of professed igno-rance of regulations: May : GR, R. , f. , approved by the Forty and Great Council twoyears later. This document identifies Francesco as the son of Catarino and refers to him as bothFrancesco and Franceschino, the form that appears in the election in the Forty. Catarinoappears to have been a major figure in the silver market; a general audit of his accounts in revealed a total of about , marks (about , kg) of silver purchased by him in that yearalone; in the same year he was called to testify about marks of Serbian grossi that he hadexamined for purchase: Apr. : ASV, GR, R. , f. v; June : GR, R. , f. v. Otherbrushes with the silver officials in the same year are recorded for Feb. []: GR, R. , f. v,and Nov. : GR, R. , f. v.⁵² Mar. : ASV, AC Raspe, R. /, f. v. This was, however, a common family name(or even epithet based on hair or skin color): eleven nobles and eight non-nobles in the estimohave the last name of Rosso or Rubeo. In this Marco Rosso was given special permissionto sell wine of Malvasia because of his lost arm: May : GR, R. , f. .⁵³ Aug. : AC Raspe, R. /. f. v. He was still a silver agent in , when he wasfined for illegally unsheathing a sword in public: May : GR, R. , f. v. That the refinerwas the same individual as the silver broker is demonstrated by his parish of Santa Maria For-mosa, the same specified in the document, as well as the same diminutive personal name.For having so traduced the honor and prestige of the alloy of Venice, Rizzo was stripped of hismint office, sentenced to half a year in jail, and banned from ever working in any capacity withgold or silver in Venice again. The ban appears to have been ignored; in addition to his electionas a silver broker in years immediately following, he was characterized as a silversmith in a courtcase in : Mar. : XL, Parti, R. , f. v.⁵⁴In he was described as an old, decrepit massarius (apparently a salaried functionary) in the

Rialto bridge away from the Fondaco dei Tedeschi and the mint and offices atSan Marco. In the thirteenth century these officials bore the title “gold estima-tors,” but they were also in charge of recording silver. The office of estimatorsappears to have been initiated in , when two goldsmiths were elected to testquantities of gold greater than saggio (about . gr) to guarantee that it was atleast percent pure, the fineness of southern Italian gold coins.⁵⁵ They couldinspect bullion only after it had been smelted in the public refinery and put ina bag closed with an official seal. They tested the gold using touchstones sup-plied by the state; if it could not be tested with a touchstone, it was to be re-smelted until it could be. Another of their duties was to test the scales used bythe moneychangers at the Rialto and San Marco at least once a month and re-port any fraud to the authorities. Their “mother weights” were also used by themintmasters to check the weights at the mint at the beginning of each fortnightof duty.⁵⁶ The gold could then be sold in only two locations, the market atthe Rialto bridge and the booths of moneychangers in the Piazza San Marco.The estimators were instructed to report all amounts of bullion weighed to thecustoms officers and officials of Friuli, including the names of both buyer andseller.⁵⁷

On October , the minting of the gold ducat was initiated, and hence-forth the control of gold bullion was of much greater importance to the Vene-tian state.⁵⁸The most immediate change was the addition of the mint as a poten-tial customer for holders of gold bullion. Sellers, presumed in the regulations tobe Germans, were to bring gold bullion to the mint after it had been examinedand weighed by the gold estimators at the Rialto and sealed by them with thestate seal.⁵⁹ The estimators did not get a raise from the state for their added


fondaco; the Senate gave him a pension of £ a year and a sinecure position in the PepperOffice, with the stipulation that if he was too weak to hold that position, he would receive apension of £ a year, equivalent to his salary in the fondaco: Nov. : ASV, SM, R. ,f. . Such generous treatment was usually reserved for those who had a long history of serviceto the state.⁵⁵Capitolare degli Orifici: Monticolo and Besta, Capitolari, :, #; DMC, :. Four yearslater, the duties of the office were elaborated, and the minimum quantity of gold that needed tobe certified was raised to ounces (about gr): June : DMC, :‒.⁵⁶ Dec. : DMC, :‒.⁵⁷This provision, probably of the Senate, is known from chap. of CMA; the datable entriesin this section are from the period ‒. Papadopoli, :‒, #; cf. Stahl, “ThirteenthCentury,” ‒, for a discussion of the composition of this section of the capitulary.⁵⁸ Oct. : DMC, :, #; Papadopoli, :.⁵⁹ June : DMC, :‒, #, and Papadopoli, :, #. An elaborated form of this provi-sion is contained in chapter of CMO: PMV, pp. ‒, #.

duties; their old salary of £ was confirmed by an act of .⁶⁰ In theelection of the gold estimators, like that of the mintmasters, was moved fromthe Great Council into the Forty.⁶¹

The constitutional changes at the end of the thirteenth century, usuallysubsumed under the term Serrata, affected the gold estimators as well as otherhigh officers of the administration. A resolution of the Great Council specify-ing officeholders eligible to take part in the important ducal election of

included the gold estimators (as well as the mintmasters) unless otherwise inel-igible; this act implies that the office of gold estimator had been one of thosethat had previously carried de officio membership in the Great Council.⁶² Afterthe changes of , when membership in the Great Council became primarilyhereditary, a provision was made that those gold estimators who were eligible forthe council not lose membership because they could not attend it on workingdays; they would still be considered members on holidays.⁶³ Later that year, amotion to make all gold estimators members of the Great Council ex officio(unless otherwise ineligible) was defeated.⁶⁴

At the end of the thirteenth century, Venetian moneychangers and bankersappear to have gotten control of the gold market and kept the price artificiallylow, to the detriment of German merchants bringing bullion for sale. To counterthis, and to keep supplies coming in for use by the mint, new regulations for thesale of gold and the responsibilities of the gold estimators were enacted in.⁶⁵ The estimators were required to examine the gold within three days ofits presentation, and the buyer of record had to pay for the gold himself withina short period of the sale. In early , the sale of gold bullion at auction wasmade subject to an examination by the gold estimators, who were to write thefineness and amount of copper in the alloy on the sealed bag.⁶⁶ If the gold wasnot of consistent enough quality to be estimated with the touchstone, it was tobe smelted and cast until it could be estimated.⁶⁷

The examination of silver was fundamentally different from that of gold.The fineness of gold could be estimated within or percent with a touchstone


⁶⁰ Feb. []: DMC, :, #.⁶¹ Aug. : DMC, :, #, and Papadopoli, :, #.⁶² Nov. : DMC, :, #.⁶³ Mar. : ASV, MC Magnus, f. v.⁶⁴ Sept. : ibid., f. v.⁶⁵ July : DMC, :, #; plus section on estimators in the capitulary of the Lords of theNight Watch: ASV, Liber primus capitulariorum, f. v.⁶⁶ Feb. []: PMV, ‒, #.⁶⁷ Sept. : Thomas, Capitolare, , #.

and needles, but that of silver could be determined only by cupellation, whichinvolved the removal of a sample and its smelting under well-controlled condi-tions. Therefore, while state officials could examine gold for fineness at a tableat the Rialto market, they could only weigh silver and examine it for stampedmarks or other signs of its origin and declared fineness. The gold estimators weregiven responsibility for examining silver in ; they were required to examineall quantities greater than ounces (about . kg).⁶⁸ At least once a week theestimators had to go to the silver mint and perform an assay on the silver coinsminted there. In their assay at the mint was extended to include the silveringots made there and stamped with grosso dies.⁶⁹ In they were made re-sponsible for settling disputes among mintmasters as to the weight of the coinsbeing struck.⁷⁰

In , the control over silver was tightened so that the state could keeptrack of all bullion and coins that passed through Venice and exact the appro-priate duty on them.⁷¹The gold estimators were directed to weigh at their tablesor at the mint all silver offered for sale and report to the Accounts Office weeklythe quantity of all bullion and coins weighed and the name of the buyer andseller. Silver could be cast only at the mint or at the state refinery at the Rialto;special scribes were hired to keep track of the bullion and file weekly accounts.The sale of silver was restricted to the mint and the booths of moneychangersat the Rialto market and in San Marco. Exceptions were made for Venetian mer-chants wishing to send silver with the caravans, who could buy it anywhere buthad to have it weighed in the prescribed places, and for pilgrims, who could buyor sell silver and have it weighed anywhere. In the procedures were tight-ened even more.⁷² Anyone bringing more than marks (. kg) of silver toVenice in any form except Venetian grossi or jewelry had to have it weighed bythe gold estimators, who reported the quantity to the appropriate vice-lords(those for Germans, Friuli, or Lombards).

In the fourteenth century, the markets for silver and gold bullion and coinswere subjected to increased regulation, and the number of officials in charge of


⁶⁸ Oct. : ASV, MC, Rubriche, R. , f. v; DMC, : as Dec.⁶⁹ June : DMC, :‒.⁷⁰ Dec. : DMC, :‒.⁷¹ Oct. : DMC, :‒; Papadopoli, :‒.⁷² Apr. : DMC, :‒, #.

monitoring imports and sales grew. The circulation of Serbian grossi and clippedVenetian grossi led to the creation of special offices to deal with each phenom-enon. As often happens among bureaucracies, the holders of these offices soughtto increase their jurisdictions beyond the original definitions and engaged in in-teragency turf wars. Eventually, both of these offices disappeared, though longafter the end of the specific situation they were ostensibly created to monitor.In the same period, the Office of Gold Estimators, long since in charge of sil-ver as well gold despite its name, expanded to include teams assigned to eachmetal and finally split to form two separate and autonomous bureaucracies: thegold estimators per se and the silver officials of the Rialto.

The Officials of Serbian Grossi

From the mid-thirteenth century on, rich silver deposits were being minedin Brskovo, Croatia, and coins from the ore minted in the name of the kings ofSerbia (grossi de Brescoa or de Rassa) were widely circulated by merchants from Ra-gusa (see above, Chap. ). These coins were modeled after Venetian grossi andcould easily be mistaken for them. They were originally made on the same stan-dard as grossi, and the responsibility for monitoring the circulating coinage forSerbian grossi was shared among existing offices. In , all officials or money-changers who received such coins were instructed to cut them in half and bringthe pieces to the mint, where the mintmasters were obliged to exchange them forthe same weight of Venetian grossi.⁷³ By the Serbian coins had becomedebased, and the mintmaster was required to assay a sample of them each fort-night to determine their fineness and the rate at which they were to be com-pensated.⁷⁴ Specific officials charged with dealing with Serbian grossi are firstdocumented in an act of .⁷⁵ In they were authorized to inspect the coinsin the possession of other offices and of private individuals and cut any Serbiancoins they discovered; they could then levy a fine that they would keep.⁷⁶ Thisperiod seems to have been the high point of the threat; no further laws weremade governing the circulation of Serbian grossi, and there are no later reportsof any fines or pardons concerning them.⁷⁷


⁷³ May : DMC, :‒; Oct. : DMC, :, #,⁷⁴ June : DMC, :‒, #, and Papadopoli, :.⁷⁵ Apr. : DMC, :, #.⁷⁶ Oct. : ASV, MC Magnus, f. v.⁷⁷As there had been in the case of two Venetians pardoned in for not handing in Serbiangrossi to the mint: DMC, :, #.

The Office of Serbian Grossi, however, did not go away as easily as the Ser-bian coins. By the officials had extended their jurisdiction to cover theinspection of the galleys of private individuals.⁷⁸ The appearance of an over-valued Lombard coin in provided at least a temporary justification for themto continue their office.⁷⁹ In , the doge and his counselors heard a disputebetween the officials of Serbian grossi and the officials of the Levant concern-ing a case of fraud involving gold and silver.⁸⁰ The Great Council confirmedtheir decision to award jurisdiction to the Office of Serbian Grossi but notedthat the gold estimators were the only ones who were competent to decide mat-ters concerning gold and silver and that in the future all regulations concerningthese matters should be entrusted to them, except in the case of contraband borneby sea. Three days later the matter was brought up again; the officials of SerbianGrossi acknowledged that they were not competent to deal with the technicalquestions involved and agreed to call in the gold estimators on the matter inquestion and share the fines with them.⁸¹ This was the end of the involvementof the officials of Serbian Grossi with matters concerning coins or bullion. Theycontinued to function and even thrive, but they became involved exclusively withquestions of shipping.⁸² Finally, in their office was joined with that of theofficials of the Levant, and, continuing for some years with their archaic name,they implemented the regulations concerning galleys trading with the East.⁸³

The Officials for Clipped Grossi

At about the same time that the officials for Serbian Grossi were losingtheir connection to control of the coinage, another office was formed with sim-ilar aims. This time the target was clipped grossi (grossi tonsi, tonsorati, stronzati),authentic Venetian issues from which an individual had sheared some of the sil-ver from the edges.

Clipped coins seem to have been a serious problem in Venice throughout


⁷⁸ Sept. : ASV, MC Magnus, f. v.⁷⁹ May : PMV, , #.⁸⁰ June : ASV, MC Presbiter, f. .⁸¹ June : ASV, MC Presbiter, f. .⁸²In they were assigned a notary and three apprentices and four years later, because theywere so busy, got a second notary: ASV, Senato, Rubrics, f. , and July : ASV, MCFronesis, f. .⁸³ May : ASV, MC Fronesis, f. ; cf. Frederic C. Lane, “Maritime Law and Administra-tion, ‒,” reprinted in his Venice and History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, ),‒, for the activities of this combined office.

the thirteenth century; indeed, any thin medieval coin was subject to clipping.One way to counter clipping was to design the coins with some element thatwould exactly correspond with the edge of the coin; Venetian grossi had a beadedborder that ideally would be completely intact in a whole coin and missing in aclipped one. For this safeguard to be effective, however, the mint would have hadto be totally scrupulous in the cutting and striking of the blanks, a slow andcostly procedure. The most effective way to combat clipping was to have coinsweighed rather than counted in transactions; thus the value of a clipped coinwould be proportionately lowered by the amount removed. In the period beforethe introduction of the soldino (around ), the grosso was the only Venetiansilver coin in circulation, and weighing it for all transactions would have beencumbersome.

There was an early attempt to deal with clipped grossi. In , the GreatCouncil instructed all officials within Venice as well as all colonial officials to in-spect all grossi they received in official transactions and cut in half all those thatwere clipped.⁸⁴ Two years later this injunction was extended to all Venetian cit-izens; they were to cut in half any clipped grossi they received and bring themto the mint, where the mintmaster was obliged to exchange them by weight forgood coins.⁸⁵ This provision apparently was not in effect long; in the capitularyof the mintmaster for silver, revised in , his obligation was to exchange newcoins for old only for those who swore that they needed them for overseas trade.⁸⁶

In , clipped grossi again became enough of a problem that the state hadto intervene. In July, a Milanese by the name of Bonifacius (called clericus) whoresided in Venice was arrested for clipping Venetian grossi and other coins; hewas sentenced to the loss of his right hand and right eye and banishment.⁸⁷ InOctober of that year, the Forty decreed that state officials should make sure thatpayments were either in newly minted grossi or in those that were of full weight(specified as no more than .% below the official weight standard); if paymentwas in “estimated coins” the officials were to exact a pledge in gold or silver worth percent above the debt until these coins could be verified.⁸⁸


⁸⁴ Sept. : DMC, :; the copy of this act in ASV, MC Socius, f. , was cancelled in as no longer applicable.⁸⁵ Dec. : DMC, :‒, and PMV, , #. The legislation exists in the two Great Councilcompilations of , ASV, MC Comunis , f. , and MC Fractus, f. , but is lacking from the Bifrons compilation of the Avogaria di Comun. The text in Fractus was canceled by a teamof revisors active about : cf. DMC, :xiii.⁸⁶CMM: Papadopoli, :, #.⁸⁷ July : ASV, SN, R. , f. .⁸⁸ Oct. : ASV, V Savi, R. bis (Capit. Estraordinaries), f. v.

At about the same time, a new office was established to deal with the prob-lem. An act of the Great Council in decreed that grossi would no longer cir-culate by weight and specified the duties of the officials of clipped grossi.⁸⁹Thesemen were to go to the tables of the moneychangers at least once a week and lookthrough their coins for clipped grossi or any grossi from which silver had beenremoved “by iron or by water” (i.e., by clipping or by “sweating,” a chemical proc-ess in which some of the precious metal was leached out of the coin) or whichwere in any other way bad. They were even permitted to search the homes andsafes of the moneychangers. They were to cut in half all clipped grossi and levya fine of pennies per coin (about one-fourth the value). They could also searchthe homes, safes, stores, and ships of any private individuals whom they sus-pected and similarly cut bad grossi; the fine for private citizens was set at pen-nies per bad coin.

These officials quickly began consolidating their position and expandingtheir jurisdiction. Early in an act regulating the circulation of foreign pettycoinage in Venice included the officials of clipped grossi along with the mint-masters among the offices with jurisdiction over enforcement.⁹⁰ In July of thatyear the officials procured the right to bear arms for themselves, their scribe, andtheir servant, under the same conditions as the five Keepers of the Peace.⁹¹ Anact of October gave the officials of clipped grossi jurisdiction over enforc-ing a regulation that moneychangers not transfer debits among one another.⁹²

In November , jurisdiction over the market for gold and the Office ofGold Estimators was delegated from the Great Council to the Forty, which wascharged with investigating the joining of the Office of Clipped Grossi with thatof the gold estimators.⁹³ The proposed merger was not effected. Instead, theofficials soon found another area in which to exert their authority and collectfines. In September , the Forty adopted provisions to ensure that the ducat


⁸⁹ Nov. : ASV, MC Fronesis, f. . The Office of Clipped Grossi is first documented in anact passed by the Great Council a month earlier, which countermanded the decision of theForty that the two officials be chosen in that body and declared that the two empty positions befilled by election in the larger body, with the customary salary and conditions of office—Oct. : MC Fronesis, f. v.⁹⁰ Feb. []: NMC, ‒.⁹¹ July : ASV, AC Neptunus, f. v.⁹² Oct. : PMV, ‒, #. This was modified a few years later, with the capitulary of theofficials of clipped grossi cited as the chief testimony of the regulation: Dec. : PMV, ,# [as ]; they were even given the complete fine of percent on such transactions (unlessthere was an informant, in which case it would be split in half ), with nothing going to the state.⁹³ Nov. : PMV, ‒, #; Papadopoli, :, #.

circulated at its traditional value of grossi for two years.⁹⁴ It set a fine of

percent for anyone refusing to receive ducats at this value and entrusted theenforcement to the officials of clipped grossi, who were to receive one-third ofthe fine. The explanation for this jurisdiction is probably to be found in a reso-lution of the next month, in which the Forty insisted that all ducats that hadbeen clipped or otherwise altered be cut in half and that any ducats received intransactions could be brought to the officials of clipped grossi, who would ex-amine them and seal the good ones in a bag.⁹⁵ Such examination had been underthe jurisdiction of the gold estimators for the preceding decade, but the simi-larity of the problem to that of clipped grossi probably justified this transfer ofauthority.⁹⁶ By this time the problem of clipped silver grossi was evidently nolonger a concern; in the individuals assigned to various state offices for check-ing grossi were removed because it was noted that there was no further need forthem.⁹⁷ Clipped grossi may no longer have been a concern because of the plansfor the introduction of new silver coins for circulation in Venice, the mezzaninoand soldino, whose minting apparently began the next year (see above, Chap. ).These new coins caused problems that gave new areas of responsibility to theseofficials; by they had been assigned the responsibility for checking for falsesoldini.⁹⁸They also acquired jurisdiction over some of the activities of bankers.⁹⁹

By , the Office of Clipped Grossi had grown to include the officials, fourweighers of ducats known as deputies, two of whom were noble, four appren-tices, and two servants.¹⁰⁰ In August , in the midst of the chaos and strainsbrought on by the Black Death of that summer, the Senate eliminated the Officeof Clipped Grossi, transferring its responsibilities and jurisdictions, as well asits employees, to the Silver Office at the Rialto.¹⁰¹ There remained, however,noble officials within the Silver Office who carried the designation “deputy ofclipped grossi” for many decades.¹⁰² As late as , a resolution of the Great


⁹⁴ Sept. : NMC, ‒, #.⁹⁵ Oct. : NMC, ‒, #.⁹⁶ May : ASV, MC Civicus, f. ; partially publ. in PMV, ‒, #.⁹⁷ Sept. : ASV, AC Brutus, f. v.⁹⁸ Sept. : ASV, Ufficiali al Cattaver, R. Capitolare, f. v, #. This provision, presumablyof the Forty, extended jurisdiction over such forged coins from the officials of clipped grossialone to other officials, as well.⁹⁹Mueller, Venetian Money Market, ‒.¹⁰⁰ June : ASV, MC Spiritus, f. .¹⁰¹ Aug. : ASV, SM, R. , f. ; cf. Stahl, “Black Death,” ‒.¹⁰²A nonextant act of June apparently regulated the relationship and sharing of finesbetween these deputies and the officials: cited July : ASV, AC Raspe, R. /, fasc. , f. .

Council referred to “those officials of silver at the Rialto known as officials ofclipped grossi” to whom the responsibility of weighing ducats had in ancienttimes been committed.¹⁰³

In the Office of Gold Estimators was split into two teams: a team ofthree officials to be in charge of gold, and one of two men for silver.¹⁰⁴ In twoacts of , these officials in general are referred to jointly as the estimators ofgold and silver.¹⁰⁵ This tentative division appears to have been short lived. In ageneral reordering of provisions on gold and silver in , these officials are re-ferred to only as gold estimators, and their number is given as three.¹⁰⁶ In ,the gold estimators were given the jurisdiction over weighing ducats and florinsin circulation.¹⁰⁷The next year, the gold estimators, along with the mintmastersand weighers, were exempted from the requirement that they stand down aftertheir term for the length of time they had served; henceforth they could be re-elected to the office immediately.¹⁰⁸

The inception of the quinto in brought with it major changes in theway the bullion market was regulated (see above, Chap. ). At first the new reg-ulations were enforced by the gold estimators, as illustrated in the case of theVenetian silver merchant Luca Tanoligo.¹⁰⁹ In , the estimators testified thatsince April Tanoligo had purchased , marks of silver (about , kg),of which he should have sold one-fifth, or , marks, to the mint at a fixedrate for the manufacture of petty coins. Instead he brought only , marks tothe mint and so was being fined for withholding marks. These figures were


¹⁰³ Sept. : ASV, MC Ursa, f. v.¹⁰⁴ Oct. : CMA, ff. v–r. The provision is known only in this eighteenth-century capitu-lary, whose early entries concern the gold estimators more than the mintmasters for silver. Thetext under this date begins with general provisions concerning hours for all Venetian officialsand then suddenly follows with: “Item, quod quando examinabunt aurum . . .” An introductorysection and the beginning of the legislation itself have clearly been lost, and the date of this actmay not be the same as that giving hours for all officers; the next act in this chronologicallyordered capitulary is June .¹⁰⁵ Jan. []: NMC, ; June : ASV, MC Presbiter, f. .¹⁰⁶ Mar. : ASV, MC Presbiter, ff. v–v; publ. in part in PMV, ‒, #.¹⁰⁷ May : ASV, MC Civicus, f. ; partly publ. in PMV, ‒, #; June, : PMV, .#. See Cecchetti, “Appunti sulle finanze antiche,” ‒.¹⁰⁸ June : ASV, MC Civicus, f. v.¹⁰⁹ Feb. []: ASV, GR, R. , f. v. The margin is unclear, but it appears that the plea wasapproved at least by the Forty.

all documented using the accounts of the estimators, who had recorded all histransactions over the period in question. As a grazia, Tanoligo was granted a re-duction in the fine and permission to put the requisite silver in the mint at therate of marks a month.¹¹⁰

In , the Office of Gold Estimators was broken up; two of the men inthat office were reelected and were joined by a third, and the other two weremade silver officials.¹¹¹ In , the Forty decreed that all silver brought by Ger-mans or Lombards to Venice had to be sealed at the appropriate fondaco andbrought to the tables of the silver officials at the Rialto by the brokers.¹¹² Thesilver officials were to record the silver presented to them in their accounts andinquire as to what was to be done with it. When the silver was sold, the buyerswere to pay for it, with real coins rather than credit, at the table of the silver offi-

cials, who would then record the transaction.A case from illustrates the activity of one silver official, Lorenzo Die-

do.¹¹³ A moneychanger named Filippo Marmora was fined for not putting sil-ver in the mint for his quinto. His testimony, corroborated by a witness, was thathe had brought the silver to Diedo, the official for weighing silver, on the day ofthe sailing of the Cyprus galley. He said that Diedo advised him to send the sil-ver with the galley and pay the quinto after the ship’s return. Marmora testifiedthat Diedo confided that the officials did not examine the accounts of individ-uals every day and that there was about two months’ real leeway in which peo-ple could put the silver in the mint, as long as they eventually put in what theyowed. The Forty apparently believed Marmora’s testimony and that of his wit-ness, as they granted him a pardon from the fine.¹¹⁴


¹¹⁰It is an indication of how close the ties were between the officials and the merchants that arelative of Luca’s was a gold estimator at the time (and recused himself from this and an earliercase involving him) and that in , after his death, his son sought a position as striker in thesilver mint: June : ASV, AC Raspe, R. ., ff. v–; June : ASV, GR, R. ,f. ; the margin of this act is blank, as are many others in this section of the MS, so it is notclear whether the plea was granted.¹¹¹ Feb. []: ASV, XL, R. bis (Sanudo), f.. See below, App. A, tables A. and A..¹¹² May : Thomas, Capitolare, ‒.¹¹³ Dec. : ASV, GR, R. , f. .¹¹⁴There may have been more to this story than is contained in the document, as the witnesswho testified in this case, Marco Moro, was one of the members of the Forty who three yearslater introduced the legislation that called for the review of the three silver officials; Diedo wasthe only one who passed: Oct. : DQ , :‒, #.

Once the Silver Office at the Rialto had been set up as a separate entity, thegold estimators returned to their original duty, the testing of gold with a touch-stone. In the s, the needles of their touchstones were changed; instead of beinggraduated by one-grain distinctions, they were to be in half-grain increments (fig.).¹¹⁵ Thus, instead of being accurate to about percent (one grain was one-fourth of a carat), they would be (at least theoretically) accurate to . percent.At the same time, the amount of copper in the mixture was limited to . per-cent, to keep its coloring from throwing off the estimation. The estimators con-tinued to keep the mother weights of the republic; they were required in tocheck all weights made by the mint before they could be distributed and to checkthose used by moneychangers every three months.¹¹⁶ Unlike silver, whose importand sale was the subject of endless recording and investigation, gold was an anony-mous commodity within Venice; it had to be shown to the estimators when it wasbrought in, but no records were kept to make sure it was sold properly.¹¹⁷

The usual procedure for the sale of gold can be seen in the summary of atrial of .¹¹⁸ Two Germans brought gold to Venice for sale and showed it tothe gold estimators, who examined the bullion and issued the Germans receiptsindicating its fineness and weight. The gold itself apparently was kept in thevaults of the estimators. The Germans took the receipts to the vice-lords of theGerman fondaco, who conducted the auction. After the bidding, the vice-lordtook the receipts and wrote on the back of each the name of the German seller,that of Andrea Gabriel, the buyer, and the agreed-upon price.¹¹⁹ Gabriel tookthe receipt to the estimators to pay for the gold in their presence and receive itfrom their keeping. However, on the way to their table he allegedly erased theprice and falsified it so that he would pay £. less than the agreed-upon price.


¹¹⁵CMO, f. ‒v, #‒; these undated provisions fall between June (#) and (#).¹¹⁶ May : PMV, ‒, #.¹¹⁷In , the Forty decided that the gold estimators could not question those who broughtthem gold as to its origin; this provision was confirmed in succeeding decades: May :DQ , :‒, #; Mar. : XL, Parti, R. , f. . A Venetian who refused to give infor-mation to the estimators about the source of gold of another person defended himself on thebasis of the estimators not having the right to ask such questions and received a pardon: Jan.[]: ASV, GR, R. , f. .¹¹⁸ Jan. []: AC Raspe, R. /, fasc. , f. v.¹¹⁹See Mueller, Venetian Money Market, and .

He was prosecuted by the state advocates and found guilty by the Forty; he wasfined £ and forbidden to engage in any future activity as a moneychanger orany further transactions in gold or silver except for stamped ingots.

In addition to examining gold bullion, the estimators dealt occasionally withfalse and clipped coins. Although this was usually not in their purview, it didgive them an opportunity to collect extra fees and penalties. In they werecharged with checking summi, small silver ingots, to make sure they were underthe weight of saggi (about grams) and of the proper fineness; they couldcharge £. per hundred summi checked.¹²⁰Three years later clipped soldini andmezzanini were such a problem that the gold estimators were given permissionto join with (or compete with) the silver officials in checking the tables of mon-eychangers for such coins; for each clipped coin they found they could fine themoneychanger two good ones and keep the clipped one as well.¹²¹ They wereeven assigned two extra workmen for the purpose, with a salary of £ per month.


¹²⁰ June : CMA, ff. v–.¹²¹ Feb. []: PMV, ‒, #.

Fig. . Touchstone needles used in estimating the fineness of gold, of alloys rangingfrom one carat to , to be compared with samples taken by touchstone.

Source: Georgius Agricola, De Re Metallica (Basel, ), Book


In a similar way, they were empowered to join the silver officials in in check-ing the holdings of bankers at the Rialto and San Marco in search of false ducatsbelieved to have been made in Germany.¹²²

In May , the Senate advisors on income and expenses, in an effort tocontrol the mounting state debt, proposed that the Silver Office of the Rialtobe merged back into that of the gold estimators, with four officials in total, eachhaving only £ per year.¹²³ This was tried, but five months later the act wasrepealed, and the two offices went back to their former status.¹²⁴

Towards the end of the fourteenth century, new problems arose in the bul-lion markets in Venice, and a series of advisory committees and councils pro-posed new regulations. The main problem with gold in seems to have beendiscrepancies in the quantity of pure gold estimated by the gold estimators atthe Rialto and that reported by the mintmasters to the Accounts Office afterthe gold was refined and made into ducats.¹²⁵ To counter this, the gold estima-tors were required to send one of their workmen to the mint with the merchantand his gold. At the mint, a sample of carat per mark of the gold would beremoved, weighed, and stamped with an iron die carried by the workman. Itwould be locked in a safe at the mint, whose key was in the possession of theestimators. After the ducats were made, the estimators would come to the mint,as would the account officials, and the sample would be assayed to see if it hadbeen properly estimated and refined. Since the account officials were not expe-rienced in testing gold, they were granted £ per year to hire a moneychangerwho was competent in this to accompany them on these occasions.¹²⁶

These provisions were cumbersome but apparently effective. In , themintmaster for gold, Nicolò Trevisan, was fined by the account officials becausetheir assay of his production showed a discrepancy with that of the gold esti-mators.¹²⁷Trevisan appealed to the doge’s council, saying that the gold was testedtwice with a touchstone and then assayed twice by cupellation, apparently withdifferent results.¹²⁸ The six counselors followed the advice of the state provi-


¹²² Oct. : PMV, ‒, #.¹²³ May , Regolazione, :, #.¹²⁴ Nov. : SM, R. , f. v.¹²⁵ July : ASV, Ufficiali alle Rason Nuove, R. , Capitolare, ff. v–; in vernacular inCMO, ff. v–, #‒, as July .¹²⁶This provision, on f. of the Rason Nuove capitulary and lacking in the mintmaster one, isapparently from a slightly later date.¹²⁷: ASV: GR, R. , f. v; the margin of the MS is torn, so there is no indication of theresult of his appeal for a payment over time of his fine.¹²⁸ June ; ASV, CN, R. , f. , #.

sioners and ordered that the first of the cupellations be considered the valid one.The condemnation held; seven years later Trevisan was still paying off his fine.¹²⁹

The preamble to legislation reforming the gold mint in recognizedexplicitly the importance of the gold estimators: “The Office of our Estimatorsof Gold is the fundament and principal from which root our honors and bene-fices depend.”¹³⁰ The number of estimators was raised from three to four, all tobe between thirty and sixty years of age. Each of the four was to have a salaryof £ per year (higher than ever in the history of the office) and an equal sharein the fees and fines. New procedures were instituted to avoid conflicts betweenthe estimators and mintmasters, and they were issued new touchstones at the ex-pense of the state.

That the new regulations did not work any better than the previous ones isillustrated by a case brought to the doge’s council two years later.¹³¹ A “Ger-man” from Bratislava had brought about marks of gold to Venice to have madeinto ducats. The four gold estimators judged the bullion fine enough to be minted,but the mintmasters for gold refused to accept their findings. The council ruledthat the mint should go ahead and make the ducats; if there was any loss, it wasto be borne by the gold estimators, and if there was a profit, it would go to thestate. Soon after this the procedures were changed back to what they had beenbefore the reform.¹³²

In , yet another attempt was made to attract gold to Venice and controlthe standard of the ducat by revising the regulations in a special council.¹³³ Underthe new procedures, merchants were to go first to the gold leaf officials to havetheir bullion cast into ingots and sealed in leather sacks. It would then be broughtto the gold estimators, who would test it with touchstones without knowing theidentity of the owner. If the gold was under carats grains (% fine), theyshould refuse to certify it. The bullion would then go to the mint, where it wouldbe refined and then sent back to the estimators for testing. If they agreed thatthe ingot was fine enough to be coined, they would stamp it with their own die.When they made ducats, the mintmasters were to cut the ingot around this mark


¹²⁹ Mar. : ASV, GR, R. , f.. This involvement of the estimators at the mint led toother problems, as well; in the term of the mintmaster for gold had to be extended for twomonths because the estimator who was supposed to check his gold had died: Feb. []: ACRaspe, R. /, fasc. , ff. v–.¹³⁰ Apr. : ASV, SM, R. , f. ‒v.¹³¹ Jan. []: ASV, CN, R. , f. v, #.¹³² Jan. []: ASV, SM, R. , ff. v–v.¹³³ June : ASV, SM, R. , ff. ‒.

and send the piece of gold with the mark to the account official, who could testit to make sure it had been properly examined.

The endless revision and reiteration of the regulations concerning the goldestimators must have resulted from a number of factors. Certainly gold was itselfvaluable enough that even a slight fraud or error was enough to produce signi-ficant profit for an individual and loss for the state. By the early fifteenth cen-tury, the ducat was the standard coin of the trade of Europe and the Mediter-ranean, and any possibility of its debasement was a threat to the supremacy ofVenice and its coinage in this commerce. There is clear indication in these reg-ulations, and the appeals and pardons of the period, that rivalry among the officesconcerned with bullion was strong and omnipresent and that the gold estima-tors were active in protecting their jurisdiction. However, the situation that pro-voked the legislation, and the one on which the Venetian government could havethe least impact, may well have been a general shortage in gold that was availablein Europe for coining.

Over the course of the fourteenth century and early fifteenth, the salariesof the gold estimators and their staff were frequently lowered to save expenses,especially in times of crisis, and then raised again to attract people to the office(see graph .). Beginning in , the estimators had a notary with a salary of£ per year and a workman with a salary of £ a year.¹³⁴ In , the GreatCouncil decreed that the salaries of the gold estimators and their staff, a totalof £ per year, be paid out of the profits of the gold mint.¹³⁵

We have information on only a few of the men who served as gold estima-tors in the Middle Ages. The estimators were elected in the Forty, whose recordsfrom the Middle Ages are preserved in only scattered fragments, and were notsubject to an annual review that would have left a record of individuals servingin those years for which the Forty registers are extant. Our information on theidentities of the officeholders comes chiefly from appeals to fines imposed bythem; it is strongest for the periods ‒ and ‒. In both periods itappears that the holding of the office was quite consistent (see below, App. A,table A.). When they were transferred to the Silver Office in , Marco Stor-nado had served continuously as a gold estimator since ; Paolo Papaziza,since . Francesco de Bernardo served in the office from to . Theirterms may extend well beyond these limits. Moreover, Paolo Papaziza is known


¹³⁴cf. Jan. []: DQ , :, #. In , the workman who had held that office for twelveyears was given a raise of £: ASV, GR, R. , f. v.¹³⁵ July : ASV, MC Ursa, f. .

to have replaced his father in the office, and Francesco de Bernardo was replacedby his son. In the fifteenth century the same stability appears to have held; twoof the estimators appear to have served at least ten years each.

A few of the known fourteenth-century gold estimators were moneychang-ers: Marco Stornado, Maffeo Gabriel, and Donato Quintavalle. Many heldrelated positions in the course of their careers, such as silver official (Vezeli Pre-marin, Michele Duodo) or mintmaster or weigher (Marco Stornado, Francescode Bernardo, Jacopo Trevisan, Donato Quintavalle). Some were advisors on mintlegislations: Giovanni Grimani, Jacopo Dente, Michele Duodo, Jacopo Trevisan,and perhaps Vezeli Premarin. Those known from the early fifteenth century ap-pear to have been much less involved in related offices; only Bernardo Malipierois known to have been a mintmaster.

The earlier gold estimators seem to have differed from the later ones in termsof family background, as well.¹³⁶ The three earliest known holders of the office(Albertino Dente, Marco Stornado, and Nicolò Papaziza) were from familiesnot included in the Great Council at the time of the Serrata but admitted insubsequent years. Though all appear to have been noble, only one of the sixteenmen known for the fourteenth century (Jacopo Trevisan) is from a family char-acterized in later times as “long” or “short.” Of the six gold estimators knownfor the period ‒, four were from these prestigious houses. Only oneholder of the office (Donato Quintavalle) was included in the estimo of ,and he was in the tenth (lowest) decile of assessments; four other holders areknown from within a decade of this time, who may have been too poor to beassessed.

In general, it appears that the job of gold estimator, which required expertisein testing gold with a touchstone and paid a modest but decent salary with appar-ently great potential for fees and fines, was held for long periods of time by asuccession of noblemen. In the fourteenth century these were of emerging andmodest families; in the fifteenth they appear to have been from minor branchesof the most powerful families.

The silver officials were responsible for keeping track of all silver from thetime it entered Venice until it left and for making sure that the appropriate reg-ulations were observed and fees paid. In , the rules governing the sale of sil-


¹³⁶See Stahl, “Office-holding,” ‒.

ver within Venice were reviewed in a regulation sent to the officials of the Ger-man fondaco.¹³⁷ All silver brought in by Germans or Lombards was to be broughtto the silver officials at their office at the Rialto market; they were to make arecord of whom it belonged to and how it was to be disposed of and were tostamp it with a seal. When the silver was sold, the buyer was to pay for it in cashat the table of the silver officials. In , it was decreed that buyers of unrefinedsilver had to have it refined within three days; if there was gold to be divided outof it, this was to be done within six days.¹³⁸

Each Venetian who took part in the silver market had a set of personalaccounts, which were kept up to date by the silver officials and checked by themmonthly against their own records to make sure that entries were not made sur-reptitiously.¹³⁹ The mintmasters also kept track of silver that they stamped, butsince they did not always know the identity of the owner of the bullion, theirrecords were less accurate than those of the silver officials and not usable forprosecutions.¹⁴⁰ The sums involved were often great, and merchants were finedeven for a small discrepancy: Catarino Quintavalle bought , marks (morethan , kg) of silver in a year; he was fined for a discrepancy of markswhen his yearly accounts were checked.¹⁴¹ In , to facilitate the work of sil-versmiths, it was decided that they could buy quantities of silver less than marks in weight without going through all the presentations and declarations.¹⁴²

In , so much silver was being sold illicitly and smuggled out of Venicethat it was said that merchants were suffering and the mint was “sleeping” forlack of silver being made into coin.¹⁴³ The Forty took strong action: it decreedthat any silver sold or exported without being shown to the silver officials wouldbe seized and forfeited.¹⁴⁴ Any silver broker who was found to have participatedin such a sale would be removed from office and fined £; any moneychanger


¹³⁷ May : Thomas, Capitolare, ‒, #.¹³⁸Known only from the text of a pardon of Mar. : ASV, GR, R. , f. ; this may be theact of the Forty of Oct. referred to in a debate on Jan. []: DQ , :‒, #.¹³⁹As was done by Andrea Gabriel in , who had six pieces of silver stamped illegally andwritten into his accounts by someone other than the silver officials; he was not granted the par-don he sought: Feb. []: ASV, GR, R. , f. v. The monthly checking of merchants’accounts is mentioned in a pardon plea of Sept. : GR, R. , f. v.¹⁴⁰Marco Trevisan had pieces of silver which he had brought to be stamped at the mint; themintmasters’ records indicated that he had later sold pieces, but the silver officials’ recordread pieces: Dec. : ASV, GR, R. , f. v.¹⁴¹ Apr. : ASV, GR, R. , f. v.¹⁴²Legislation known only from a pardon of Feb. : ASV, GR, R. , f. v.¹⁴³ May : ASV, GR, R. , f. v.¹⁴⁴ Feb. []: DQ , :‒, #‒.

so convicted would be banned from his trade for a year and fined £; andany other individual would be imprisoned for two months and, if a noble, bebanned from the Great Council for two months. The record-keeping system wasstrengthened; the mintmasters were enjoined to keep two sets of accounts of allpieces of silver that they stamped (one to be kept by their scribe and one bythemselves) and every week send a copy of these records to the silver officials,who would copy them into their own accounts in an orderly manner.

Just as the market for gold was becoming concentrated by the mid-four-teenth century, so the market for silver was in danger of falling into the handsof a few buyers, acting in concert to keep prices low. In , legislation waspassed in the Senate which prohibited anyone from buying unstamped silver onbehalf of someone else and forbade any corporate group to buy stamped (debulla) silver.¹⁴⁵ To bring the sale of silver even more into the public light, it wasdecided the next year that all quantities of silver greater than marks broughtinto Venice for refining must be auctioned publicly at the Rialto market.¹⁴⁶ Thesilver officials were to observe the auction and indicate, through gestures, whetherthey considered it done well or whether it needed to be redone. The regulationsconcerning the sale of silver were to have effect within a fifty-mile radius aroundVenice, though a few years later special arrangements had to be made for mer-chants and silversmiths of Treviso.¹⁴⁷

In it was decreed that all registered (cameratum) silver that was to be soldat auction or taken to the mint was to be stamped with a seal of Saint Mark andits weight and the number of pieces recorded.¹⁴⁸To meet the needs of merchants,the silver officials were required in to be at their station at the Rialto forextended hours for a week before and following the departure of the galleys.¹⁴⁹

:

The efforts on the part of the silver officials to keep the silver auctions atthe Rialto from being dominated by moneychangers and bankers led to a pub-lic scandal in , when they prosecuted the de Bora family of moneychangersfor conspiring to rig the bidding on silver.

The members of this clan had a long and often violent history in Venice.


¹⁴⁵ Dec. : PMV, ‒, #.¹⁴⁶ May : CMA, ff. v–v; publ. in vernacular in Thomas, Capitolare, ‒, #, as Apr. .¹⁴⁷ June : ASV, SM, R. , f. .¹⁴⁸ Sept. , known only from a reiteration in : Nov. : Cap. Broche, .¹⁴⁹ Sept. : ASV, MC Novella, f. .

Marco and Pietro de Bora, sons of Bertucio, had been fined in for bran-dishing weapons in public.¹⁵⁰ In another moneychanger, Marco Rosso,rented a table in San Marco which had been formerly held by the de Bora broth-ers.¹⁵¹ A relative of the de Boras named Nicolò Venier threatened Rosso that hewould blind him if he kept the table, to which Rosso replied that he had rentedthe table from the Procurators of San Marco and had every right to operate it.The six sons of Bertucio de Bora accosted Rosso and threatened him; hearingthis, the Procurators responded that the de Bora brothers apparently thoughtthey could claim the whole Piazza San Marco as their own. Sometime later, whenMarco Rosso was leaving his home in the evening to go to the piazza, he wasaccosted by one of the brothers, Nicolò, who attacked him with a knife and cutoff his right hand. Nicolò fled Venice and was sentenced in absentia to a fine of£ and one year in jail. Seven years later he returned and paid the fine; his jailsentence was waived in exchange for one year’s unpaid service in Zara.

Tomaso de Bora was charged in with the rape of the illegitimate daugh-ter of a silversmith.¹⁵² In the same year, he assaulted a rival moneychanger in SanMarco who tried to attract the attention of someone offering him silver at histable.¹⁵³ The family’s business, and its reputation, were carried on by the nextgeneration. In Pietro’s son Nicolò de Bora was fined £ for punching aservant of the doge’s counselors.¹⁵⁴ His brother Alvise had a table in San Marco,where in he bought a small quantity of gold stolen from the refinery at theRialto; in he was fined for illegally taking foreign coins to Treviso.¹⁵⁵ In gen-eral, however, the family does not appear to have had much of a history of activ-ity in the silver market in the s through s; they do not appear among thescores of buyers of silver who petitioned for pardons for fines related to buyingsilver in the decades after the imposition of the quinto.

In , the silver officials accused Nicolò and Giovanni de Bora and theirnephew Alvise of a conspiracy to control the auction of silver at the Rialto.¹⁵⁶


¹⁵⁰ Nov. : ASV, GR, R. , f. v.¹⁵¹ Mar. : ASV, AC Raspe, R. /, f. v. See Mueller, Venetian Money Market, , for thisincident.¹⁵² Feb. []: ASV, AC Raspe, R. /. f. v.¹⁵³ Apr. : ASV, GR, R. , f. .¹⁵⁴ June : ASV, AC Raspe, R. /, fasc. , f. v.¹⁵⁵ Mar. : ASV, SN, Sentenze, R. , ff. v–; Mar. : GR, R. , f. .¹⁵⁶The most important documents are dated June : DQ , :‒, #‒, and ASV, ACRaspe, R. /, fasc. , ff. ‒. Other relevant documents are: Mar. : DQ , , , #; Mar. : DQ , , ‒, #; Apr. : DQ , , , #; May : AC Raspe, R. /,fasc. , f.; May : DQ , , ‒, #‒; and DQ , , ‒, #‒.

This accusation was based on an interview with the silver officials in which thede Boras were alleged to have admitted to buying silver at auction on behalf oftheir corporation (societas). From subsequent testimony, it appears that this is notwhat they had said. In fact, the silver officials had asked them which of themcarried the silver they bought to be refined at the mint, and they had answeredthat it was mainly Giovanni who carried it to the mint. After the de Boras leftthe office, however, the silver officials, with the help of their workman, Bonifa-cio, induced their scribe, Savoreto, to cross out this part of the testimony andreplace it with the supposed admission that they had bought on behalf of a cor-poration. The officials then took this supposed confession to the state advocatesfor prosecution.

This affair came to light (or at least first appears in extant documents) on

March , when a moneychanger named Giovanni Rizzo brought a libel actionagainst the workman Bonifacio for calling him a liar when he said publicly thatBonifacio had coerced the notary Savoreto to make the changes. The Forty thenset up a commission to inquire about the charges, giving it power to examine andtorture both Bonifacio and Rizzo. The commission was subsequently given au-thority to examine and torture anyone they believed might have information onthe matter, including the three silver officials, Nicolò Polani, Michele Zorzi, andNicolò Donato.

On May the Forty heard the facts gathered in the case to that point. Theyordered Rizzo released from prison along with a certain Plastrino a Caligi, whoserole in the affair is unclear, and Simeone Savoreto, the father of the notary.¹⁵⁷In the meantime Maestro Dalmasio, a schoolteacher (rector scolarum) and kins-man of Bonifacio, got word to him through a jailor to stand firm on his earliertestimony.¹⁵⁸ The jailor was later removed from office for a year and sentencedto one month in his own prison for permitting this communication. Then theForty debated on whether the prosecution should begin on the basis of what


¹⁵⁷Savoreto, the notary charged, appears to have been young and new to the job. His father,Simeone, had, in fact, been the notary for the silver officials until , when he became thenotary of the Captains of the Sestieri (cf. Nov. : ASV, GR, R. , f. , and July :ASV, MC, Novella, f. ; as well as a register of wills notarized by him: ASV, NT, B. ). Theson first appears in as a witness to a document notarized by his father, and then after hisfather paid his fine for this affair, he appears as witness to further acts of his father and as anotary himself: ASV, CI, B. .¹⁵⁸The career of Dalmasio, professor of grammar and rector of schools, is traced in EnricoBertanza, ed., Documenti per la storia della cultura in Venezia, vol. , Maestri, scuole e scolari in Venezia fino al, rev. by G. dalla Santa, Monumenti storici, st ser., Documenti, (Venice, ), ‒.In a document was witnessed by “Dalmasius et Bartholomeus quondam ser Bonefaccinepos eius,” suggesting that Bonifacius was the son of Dalmasius.

the commission had already found or wait until more evidence was amassed. Ittook eight rounds of balloting before a majority could be reached to extend theinvestigation.

Finally, on June , the case was brought before the Forty and decided.All charges were dropped against the de Boras, and fines levied against them werereturned. The three silver officials were removed permanently from that office,banned from holding any public office for two years, and fined £, each, ofwhich the de Boras got one-sixth; in addition, Nicolò Donato was sentenced tothree months in prison for publicly denouncing the proceedings. Bonifacius wasdeprived of his office, his kinsman Dalmasio was fined £, and the notary Sa-voreto was fined £.

Repercussions continued for a couple of years. At some point the silverofficials brought charges against Giovanni Rizzo for buying silver illicitly; he wasgiven a pardon for these charges in the Great Council, which was ultimately con-firmed in .¹⁵⁹ In debate in the Senate in on new legislation to eliminatecollusive bidding on silver, Giovanni Grimani, one of the advisors, argued thatthis responsibility be entrusted to the state provisioners and the contraband offi-

cials, since such accusations from silver officials had led to the de Bora scan-dal.¹⁶⁰ Nicolò Polani, one of the silver officials who had been dismissed as aresult of the case, took offense to this characterization in the Senate and a fewdays later went up to Grimani at the Silver Office at the Rialto and verbally as-saulted him; Polani was fined £.

, ‒

The de Bora affair of had ended with the disgrace of the Silver Officeat the Rialto and was a setback in the effort to open up the silver auction to freerbidding (fig. ). In May , the Senate recognized the “common talk” of col-lusion in the buying of silver and placed responsibility for eliminating it withthe state provisioners and the contraband officials, two financial offices con-cerned largely with trade.¹⁶¹This was clearly an insult to the silver officials, whohad earlier had this responsibility and the fines resulting from it. If the investi-gating officials suspected such a conspiracy but could not prove it, they were tocome to the Forty, which would establish a commission to investigate; this againappears to be an echo of the de Bora affair. Not long after, the longstanding rule


¹⁵⁹ Feb. []: ASV, AC Raspe, R. /, fasc. , f. v.¹⁶⁰ July : ASV, AC Raspe, R. /. fasc. , f. v.¹⁶¹ May : PMV, ‒, #.

that purchases of silver be paid for in coin at the officials’ table was sustained byonly a narrow margin.¹⁶² In , purportedly to encourage the flow of silver toVenice, the Senate took away from the silver officials the duty to determine thesource of the silver presented to them; the requirement of the quinto and thepublic sale of all silver was retained.¹⁶³ In May , the Senate eliminated theSilver Office and merged it into the Office of Gold Estimators, but in Novem-ber of the same year it rescinded this decision.¹⁶⁴

A few years later, a period of banking crisis blamed on bullion speculationled the Senate to resume its efforts to control the activity of moneychangers. In, a team of advisors drafted legislation to control the developments thatwere changing these businesses into true banks.¹⁶⁵ Although it rejected propos-


¹⁶² Oct. : PMV, ‒, #.¹⁶³ Dec. : PMV, ‒, #. An additional provision to eliminate the public auctionappears to have been defeated; the votes in favor were fewer than those needed to pass the othersections, even though the number of nays is given as only four; moreover, there is no “capta”under the name of the proposer, as is usual for accepted resolutions.¹⁶⁴ May : Regolazione, :, #; Nov. : ASV, SM, R. , f. v.¹⁶⁵ Sept. : PMV, ‒, #; cf. Mueller, Procuratori di San Marco, ‒, and Mueller,Venetian Money Market, ‒, for these developments.

Fig. . The Rialto Market, just west of the Rialto bridge, where silver was sold atauction and silver officials and gold estimators had their tables.



als that would have banned scrip banks entirely, the Senate did prohibit bankersfrom making any purchase of silver (as well as other valuable commodities) inauction or de bulla and required that all payments for auctioned silver be made inthe presence of the silver officials, who were to get oaths from the buyers andsellers that the silver would not be passed on to bankers.

During the ruinous War of Chioggia, Venice had to deal with a shortage ofstate funds and a shortage of silver, as well. A special law was passed in toallow people to bring their silver plate and jewelry to the mint for coining. Thesilver officials were to examine it to make sure it was worked in Venice; if not, itwas subject to the quinto.¹⁶⁶ The order that silver purchased at auction be paidfor in coin at the tables of the silver officials was rescinded, allowing for the pay-ment by bankers. Perhaps as a concession to the silver officials, they were givenresponsibility for making sure that moneychangers did not keep their tables openon holy days, except those in San Marco, who could operate on feast days fromthe beginning of Lent until one week after Ascension for the sake of pilgrims.

As the war wore on, the problem became more intense. German merchantswho brought silver to Venice could not find any buyers with ducats and hencecould not sell it.¹⁶⁷ The Senate now specifically allowed bankers to finance thepurchase of silver by individuals with scrip payments, though they still couldnot buy for themselves. After the silver was presented to the officials, it could besold in any fashion at all. These provisions were to be temporary, in effect dur-ing the war only, but after the war ended in , the state found itself pressedby a huge debt. As part of extraordinary impositions, including a general per-cent sales tax, the Senate levied a fee of £. for each mark of de bulla silver sold,to be collected by the silver officials.¹⁶⁸ A few months later, to keep some silverflowing into Venice, German importers of silver were specifically exempted fromthe fee.¹⁶⁹

Bankers won additional concessions in their role in the silver market in .In February of that year Pietro Benedetto and Gabriel Soranzo petitioned theSenate for permission to buy silver for commerce abroad; the Senate loosenedthe rules of to allow them (and other bankers) to buy many other com-modities but maintained the ban on silver and copper.¹⁷⁰ In August, they peti-tioned again, and this time they alone were given permission to buy up to ,


¹⁶⁶ May : PMV, ‒, #.¹⁶⁷ Apr. : PMV, ‒, #; Aug. : PMV, ‒, #.¹⁶⁸ Mar. : PMV, , #.¹⁶⁹ July : PMV, , #.¹⁷⁰ Feb. []: ASV, SM, R. , f. v.

ducats’worth of silver each for export; the provision carried the Senate only afterthe incorporation of the limit to , ducats on the fifth ballot.¹⁷¹ In the“temporary” wartime acceptance of the purchase of silver with bank money wasfinally rescinded.¹⁷²

After the emergencies of the war had passed, the supervision of the silvermarket in Venice appears to have been neglected. In , the Senate noted thatneither the mintmasters nor the silver officials often checked the accounts ofmerchants or moneychangers to make sure they had put their quinto in the book,because they did not agree among themselves that this was necessary.¹⁷³ Toimprove the situation, it was ordered that any single official of either office coulddemand to see the accounts of any buyer of silver and could send for the recordsof the other office; this was still a great departure from the practice of a halfcentury earlier, when records of buyers of silver were examined monthly (at leastin theory) and accounts were exchanged weekly between the Rialto and the mint.Other procedures, such as the sealing of all silver presented to the officials andthe declaring of all silver separated from gold, were reiterated in a manner thatimplies they had fallen into disuse. The apparent malaise of the silver officialsin regard to their supervision of the market may explain why in the doge’scouncil decided that the gold estimators had in the past exercised jurisdictionover the sale of silver and could impose fines in those matters at present.¹⁷⁴

In , the Senate recognized that little silver was being brought to Venicebecause the demand in the Levant was for gold ducats, not silver grossi, and thatthe flow of silver was going to different destinations and bypassing Venice.¹⁷⁵The old provisions, which had prohibited Venetians from exporting de bulla sil-ver except in galleys going east and foreigners from exporting it at all, were revisedand entrusted to the silver officials. The quinto was maintained, and those whowished to take silver out of Venice by land were required to have one-fourth ofit coined at the mint, paying only the labor costs of minting. The same proce-dures were to hold for non-Venetians who wished to export silver by sea to thewestern Mediterranean; Venetians could export silver by sea in any directionwithout having a fourth of it coined or getting a receipt from the silver officials.

Ten years later, in , there was still little silver reaching Venice, and theSenate again revised the provisions for its sale and minting in the hope of at-


¹⁷¹ Aug. : ASV, SM, R. , f. .¹⁷² June : ASV, Senato Deliberazione (Secreta), R. R, f. .¹⁷³ Nov. : Cap. Broche, ‒.¹⁷⁴ Apr. : ASV, CN, R. , f. .¹⁷⁵ May : Papadopoli, :‒, #; Cap. Broche, ‒.

tracting new supplies.¹⁷⁶The quinto was abolished entirely. All silver brought toVenice was still to be presented at the Silver Office at the Rialto and recordedboth by the officials and their scribe and then brought to the mint to be refined.One-quarter of the silver refined was to be made into coins within one week,with the owner paying a fee for the labor but otherwise receiving full weight.Silver was still to be auctioned at the Rialto and paid for in the presence of thesilver officials; as always, collusive bidding was banned from such sales. Buyersof silver could export it from Venice any way they wanted with no restrictionsor fees.

Finally, in , in the midst of the wars of the Terraferma, the last majorcontrol on the sale of silver was lifted.¹⁷⁷ Silver still had to be presented to theofficials upon import, and the auction at the Rialto was maintained, but hence-forth the owners were free to sell their silver in any manner they wished. Theimport duty on silver was also lowered from £. per mark to £..

The laws of supply and demand had made themselves felt on the regula-tion of the silver market in Venice. In the mid-fourteenth century, when silverwas plentiful, the state imposed numerous regulations to channel bullion to themint and to Venetian merchants, while producing income for the state treasury.With the bullion famine of the early fifteenth century, all restrictions and regu-lations were relaxed in the hope of attracting some bullion and keeping the mintand merchants supplied with a bare minimum of it.

In the early fourteenth century, oversight over the circulation of problem-atic coins within Venice was basically in the jurisdiction of the officials of clippedgrossi. In , these officials were deprived of their independent office and putinto the Silver Office at the Rialto.¹⁷⁸ Known henceforth as deputies of clippedgrossi or weighers of ducats, they seem to have been in frequent conflict withtheir superiors, the silver officials, as illustrated by a case of .¹⁷⁹ On this occa-sion, the three silver officials sent one of the deputies to confiscate some coinssold illicitly. The deputy did this and handed the coins over to the officials. Theofficials gave half the coins to the state treasury and divided the remainder amongthemselves as their due. Citing an otherwise unknown law of July (pre-


¹⁷⁶ Nov. : Cap. Broche, ‒.¹⁷⁷ Jan. []: ibid., ‒.¹⁷⁸ Aug. : ASV, SM, R. , f. .¹⁷⁹ July : ASV, AC Raspe, R. /, fasc. , f. .

sumably of the Forty), the deputy brought a claim against the officials for thefine, saying that he had found the coins and should keep part of them; the offi-

cials responded that he was just a messenger and that the fine was theirs. TheMinor Council found in favor of the officials.

The weighing and sealing of ducats had been the responsibility of the offi-

cials of clipped grossi since early in the fourteenth century. In , the GreatCouncil insisted that offices of the state accept ducats only after they had beencertified by the deputies at the Silver Office and sealed in bags.¹⁸⁰ In , in theface of an invasion of false ducats believed to be of German manufacture, theSenate ordered all Germans bringing ducats into Venice to have them certified.¹⁸¹Both the silver officials and gold estimators were authorized to search the tablesof moneychangers and the vaults of private individuals, looking for these falseducats, cutting them in four, and collecting fines. In , the problem of clippedand false ducats arose again, and the Great Council reiterated the requirement(apparently fallen into disuse) that payments to the state in ducats be first cer-tified and sealed by the deputies of clipped grossi at the Silver Office at the Ri-alto; light ducats were to be cut in half and false ones in quarters.¹⁸²

The functioning (or malfunctioning) of the Silver Office in regard to cer-tifying ducats is illustrated by two cases of . A woman named Ursia, iden-tified as a revendigola (a reseller of merchandise) brought ducats to the SilverOffice at the Rialto to have them weighed.¹⁸³ She gave them to the workman,who passed them along to the deputy, Bartolomeo de la Fontana. He weighedthem, found them all good, and then gave them back to the workman. Before re-turning them to the woman, the workman substituted worn and clipped ducatsfor of the good ones; he was sentenced to six months in prison and perpetualloss of government jobs. At the same trial, another noble deputy and three otherworkmen were prosecuted for substituting worn or clipped ducats for fresh ones;all were removed from office.

The next month a Venetian noble working as an official of Crete, AndreaBollani, came to the Silver Office to have some ducats certified before usingthem to pay certain freight fees.¹⁸⁴The officials weighed the ducats, placed themin his bag (marsupio, burseto), and sealed the mouth of the bag with a seal of SaintMark. Bollani then slipped into the Church of San Giovanni di Rialto and, in


¹⁸⁰ Feb. []: ASV, MC Novella, f. v.¹⁸¹ Oct. : PMV, ‒, #.¹⁸² Sept. : ASV, MC Ursa, f. v.¹⁸³ Feb. []: ASV, AC Raspe, R. /, fasc. , ff. ‒.¹⁸⁴ Mar. : ASV, AC Raspe, R. /, fasc. , f. .

the darkness of the nave, slipped an additional ducats (presumably under-weight) into this bag without breaking the seal. He was arrested by the officialsto whom he made the payment (who apparently recognized the underweightducats) and was fined £ and removed from his office.

In addition to checking ducats, the silver officials were called upon, fromtime to time, to check circulating Venetian coins to make sure that were notclipped. In , a few years after a debasement, so many soldini and mezzaniniin circulation were clipped that the gold estimators as well as the silver officialswere empowered to check the coins of moneychangers.¹⁸⁵ In a similar situationin , when clipped soldini were in common circulation, the deputies of thesilver officials were given an added incentive: instead of the usual third of thefine levied against moneychangers found with clipped coins, they could nowkeep half the fine.¹⁸⁶ All state officials were to make sure that the coins theyreceived were not clipped or false; if they were not confident of being able todistinguish the bad coins, they could send for one of the workers in the SilverOffice to have him check them over.¹⁸⁷

On certain specific occasions, the silver officials were given responsibilitiesrelating to the circulation of foreign coins in Venice. In , in response to thecomplaint of the cardinal of Bologna, the silver officials were authorized to checkfor counterfeit bolognini and fined a moneychanger who had about of thesecoins on his table.¹⁸⁸ In , during the War of Chioggia, importation of for-eign silver coins was made subject to the same requirements as imported silverbullion, that is, presentation to the silver officials and putting the quinto in themint.¹⁸⁹ In and again in , disputes arose between the silver officials andthe captains of the posts as to which office could levy fines for the illegal exportof Paduan and Hungarian coins; in both cases the silver officials won jurisdic-tion.¹⁹⁰ Jurisdiction on a case involving the sale of Sicilian coins was disputedbetween the silver officials and state provisioners from until its resolutionin .¹⁹¹ In a similar dispute, the silver officials were given jurisdiction over thestate provisioners on a case of coins brought illegally from Apulia.¹⁹²

For one year after the conquest of Verona and Vicenza, inhabitants of those


¹⁸⁵ Feb. []: PMV, ‒, #.¹⁸⁶ Nov. : PMV, ‒, #.¹⁸⁷ May : Cap. Broche, .¹⁸⁸ Dec. : ASV, GR, R. , f. v.¹⁸⁹ May : PMV, ‒, #.¹⁹⁰ June : ASV, CN, R. , f. v, #; Dec. : CN, R. , f. , #.¹⁹¹ Aug. : ASV, AC Raspe, R. /, fasc. , ff. v–.¹⁹² Feb. []: ASV, CN, R. , f. , #.

towns could bring the coins that had circulated there to the silver officials andthen change them within Venice with no duty or quinto.¹⁹³ After further con-quests on the Terraferma, other coins were banned after a period allowed for theirexchange, and the silver officials were to make sure that the moneychangers ob-served the regulations.¹⁹⁴

Although the Silver Office at the Rialto was in charge of checking Venetiancoins in circulation for clipping or other reduction in weight, there is only onerecorded occasion when they were called upon to check the quality of coinageproduced by the zecca itself. In there was a problem with the culling ofheavy coins which was attributed to the fact that the coins leaving the mint weretoo heavy.¹⁹⁵ The silver officials were authorized to check soldini in circulation,and if they found any heavier than the prescribed tolerance, they were to fine theforeman of the mint on duty when they were issued; a mark on the coin wouldindicate the responsible mintmaster and hence the time of their production.This specific instance points to the general reasons why the silver officials wereotherwise not called upon to monitor the mint’s products. It is noteworthy thatthey could fine only for overly heavy coins; if a coin was too light, this could bethe result of clipping or wear in circulation rather than the fault of the mint.

The silver officials were never called upon to judge the fineness of the mint’scoins. Although this might seem like a good way for the state to control themint’s output, there is no indication that it was ever done. The obvious reasonfor this is that they were not competent in the cupellation process required totest the fineness of silver. Unlike the gold estimators, who had touchstones fortesting the fineness of gold presented to them, the silver officials were withoutresources for testing the quality of silver and could only weigh it when it waspresented. All issues regarding the fineness of silver bullion or of silver coinswere settled by an assay at the mint, not at the tables of the silver officials at theRialto.¹⁹⁶

The silver officials are always referred to as being at or in the Rialto. More


¹⁹³ Mar. : ASV, SM, R. , f. .¹⁹⁴ May : ASV, SM, R. , f. .¹⁹⁵ May : Cap. Broche, ‒.¹⁹⁶The only evidence of an exception to this is from a decree of the Forty in that “the esti-mation of silver which used to be done by the [Silver] Officials now should be done by theMintmasters.”This may be referring to the examination of the quality of silver of silversmiths,which had been done by the gold estimators (with disputes settled by an assay at the mint) andwould by then have been assigned to the silver officials: Oct. : CMA, ff. ‒v; Oct.: DQ , :‒, #.

information on their physical office is given in a decree of , in which, in aneffort to enlarge the porticoes of the piazza (platea) of the Rialto, instructionswere given for the demolition of the wall of the campanile of the Church of SanGiacomo di Rialto and the removal of the office of the silver officials.¹⁹⁷ Up tothis point, then, the office must have been right on the square, within sight ofthe location “between the two stairs of Rialto,” where the silver auctions tookplace. After , it was located in a building facing the Grand Canal, which itshared with the tax officials and the Sopraconsoli dei Mercanti.¹⁹⁸

The first extant record relating to the election of the silver officials is from, about six years after their office was definitively separated from that of thegold estimators.¹⁹⁹ The Forty noted that the silver officials had until that timestayed continuously in office but henceforth should serve a term of two yearsonly and be required to remain out of office for two years before they could bereelected. The election of the three officials was staggered so that each year atleast one would be replaced. This would keep the officials from getting too set-tled in the office and would lessen the chances of collusion among them. Thewillingness of the Forty to have constant turnover in this office reflects the factthat it demanded less technical expertise than that of gold estimators, whoseholders had to be adept with the touchstone.

In , the election of the silver officials was moved back from the Fortyto the Great Council.²⁰⁰ The two-year maximum term was apparently main-tained; it is mentioned as still in force in .²⁰¹With the addition of the dutiesof the officials of clipped grossi in , the silver officials sought a raise in salaryfrom £ per year to £ but were denied it by the Forty.²⁰² This was actuallyless salary than their scribe received (£); clearly it was the income in fines whichmade the office attractive.²⁰³Their low salary was maintained through the courseof the century (see graph .). The salary of £ was maintained even in ,when the low volume of silver had greatly reduced the profitability of the office;


¹⁹⁷ Sept. : ASV, MC Leona, f. v.¹⁹⁸Mueller, Venetian Money Market, ‒, fig. .¹⁹⁹ Oct. : DQ , :‒, #.²⁰⁰DQ , :‒, #.²⁰¹ June : ASV, MC Leona, f.‒v. It was, however, ignored in at least one case;Nicolò Donato was elected in Nov. and reelected two years later. Other than him, the onlyfourteenth-century silver official known to have served for more than two years, Pietro Signolo,was elected to another office in the middle of his service.²⁰² Apr. : ASV, GR, R. , f. v.²⁰³ Apr. : ASV, GR, R. , f. v.

to compensate the silver officials, they were given £. of the £. fee for eachmark of silver sold, all of which had previously gone to the state.²⁰⁴ The salaryof the silver officials was finally raised to £ per year in , when their por-tion of the fees from the refining and sale of silver was also raised.²⁰⁵ The onlyfigure for the salary of a deputy of clipped grossi is from , when one deputyreceived a raise from £ per year to £.²⁰⁶

The silver officials who served in the first decade after the creation of theoffice in were much like the gold estimators in terms of their backgrounds;they were generally from either recently ennobled families or families of minorimportance.²⁰⁷ This picture seems to have changed in midcentury, with the lim-itation of the term to two years, the incorporation of the Office of ClippedGrossi, and the transfer of their election from the Forty to the Great Council.Of the thirty-six silver officials known from to , twelve were from pres-tigious long or short families. They do not, however, appear to have been menof substantial wealth; twenty-four of them served within fifteen years before orafter the estimo of , but only four can be identified among the thousands ofnobles listed in the estimo, and these four are all below the median in assessedwealth.²⁰⁸ None of this group is known to have served as gold estimator, butfive of them served as either mintmaster or mint weigher. Many, however, areknown to have filled a variety of state offices unconnected with bullion or themint; for them the office of silver official seems to have been one stage in a careerof government service. Unlike the holders of the office of gold estimator, thesilver officials do not seem to have made a career in this office. The requirementthat they not be reelected immediately after their two-year term probably ac-counts for a large part of this distinction, but the contrast in required skill wasprobably also a factor; anyone who could keep records could serve as silver offi-

cial. The home parishes of silver officials were spread throughout the city, thoughthree of the eight for whom this is documented lived in the sestier of San Marco(see Map ).

Holding the office of silver official at the Rialto as a step in the bureau-cratic careers of minor members of the higher nobility seems to have becomeeven stronger in the early fifteenth century; of eighteen holders of the office


²⁰⁴ Nov. : ASV, MC Leona, f. v.²⁰⁵ June : ASV, MC Leona, f. ‒v.²⁰⁶ Sept. : ASV, GR, R. , f. .²⁰⁷See below, App. A, table A., for known holders of the office.²⁰⁸Some of the other names do appear, but it cannot be ascertained if these are the same indi-viduals.

known between and , ten were from long or short families, includingthree members of the large Contarini clan. Alessandro Bastio, who held the officein for six months before becoming treasurer of Treviso, is the only holderof the office whose family is not known to have been noble, and one of onlythree since whose family had not been in the Great Council in the thirteenthcentury (the others are Benedetto Grioni and Lorenzo Guoro). The name ofonly one official of clipped grossi is known from before the merger of that officeinto the Silver Office in : Simoneto Zusto. Three deputies of clipped grossiare known after that time: Franceschino Dolfin, Bartolomeo de la Fontana, andNicoleto Emo; their family backgrounds seem to have been about the same asthat of the silver officials (Dolfin was a long family), but none are known to haveheld other offices.


The Economics of the �ecca

The mint played two major roles in the economy of the medieval Venetianstate. It supplied the currency that was the basis of the merchant economy, andit was a source of income for the fisc. As we have seen in Chapter , the settingof monetary policy was to a large extent a political process balancing these twosources of profit or, in bad times, avoiding economic crisis. In the course of thethirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Venetian coinage became increasingly im-portant as the basis of Mediterranean trade, at the same time that the statebureaucracy was growing and requiring ever more income. The two functions ofthe mint, producing coins and producing profit, thus both became more crucial,and the volume of coinage and income derived from it were increasingly regu-lated by the state.

When the gold ducat was introduced in , its production was assignedto a separate staff of officials and workers who, while occupying the same build-ing as the silver mint, operated independently. The gold mint had different pro-cedures for the acquisition of bullion and calculation of profit, as well, so itsworkings are best left until the end of this chapter, after a chronological overviewof the economics of the silver mint.

The Silver Mint before

As in most aspects of the internal history of Venice, the economics of themint before the mid-thirteenth century are generally obscure. In , Doge OrioMalipiero pledged the mint profits for a period of twelve years to the citizenswho financed an expedition against the Hungarians in Zara if other sources of

income should fail.¹ Thus, even in the period in which the only coin minted byVenice was the base penny, the proceeds of the mint were significant enough tosatisfy potential creditors of the state.

From the creation of the grosso around to the introduction of the sol-dino and mezzanino shortly after , the fine-silver grosso constituted themajority of the production of the silver mint of Venice and established itself asthe basic coin of trade in the eastern Mediterranean. The profitable productionof grossi was entrusted to a team of three mintmasters, elected for a year by theGreat Council or delegated smaller bodies. It appears that the mintmasters inthis period were expected to buy silver at whatever price they could arrange.Although a price was set for silver that they bought to make special export ingotsfor merchants, there is no record of the setting of a mint price for silver to bemade into grossi.² Rather, they were expected to negotiate the price with theseller directly. In the Great Council decreed that foreign merchants had toshow their silver to the mintmasters as soon as they registered it at the Fondacodei Tedeschi; only if they could not agree on a price with the masters could theysell it to others.³

The redaction of their capitulary (manual) demanded that at least oneof his associates be present when the master on duty bought silver for coinage,and it gave the masters the authority to throw out of the mint any money-changers or other individuals who were bidding against them when they werenegotiating a price for silver.⁴ Later that year the masters were specifically giventhe power to fine these competitors if they did not leave the mint under suchcircumstances.⁵ The silver they bought could be in the form of ingots made inVenice, foreign silver, billon, or coin. If the silver had been brought directly tothe masters without paying the appropriate import duties, they were to collectthese sums.⁶ In addition to the purchase of silver at market price, there appearto have been a couple of exceptional sources of silver bullion for the mint in thisperiod. In , as part of a series of initiatives intended to encourage the mint-ing of the ducat, introduced two years earlier, the Venetian state allocated £,

to the silver mint, of which £, was to be used for making piccoli and £

The Economics of the Zecca

¹ Nov. : Diploma copied in Sanudo, Vite dei dogi, cc. ‒.²The capitulary of states explicitly that they shall accept the price set by the doge and hiscouncil for silver for these ingots, but nowhere does it mention the setting of any price for silverfor coins: CMM, c..³ Apr. : Thomas, Capitolare, xiv.⁴CMM, cc. and .⁵ Dec. : DMC, :, and PMV, , #.⁶ Apr. : CMM, c. []: Papadopoli, :; DMC, :‒, #; PMV, ‒, #.

for making grossi.⁷This was intended as mint capital, to be made into coins thatcould be given to customers immediately, rather than making them wait to havetheir own silver minted.

A more regular source of bullion, and a loss of profit for the mint, was theexchange of coins on a weight-for-weight basis, occasionally mandated by thestate to meet commercial exigencies. The capitulary of required mintmas-ters to supply any Venetian merchant about to travel overseas with new, full-weight grossi in exchange for old ones.⁸ The regulation authorized the mastersto accept a pledge as a guarantee that these coins were to be used for overseascommerce, but it did not authorize them to charge a fee for the service. It didnot specify whether the exchange was to be done on a weight-for-weight basis,in which the mint would lose the expenses of minting as well as its profit, or ona piece-by-piece basis, in which case the loss would be even greater, especiallyfor heavily worn or clipped coins. Another regulation in the same capitularyrequired the masters to give all Venetian merchants fresh coins on a weight-for-weight basis to replace either clipped or cut coins, while foreign merchants couldexchange only cut coins on this basis.⁹ In a similar way, the mintmasters had toreplace foreign coins whose circulation was harmful to the Venetian economy ona weight-for-weight basis. The most important of these in the early period werethe grossi minted in Serbia, which closely resembled those of Venice.¹⁰

We have no extant archival records of the price that the mint paid for silverbullion for coining grossi in the period ‒. The only mint prices knownare those imposed by the doge in for silver to be made into commercialingots. For this, the masters were to pay grossi per mark for silver the fine-ness of the grosso; that is, £. at the current value of the grosso.¹¹ Accord-ing to the merchant manual compiled by the Florentine Francesco BalducciPegolotti, the mint price to merchants for silver was also grossi fifty yearslater.¹² If the price of grossi per mark of silver set in was just for silver


⁷ Nov. : CMM, c. ; DMC, :‒, #.⁸CMM, c. .⁹CMM, c. .¹⁰CMM, c. ; Oct. : DMC, :, #.¹¹ June : DMC, :‒; PMV, ‒, #. This figure is given as £ s in the ad grossossystem, in which a grosso was worth ¹⁄⁹ pennies ad grossos, e.g., May : CMM, c. [a],publ. in Papadopoli, :; and PMV, ‒, #, where it is misdated .¹²Pegolotti, Pratica, ‒. As there is no mention in this passage of the quinto or the soldinoand mezzanino, it must reflect conditions before . Fifteen to twenty days after putting silverin the mint, the merchants would get back new grossi, cut at to the mark, at the above rate,with the price ad grossos calculated at pennies ad grossos per grosso. These figures involve abit of rounding off (the grosso was actually cut at ½ to the mark, and the grosso was worth

to be made into ingots, a half century later this appears to have become the stan-dard rate for silver to be made into grossi, as well.¹³ Silver of less fineness thanthe standard would have been prorated, and the estimation and negotiation con-cerning this issue might have given the mintmasters a certain leeway even if theprice for silver of grosso fineness had become fixed.

According to the capitulary of , a mark of silver was to make between⅓ and ½ grosso coins per mark.¹⁴ At the more generous allowance, theprofit on silver bought at grossi to the mark would have been ½ grossocoins, or . percent. As the grosso was then worth pennies (£.), a markof silver would have been bought by the mint at £. in the lira di piccoli sys-tem and would have produced coinage worth from £. to £..¹⁵ The

capitulary of the mintmasters called for passing along to the state treasury atleast pennies (£.) per mark of silver coined into grossi; if their profit wasgreater than pennies, they were to pass along to the state that much more.¹⁶Thus, the net profit, or seigniorage, of the minting was set at pennies, slightlyunder grosso, per mark, and the state was to benefit from any improvement onthis which the mintmaster might effect. If, however, the profit was less than

pennies per mark, the mintmaster was responsible for making up the shortfallfrom his own funds; he could not close his accounts until all was reconciled.

Of the ½ grossi, or pennies, per mark gross profit, then, pennies hadto be turned over to the state, the balance of pennies being allowed to themasters to cover the costs of production, the brassage.¹⁷ This would have to in-


¹⁄⁹ pennies) but correspond almost exactly to the conditions known for the late thirteenthcentury.¹³There are few other figures for values of silver within Venice in this period independent ofmint prices, and they are all somewhat problematic. In some cases the fineness of the silver isnot certain, and some documents from the region outside Venice cite “marks of silver,” whichcould be either weights or accounting terms. Nov. : ASV, CI B. , # (Antonio, priest ofSanta Sofia) [ grossi per mark]. ‒: LCR, :, # ( Feb. []); :, #‒ (Oct ); :, # ( May ); :, # ( Dec. ) [ grossi per mark]. : Azzoni,“Della zecca,” [ grossi per mark]. : LCR, :, # [ grossi per mark if quote islire di piccoli, ⅔ grossi per mark if it is lire a grossi]. Aug. : ASV, AC Neptunus, f. ;cf. Mar. : PMV, ‒, #, and Thomas, Capitolare, ‒, # [ grossi per mark].¹⁴CMM, c. . The medieval Venetian mark is calculated to have weighed about . moderngrams: Lane and Mueller, Coins and Moneys of Account, .¹⁵See Lane and Mueller, Coins and Moneys of Account, , for the value of pennies to the grossoin the period ‒. See Stahl, “Thirteenth Century,” ‒, for the dating of these sectionsto .¹⁶CMM, c. .¹⁷The documentation does not specify whether the pennies was in the lira di piccoliaccounting system, in which the grosso was worth pennies, or the lira a grossi system, in

clude the cost of materials, salaries, and wages. Materials included copper foralloying, lead for cupellation, iron for dies, and charcoal for fuel, as well as tools.¹⁸The mint building itself was supplied free by the state; when the mint was ex-panded in , the mintmasters were instructed to pay for the construction fromthe proceeds of the minting and include the costs in their accounts, presumablydeducting them from the profit passed along.¹⁹ The employees on salary, whowere paid regardless of the quantity of coinage, included the weighers, the dieengraver, the scribe, the smith, and the apprentices; these were the individualswhom the masters were instructed to continue paying while the mint was beingrebuilt after the fire in .²⁰These expenses cannot be estimated for this period.Nor are there figures from this period for the rates of pay to the workmen whowere hired according the activity of the mint and paid by volume worked, pos-sibly because such wages were left to the masters to be worked out rather thanbeing established by the state. At the end of the fourteenth century, such wageswere set at pennies per mark, which would be about pennies per mark inthe coinage of a century earlier.²¹

In any case, the expenses of minting must have been quite close to theamount allowed for them, and the mintmaster would have had to exercise con-stant vigilance to keep from owing the state for the shortfall of the expected

pennies per mark. The workings, and alterations, of this procedure are illustratedin a case of . In June of that month, the three mintmasters were fined forbeing late in turning in their accounts, but the fine was rescinded by the Great


which it was fixed at ¹⁄⁹. In the calculations that follow, I have assumed it to be in lire di pic-coli; see Lane and Mueller, Coins and Moneys of Account, ‒ and ‒, for calculations assum-ing it to be lire a grossi.¹⁸After a fire in , the Forty authorized the mintmasters to replace the following destroyedcommodities: charcoal (carbones), crucibles (crusoles), iron ( ferrum), steel (azales), copper molds(patellas de rame), vessels (zaponos et retortas), canvas for sacks for blanching, strongboxes, locks, andkeys: CMM, c. . The prices of some mint equipment can be seen from a trial in Padua in :three pair of stones for casting silver (“lapides per fundando argentum”) were evaluated at ducats a pair; boxes of crucibles (“casas groxolorum”) for £ s Paduan a box (the pound ofPadua was about two-thirds the pound of Venice), two bronze cauldrons (“calderias”) and onesieve (“cribellum”) totaling pounds of weight a the value of shillings per pound, and fourbronze plates (“paillas”) at the same price: Roberto Cessi, “Documenti inediti sulla zeccapadovana dell’epoca carrarese,” Bollettino del Museo Civico di Padova (): supplemento, ‒, #.¹⁹ Feb. []: PMV, , #.²⁰CMM, c. .²¹ June : Papadopoli, :‒, #; Cap. Broche, . The silver content represented by thelira di piccoli (later lira di moneta) had declined from £. per mark in to £. gramsin ; see table ., below.

Council in view of the just cause of their delay.²² In September, the reason forthis delay became clear.²³ One of the masters, Francesco de Bernardo, had servedtwo tours of duties in the period covered by the accounts. In the first period,, marks of silver had been processed, and the profit had worked out to

pennies per mark. In the second quindena, , marks had been turned intogrossi, at a net profit of ½ pennies per mark; the aggregate profit on the sil-ver worked in his term was thus ¾ pennies. The charge against him, however,notes that in the capitulary of the mintmasters it says that they are to give aprofit to the state of pennies and not less; if they have more, they must ren-der it to the state, but if there is a shortfall, it is their responsibility to make itup. The wording mirrors that in the extant capitulary, redacted in and up-dated until about , but indicates that the required profit had been raised from to pennies per mark between and , probably in conjunction withthe rise in the official value of the grosso from to pennies in .²⁴ Aninvestigation determined that the shortfall in profit resulted from a small quan-tity of wax adhering to the cord of balances with which grossi were weighed;this must have resulted in the issue of slightly overweight grossi and a thereforea shortfall in profits. In view of this technical error, the Great Council excusedde Bernardo from making up the shortfall.²⁵

The seigniorage of pennies and brassage of pennies per mark of sil-ver represent profits of . percent and . percent, respectively, or a total addedvalue of about . percent onto the value of the silver as it was transformed frombullion into grosso coins (see table .). It is evident that the Venetian state wasmaking a conscious effort to keep its profit low and to encourage the flow ofsilver to the mint for the production of grossi. At a productive capacity of ,

marks of silver a year in , the maximum profit the state would have garneredfrom the minting of the grosso would have been £, per year.²⁶ In this period,the debt of the republic is estimated to have been about £,, so the con-tribution of mint profit to state finances could only have been minor.²⁷


²² June : ASV, AC Neptunus, f. v.²³ Sept. : ibid., f. .²⁴ May : Papadopoli, :‒; DMC, :, #.²⁵The wax was said to weigh one “ternario,” evidently one-third of a pennyweight, per marks;at . grams per pennyweight (denarius), this would be about . grams of wax adhering to thepan in which grossi were weighed as a group. Thus each grosso would have weighed about. grams extra, or about one-tenth of a percent of its weight.²⁶See below, Chap. , for this figure for maximum capacity.²⁷Lane, “Funded Debt,” (where it is given in lire a grossi). See table ., below.

According to the capitulary, piccoli (pennies) were to be made at analloy of about percent grosso-grade silver and percent copper, cut at

to the mark of alloy.²⁸ Each coin would have had . grams of silver; the liradi piccoli would have then represented . grams of silver. A mark of grosso-grade silver would have made about , piccoli worth £., so the grossmint profit on a mark of silver purchased at £. would have been about £,resulting in an added value of . percent, much above the . percent of thegrosso, but not atypical for a petty medieval coinage.

Like all such small, base coins, the Venetian piccolo required considerablymore work per mark of silver than the larger, fine grosso. A mark of fine silver,which could be directly cut into ½ grossi, if it were used for piccoli wouldfirst have to be alloyed with purchased copper and then made into more thanseven times as many pieces.²⁹ In fact, the mint seems to have kept labor costs forpiccoli down near those of grossi by setting the per-mark wages about the samefor both denominations (see below, Chap. ). According to the capitulary,strikers could work on a maximum of , grosso coins per day (¼ marks)on the short winter days, whereas they could work on , piccoli ( marks)per day in the same season. If their pay was set by mark in this period and wasnot very different for the different coins, the strikers of piccoli would have beenstamping more than twice as many coins in a day for less than one-third the pay.It is not surprising that the pleas in the Grazie registers are filled with requestsfrom strikers of piccoli seeking permission to transfer to grossi. The combina-tion of relative underpayment and overwork of the strikers of piccoli is evidentin their product: Venetian grossi of the thirteenth century are usually extremelywell struck, but piccoli of the period are poorly struck and difficult to read.

Merchants involved in long-distance transactions would naturally have pre-ferred grossi to piccoli, for their higher percentage of silver and their greaterrecognition among trading partners, as well as for their lower added value. Therewould, however, have been a market for piccoli among merchants within Venice,who would have needed them for small change and for the payments that werecalculated in terms of them, such as the payment of laborers. In general, it ap-


²⁸CMM, c. ; the date of this chapter is uncertain; it follows soon after the end of the section of the capitulary and precedes most of the dated sections; Cessi dates it to : PMV,‒, #; it is certainly before , when the standards were changed: Oct. : DMC, :‒, #; Papadopoli, :.²⁹The value of copper was generally about percent that of silver, and its purchase price wasincluded by the mint among expenses for supplies rather than for purchase of bullion; see Laneand Mueller, Coins and Moneys of Account, ‒.

pears that the production of piccoli needed to be encouraged by the state. Ofthe £, in state capital put into the mint in , the Great Council orderedthat £, be used to make piccoli, while only £ was to be used for grossi.³⁰The masters were instructed to give piccoli to any Venetian who sought thembut to limit each person to £ in piccoli per day. In the masters wereinstructed to make at least marks of piccoli per quindena; if they made anymore, they would receive piccolo per mark of the excess as personal income.³¹If they used silver in making the alloy for the piccoli, they did not have to passon any seigniorage to the state; if instead they melted foreign coins for the alloy,the seigniorage was specified based on the fineness of those coins.³²

A resolution of the Forty in May noted that a nonextant act of theprevious December had specified that the masters use eight workers and eightmoneyers for striking piccoli (as well as bianchi and quartaroli) and that theybe required to make as many of these coins as possible.³³ The council was notsatisfied with the compliance to this act and now set a minimum production of£, per month of this coinage, on threat of a fine. As an incentive, the mas-ters were given a raise in their personal pay for coining piccoli.

The Silver Mint from to

The circumstances that led to the changes in mint economics around seem to have derived chiefly from the rise in the price of silver. There was inmedieval Europe, and in most monetary systems based on silver, a tendency forthe price of silver to rise against coinages and for coinage systems to be steadilydebased. The mid-fourteenth century saw a new challenge to the stability of mint-ing regimes, a demographic downturn brought on by the Black Death of .This resulted in labor, especially wage labor, becoming expensive and therebyraised the brassage, or production expenses, of the mint.³⁴ The economics ofminting in Venice in this period are much clearer than for the preceding onesbecause of the survival of significant fragments of the deliberations of the Forty


³⁰ Nov. : CMM, c. ; DMC, :‒, #.³¹ May : CMM, c. [a]: Papadopoli, :; PMV, ‒, #, where it is incorrectly datedto ; the indiction date of confirms the reading of the capitulary.³²For vianali (i.e., viannari, probably deniers of Vienne in France but possibly Vienna) the seignior-age was shillings ad grossos; for imperiali (probably of Milan) it was £ s ad grossos; and formezani (probably half imperiali of Milan), it was £ s ad grossos.³³ May : NMC, ‒, #.³⁴For the effects on the mint in general, see Stahl, “Black Death,” ‒.

and because of the transfer of some jurisdictions concerning the mint to theSenate, whose acts are extant from on.

The Minting of Silver from to

Shortly after , the Venetian government instituted a major change in itsmonetary system. It replaced the three systems of account, based respectively onthe base billon penny, the pure-silver grosso, and the pure-gold ducat, with asingle moneta system pegged to coins of relatively fine but not pure silver. Thegrosso and the ducat became trade coins, left free to float against this moneta,and the penny became a basically fiduciary coin, although it retained a nominalamount of silver. A new system of acquiring silver for the mint was institutedat the same time, requiring all importers of silver to sell one-fifth of their bul-lion, the quinto, to the mint at a fixed price. The debates and legislation thateffected these changes apparently took place in the Council of Forty, whoserecords for this period are lost. The legislation can only be reconstructed fromlater references in this and other councils, scattered fragments preserved in thecapitularies of various offices, and the texts of pleas for pardons from fines ex-acted on the basis of the new laws.

The workings of the quinto are illustrated in a plea entered in a case of.³⁵ In the period from April until the end of August , the Venetian nobleLuca Tanoligo accounted to the gold estimators , marks (about , kg)of pure silver he had bought; of this he put , marks in the mint within fivedays as prescribed by the new legislation. Having compared their accounts, theestimators and mintmasters discovered that he should have put in , marks(one-fifth of ,); they insisted that he put the remaining marks in themint and pay the fine of one-quarter the value of this silver, that is, £, inthe moneta system.³⁶ If one-fourth the declared value of this fine silver weigh-ing marks was £,, the value would be £ per mark. The same price of£ per mark assessed for silver for the quinto appears in a fine of the Floren-tine Tisio Megliorato in .³⁷ For failure to put marks of silver in the minthe was fined £,; at a rate of one-fourth value for the fine, the value of thissilver works out to almost exactly £ a mark. This “quinto” price for silver canbe contrasted with a market price given in a document of that year in which the


³⁵ Feb. []: ASV, GR, R. , f. v.³⁶Given in the document as ,½ grossi.³⁷ Feb. []: ASV, GR, R. , f. v.

same merchant sold silver to Orsato Morosini for £. per mark.³⁸ In a sim-ilar case the next year, silver that was sold for £. per mark was falsely re-ported to the officials as having sold at £..³⁹

It is clear that the £ calculated as the value of silver put in the mint forthe quinto was well below market price.⁴⁰ If the market price was about £.per mark and the quinto paid only £, the requirement to sell one-fifth of im-ported silver at the lower price amounted to a tax of . percent on all importedbullion, while it ensured the mint of a steady supply of silver at a fixed rate.

The earliest extant legislation concerning the quinto is from .⁴¹ Thisrefers to two regulations of the Forty from the previous year. On March ,the Forty had renewed the order that the quinto be put in the mint for soldini.On May , the quinto had been changed to a decimo; that is, one-tenth ofthe silver declared was to be put in the mint rather than one-fifth. The reg-ulation changed the earlier ones to make the bullion thus acquired be used forgrossi from the beginning of April until the return of the last galleys of the year.By this period, at least, the proceeds of the quinto were being designated for spe-cific coins.

At the same time as the institution of the quinto, or very soon thereafter,two new denominations were introduced, the soldino and mezzanino. The valuesof the two coins are clear from their names. The soldino was a shilling (solidus),or piccoli in the old lira di piccoli system. The mezzanino was to circulate ashalf a grosso, as the base of the lira di grossi ( mezzanini) and of the lira agrossi (²⁄⁹ mezzanini). Since the grosso (of account) was worth pennies, thevalue of the new mezzanino in the moneta system would have been pennies,or ⅓ soldino. As a ducat of account was worth grossi, it would have beenworth mezzanini.⁴²

The economics of the minting of the two coins are difficult to determinebecause their original standards are undocumented. If the soldino of was ³⁄⁵fine, as seems most likely, the new lira di piccoli would have . modern grams


³⁸ Sept. : ASV, GR, R. , f. .³⁹ Apr. : GR, R. , f. .⁴⁰Lane and Mueller hold that the rate of £ s a grossi specified for ingots in remainedthat of the quinto; it would have been equivalent to £. in the moneta system: Coins and Mon-eys of Account, ‒ and ‒.⁴¹ Mar. : DQ , :, #.⁴²The names of the coins are given in a Senate act of Mar. : Cessi et al.,, Deliberazioni :,#. The values are documented in a decree of the Consiglio degli Anziani of Treviso, Nov., cited in Azzoni, “Della zecca,” ‒: “Moneta nova a XVI parvis et a XII denariisparvis facta . . . in Venetis.”

of silver, a debasement of percent from .⁴³ A mark of grosso-grade sil-ver would produce ⅔ soldini, worth £.. The gross profit on quinto sil-ver acquired at £ would then be £., ⅔ soldino coins, or percent overthe purchase price. The costs of producing a mark of soldino coins would havebeen higher than for the same weight of grossi. Copper would need to be boughtfor the alloy. It cost about £ ducats per migliaio grosso in ; less than sol-dino’s worth would have gone into a mark of alloy.⁴⁴ Labor would also have beenhigher for the soldino, as significantly more pieces had to be cut from a markthan for grossi. Those pieces known today seem to have been struck relativelycarefully and regularly. They were mainly silver, so their weight had to be con-trolled more finely than for piccoli to discourage clipping and culling. Laborcosts were probably comparable to those of two decades later, when the secondsoldino was introduced.⁴⁵ Workmen were to be paid then at the rate of £.

per mark of alloy cut, emenders were to have £. per mark, and strikers wereto have £. per mark, bringing the labor costs for wage laborers to £. permark. If we take the soldino (£.) for copper and double it to include othersupplies, and also double the £. of the wage labor costs to include the salariedworkers, we get a total of something under £ per mark brassage.

The expenses for turning a mark of silver into soldini were then about £,which, when subtracted from the gross profit of £. calculated for a mark ofquinto silver, produced a net profit to the state, or seigniorage, of £., or

percent. The profit to the state from grossi in the late thirteenth century hadbeen about £. a mark, under percent, so the minting of the soldino at thequinto price would have been considerably more profitable. A document of

implies a minting of about , marks of silver into soldini per year (seebelow, Chap. ). If all of this derived from the silver of the quinto, the stateprofit would have amounted to about £, a year, or about forty times themaximum state income calculated above for the grosso in the thirteenth century.This would have made a significant contribution towards covering at least theinterest on the state debt, estimated to have been about £,, at this time.⁴⁶

If the market price for silver was about £. per mark, the economics offree silver would have been considerably different from that of the quinto. If the


⁴³See below, Chap. , for a discussion of the fineness and weight of these coins and table .for calculations of the debasements of the lira of account of Venice through the Middle Ages.⁴⁴Ashtor, Métaux précieux, . The source of much Venetian copper seems to have been Hungaryand Poland, transported via Vienna: Carlo Schalk, “Rapporti commerciali fra Venezia e Vienna,”Nuovo archivio veneto, n.s., (): .⁴⁵ Apr. : DQ , :, #‒.⁴⁶Lane, “Funded Debt,” .

soldino was minted at ³⁄⁵ fineness, the mark of silver would have produced £.

worth of value, allowing a brassage of £ and a seigniorage of £.. This was aprofit of about percent above the market price of silver, still above the tradi-tional profit rate for the grosso.

The minting of the grosso presented special problems. The market price of£. for grosso-quality silver was equivalent to grossi at the fixed value of pennies for the grosso. Since only ½ grosso coins were made from a mark,the mint would have to give out more grosso coins than it made to meet this price.By this time, the grosso had in effect been removed from the monetary system ofVenice; it had become a trade coin whose value was determined by the market.The way the mint dealt with this situation was by charging an agio, or special fee,for payments for purchases of silver used to make grossi. In the case of the estateof Giovanni Stornado in , the agio charged by the mint brought the actualprice of silver down to ⅓ grossi per mark, so that the mint could still take its grossi per mark profit (see above, Chap. ). For the silver of the quinto, forwhich the mint paid a special price of £ per mark, the problem was less extremebut still substantial. Sixteen pounds of moneta was equivalent to grossi, stillwell above the number of pieces to be cut from the mark. Again, the mint musthave paid the quinto in moneta and have given out grossi only with an agio.

With the introduction of the soldino and mezzanino around and theapparently simultaneous setting of the quinto as a fixed mint price for one-fifthof all silver brought into Venice, the state dealt with the ever rising price of sil-ver (from £. in to more than £ in ) in a creative and generally suc-cessful way. It could produce the silver soldino for circulation within Venice andstill produce the grosso at its original standard for use in foreign trade. In thecourse of doing this Venice imposed what amounted to a tax of . percent onimported silver and debased its pound of account by about percent. The neg-ative results would have been to make Venice as a whole a less attractive place forforeigners to bring silver and to tie the internal monetary system of the city toa debased coinage, divorced from the fine grosso and ducat.

The Minting of Silver after the Black Death

The Black Death, which reached its height in Venice in the summer of ,brought great dislocations to all aspects of the Venetian economy, including themint.⁴⁷The death of most of the permanent mint personnel certainly must have


⁴⁷See above, Chap. , and Stahl, “Black Death,” for these years.

caused major disruptions in the efficiency of the mint operations. With relativelytight margins of profit, this alone would have required changes in the mintingregime. But even more significant was the change in the price of labor, broughtabout first by the need of workers for extra funds during the period of short-ages immediately following the plague, and then by the long-term decline inavailable main-d’œuvre on both the skilled and unskilled level.

When a new die engraver had been hired in , he was given a salary of£ per year.⁴⁸ An engraver hired in , probably to replace one dead fromthe plague, began work at £ per year and was raised in to £ per year.⁴⁹In the workers who formed flans complained that in view of the great short-ages (penuria) of the day, they could not feed their families; their wages were raisedfrom £. per mark to £..⁵⁰ For the new issue of soldini in , they wereable to get their wages raised to £. per mark.⁵¹ The emenders who weighedblanks requested a raise in from about £. to almost £. per mark forchecking grossi; in they got £. for soldini, a significant raise even con-sidering the much greater number of pieces per mark.⁵² On the same occasions,the moneyers who struck the coins sought a raise from £. to £. for pic-coli and got £. per mark for the new soldini.

In , changes were debated in the Council of Forty for a new soldino withan increased allowance for production costs. For this issue, we have not onlydocumentation of the standards adopted but also proposals for alternate sets ofstandards.⁵³ The first proposal, by the advisor Onoradi, called for a coin of thesame silver as mezzanini, that is, fine grosso-grade silver as opposed to the alloythat had been used for soldini up to that point. They were to be cut at the rateof per mark, that is, about . modern grams. For the first time in surviv-ing legislation a mint price was specified for free silver: £..

The first alternative concerned the mint price for silver; the advisor MicheleDuodo proposed paying £ per mark rather than £..⁵⁴ The second alter-


⁴⁸ Dec. : DQ , :, #.⁴⁹ May : ASV, GR, R. , f. v.⁵⁰ Mar. : ASV, GR, R. , f. v.⁵¹ Apr. : DQ , :, #.⁵² Mar. : ASV, GR, R. , f. (the margin lacks an indication whether this plea wasgranted); Apr. : DQ , :, .⁵³ Mar. : DQ , :‒, #; Apr. : DQ , :, #.⁵⁴The texts appear to be corrupt; in the original proposal of Donato Onorado, the price isgiven at s gr ( gr), while that of Michele Duodo says “ubi ser Donatus vult quod habeantsolidos .XII. et grosso .III. consulit . . . quod habere debeant pro qualibet marcha solidos .XII. etgrossos .VI.”This implies that Onorado had suggested s gr and that the s gr was Duodo’ssuggestion. As the resolution that passed a week later was the joint proposal of both men, it is

native was presented by the third advisor, Andrea Gabriel, together with two ofthe doge’s counselors. It called for a soldino of silver alloyed with copper, speci-fied as being ⅝ grosso-grade silver and being cut at to the mark, that is,about . grams. Those who brought silver to the mint to make these coinswould be paid at the rate of £. per mark, with the payment specified as beingin soldini.

With soldino coins cut from the mark of fine silver, the first and sec-ond proposal would define the lira di piccoli as . grams of grosso-grade sil-ver, a debasement of about . percent from that defined by the mezzanino ofsix years earlier. The third proposal would have left the lira di piccoli at about. marks of grosso-grade silver.

Let us examine the production economics of these three proposals. Underthe Onoradi proposal a mark of silver purchased for £. would have pro-duced soldino coins. Of these, would have been returned to the pur-chaser. This would have left soldini, or £ per mark, for all expenses andseigniorage, a gross profit of only . percent. This was well below the £. permark of pure seigniorage the state had demanded less than a decade earlier forthe mezzanino.⁵⁵ Duodo’s proposal called for raising the mint price of silver to£, or soldino coins. This would have lowered the gross profit from a markof silver to soldini (£.), and if it covered production expenses would nothave left anything for the state. The gross profit would have been percent. InGabriel’s proposal, a mark of grosso-grade silver would have produced ³⁄⁵ marksof alloy and thus . soldini cut at to the mark. If the mark cost £.

paid in soldini, this would have been of these coins, leaving . soldini forexpenses and seigniorage. This proposal would have resulted in a gross profit ona mark of silver of percent.

The proposal of Gabriel and the counselors, for a heavier, baser soldinowith a slightly higher profit margin, got a plurality of votes on four ballots butjust failed the required minority. The measure was tabled for a week, and whenit was brought up again, Onoradi joined Duodo on his version, and this carriedeasily on the first ballot. The Forty had approved a new coin that called for the


likely that this interpretation is correct and that the reading in the first paragraph is a scribalerror.⁵⁵A commission of three advisors of the Forty examined the workings of the mint in andrecommended changes. One of their reports notes that some mintmasters were required to ren-der to the state grossi and piccoli per mark of silver made into mezzanini, after allexpenses and the loss to refining, while other masters had to give grossi and piccoli: Oct. : DQ , :‒, #. The council regularized this to grossi piccoli, or £. withthe grosso at its legal value of pennies.

least profit of those considered (% gross), one that could scarcely be mintedwithout subsidy from the state. This low profit margin was probably part of anongoing competition with neighboring mints for silver; in the Republic ofRagusa, under a Venetian protectorate, debased its grosso and set payment of itsdecimo so that a gross profit of . percent yielded . percent brassage and only. percent seigniorage.⁵⁶

It must be remembered that the price of silver set in these proposals wasfor free silver; the quinto remained in effect, supplying a large quantity of bul-lion at a guaranteed low price. At about this time the price of the quinto wasraised from £ per mark to £, but the exact date is unknown. The old rate wasin effect in when two buyers of silver were fined for ignoring the quinto, butit had been changed by when another buyer was fined at the new rate.⁵⁷ Atthe old, lower quinto rate of £, the new soldino at coins per mark wouldhave produced a profit of soldini (£.) at a gross added value of per-cent. The wage rates adopted at this time for work on soldini were £. permark to the cutters, £. per mark to the emenders, and £. to the moneyers,totaling £. per mark. With the salaries of permanent employees, overhead,and loss from refining added, the brassage costs probably came to about £ permark, allowing a seigniorage of £. for the state, more than the £. that hadbeen expected under the mezzanino of a few years earlier. Once the higher quintoprice of £ went into effect, the gross profit would have dropped to £. (%)with a seigniorage of £. per mark.

The period following the plague saw the introduction of a new denomina-tion, the tornesello, which was to have great success in the coming decades.⁵⁸Made specifically for use in the Venetian colonies in Greece, the tornesello wasissued at a lower standard than the soldino and drove that coin out of circula-tion there. Governmental vigilance, and a natural reluctance of citizens to acceptovervalued coins when there was an alternative, kept the tornesello out of cir-culation within Venice and allowed the soldino to keep circulating there. By theend of the century, the tornesello became virtually the only petty coinage in cir-culation in the independent mainland of Greece as well as the Venetian islandcolonies.


⁵⁶Resetar, Zecca della Repubblica di Ragusa, ‒.⁵⁷ Mar. : ASV, GR, R. , f. ; Sept. : ASV, GR, R. , f. v. The rate is confirmed ina resolution of by which the quinto rate was raised from £ to £.: Dec. : PMV,‒, #.⁵⁸See Stahl, Tornesello.

The tornesello was initiated in July , just months after the new soldino.⁵⁹Its standards were to be one part silver to eight parts copper and coins permark of alloy.⁶⁰ It was to circulate at pennies, or ¼ of a soldino. One mark ofsilver would then produce marks of alloy and , torneselli coins worth £.A lira di piccoli in torneselli would contain . grams of grosso-grade silver, percent less than the . grams in the same value of the contemporary sol-dino coinage. The soldino authorization of set a mint price of £. permark for free silver. At this rate, the tornesello would have produced a grossprofit of £. a mark, or percent. The profit on silver from the quinto wouldhave been even higher, reaching percent.

It is extremely unlikely that holders of silver would voluntarily sell it forrecompense in torneselli, and even the silver of the quinto would have had to bepaid for in soldini or ducats. The way things were worked out is set forth in aSenate decree of .⁶¹ The mintmasters were to turn over the profit from thequinto to the state provisioners, who were then to use the proceeds to buy sil-ver and copper and have torneselli made of all of it. These torneselli were thento be consigned to the state chamberlains, who would turn them over to thedoge to spend as he wished, presumably on payments to officials and mercenar-ies in Greece, who were required to accept their wages in this denomination. Theminting of the tornesello thereby allowed Venice a much less costly administra-tion of the colonies than would otherwise have been possible.

The standards set for the soldino in lasted for fifteen years. Then, achange in standards was necessitated by the rise in the price of silver. The Fortynoted in that since silver had climbed to £. per mark, soldini were nolonger circulating but were being exported and melted for their bullion con-tent.⁶² The solution to this problem was another debasement, cutting more sol-


⁵⁹ July : ibid., , #.⁶⁰The weight was expressed as manus per mark. For manus as a term for four coins, see ibid., n. ; Lucia Travaini, “Un sistema di conto poco conosciuto: La ‘mano da quattro,’” Revuenumismatique (): ‒; and Liruti, “Dissertatio de monetis,” , where two assays givethe numbers of coins per mark as, respectively, s d and manus.⁶¹ Jan. []: Stahl, Tornesello, , #; Cap. Broche, ‒.⁶² Oct. : PMV, , #. The price is given as £ s is presumably in the lira a grossi sys-tem, in which silver was usually quoted, and was probably for purchase with gold ducats. By the market value of the ducat had risen to about soldini (Lane and Mueller, Coins andMoneys of Account, ). If paid in soldini at the current price, £ s a grossi represented about soldino coins. As soldini were cut from the mark, this many coins were worth more as amark of silver ( soldini) than as £..

dini from the mark to make their fiduciary value higher than their bullion value.The new issue, with the quinto raised to £. and with soldini to themark (. gr of silver in the lira of account), represented a debasement of .percent and gave the same gross profit as the issue of had.⁶³

In May new standards were adopted for the silver coinage.⁶⁴They calledfor a soldino cut at (£.) to the mark, resulting in a lira of . gramsof grosso-grade silver, a debasement of only . percent from the . gramsof the standard. The quinto was to continue paying £. ( soldini) tothe mark, resulting in a gross mint profit of £. (%) for silver of the quinto.Venetians could get free silver coined with a return of £., a gross profit ofonly £., or . percent. The mint could hardly have produced soldini at aprofit for this rate after paying expenses, so the state must in effect have beensubsidizing the minting of silver of its citizens in its desperate need for coinageto pay the expenses of war. In fact, any merchant or moneychanger who cur-rently possessed free silver was ordered to take at least half of it to the mint im-mediately to have it coined at this free-silver rate. Venetians were encouraged tomelt their household plate with a provision that any silver with Venetian hall-marks could be coined free of the quinto; silver worked abroad was subject tothe quinto. In an extraordinary gesture the mintmasters and mint wardens weregiven an incentive for examining and coining this plate; each would receive pic-coli per mark of it as a personal bonus.

Another revolutionary aspect of this coinage reform was the introductionof a new grosso. The old grosso had been minted with no change in standardor appearance from about to about ; no grossi at all had been producedfor the past two decades. The grosso of , rather than representing a separatestandard, was henceforth to be tied directly to the soldino; it would be worth pennies and weigh exactly four times the soldino. It was to be distinguished


⁶³ Oct. : PMV, ‒, #, as Oct. Dec. : PMV, ‒, #; Papadopoli, :,#.⁶⁴Once again, three proposals are known. Nicolò Gabriel, a head of the Forty, proposed lower-ing the weight of the soldino from the present soldini to the mark to to the mark; thequinto was to pay soldini per mark (£. de dicta moneta), while Venetians could bring freesilver and get £ for the duration of the war. This new weight standard would have repre-sented a debasement of percent from the soldino of . A proposal of the banker PietroBenedetto, acting as an advisor for coinage, called for a cut of soldini to the mark, adebasement of . percent. The proposal that carried came from the other two advisors, AndreaDonato and Benedetto Soranzo, also a banker: May : PMV, ‒, #; May :PMV, ‒, #.

visually from the old grosso by a star. As soldini were to be cut from themark, the tale of the new grosso was , compared with the ½ old grossi tothe mark. This represents a debasement in silver of . percent. However, as thecoin had been valued up from its original pennies to pennies, the overallchange corresponds to a debasement of . percent in the pound as defined bythe grosso from to .

The new standards and provisions were apparently not enough to bring sil-ver to the mint for coins needed for the war effort. In August a special warcommission raised the price paid for silver of the quinto from £. to £.

( soldini) a mark and allowed all merchants who brought silver to Venice tosell it to the mint for the current free-silver rate of £. ( soldini) a markwith all such silver exempt from the quinto.⁶⁵ As soldini were cut from themark, the mint was now paying almost full value back for silver of the quintoas well as free silver. The state was sacrificing its seigniorage and even subsidiz-ing the mint in its effort to keep up the production of coinage.

The war with Genoa ended with the Peace of Turin of August . Almostimmediately, the Venetian state undertook a series of measures to make up forthe extraordinary expenses and lost revenues of the war. By the end of the year,the salaries for many of the mint employees were lowered.⁶⁶ The next year, aspart of a series of extraordinary levies that included a general sales tax of per-cent, a duty of £. per mark was levied on all silver sold in Venice; Germanswere soon exempted from this for fear of curtailing their imports of bullion.⁶⁷But wage labor was still in short supply, and the wages paid to workers had tobe raised rather than lowered in this period.⁶⁸ In the course of the next decade,the prices paid for silver, both free and of the quinto, were revised several times


⁶⁵ Aug. : PMV, ‒, #. This situation is reflected in advice given in a Genoese mer-chant manual, which notes that in Venice the quinto was paying £. and other silver was sell-ing at £.: Antonia Borlandi, ed., Il manuale di mercatura di Saminiato de’ Ricci, Università di Gen-ova, Istituto di Storia Medievale e Moderna, Fonti e studi, (Genoa, ), , c. ; themarket rate of shillings per ducat quoted in the passage is appropriate for the period ‒: Lane and Mueller, Coins and Moneys of Account, ‒.⁶⁶The mintmasters for silver went from £ a year to £; the master for torneselli, from £to £; the weigher of torneselli, from £ to £; the other silver weighers, from £ to£: Sept. : ASV, SM, R. , f. ‒v. The blacksmith’s salary was lowered from £ ayear to £: Dec. , citing an earlier act: Cap. Broche, ‒. The salary of the warden forsilver went from £ to £ a year, while the wages of the warden of the emenders went from£. per mark to £.: Nov. : ASV, SM, R. , f. v.⁶⁷ Mar. : PMV, , #; July : PMV, , #.⁶⁸ Mar. : Cap. Broche, ‒.

by small amounts to try to maintain a balance between attracting silver and keep-ing the mint profitable.⁶⁹

In , the standards of the grosso were adjusted to bring the coin downto exactly four times the weight of the soldino, whose weight had been allowedto decline over the preceding decade.⁷⁰ This act called on merchants to pay thewages of the laborers to the mintmasters, which amounted to about . percentof the value of these coins.⁷¹ The state subsidized the minting by paying theoverhead and salaries of the mint staff and forgoing all seigniorage in this effortto attract silver from merchants and keep the silver mint in operation.⁷²

The problem continued into the new century; silver was simply not com-ing to Venice in sufficient quantities to keep the mint active and merchants sup-plied with coins. In the Senate took a further step to attract silver to themint.⁷³ The quinto was maintained but was to be paid out entirely in soldini,with no requirement of merchants taking base piccoli. Moreover, anyone, Vene-tian or foreigner, could take any silver to the mint and receive grossi on a mark-for-mark basis; it was explicitly decreed that the state would pay all the expensesof minting for this silver. If the person wished soldini rather than grossi, hewould pay only the extra expenses of coining the smaller denomination; the sub-sidy from the state was as high as for grossi. The mint was instructed to “con-tinue” cutting grossi at the rate of to the mark and soldini at . This, infact, represented a debasement of . percent from the last standards docu-mented, those acknowledged in .⁷⁴ In another effort to encourage the flowof silver and its minting, various restrictions on the export of free silver wererelaxed. Venetians could henceforth carry free silver to the Levant, and anyone


⁶⁹ Jan. []: PMV, ‒, #; Jan. []: PMV, ‒; #; Aug. : Cap. Broche, ,and PMV, , #.⁷⁰ May : Cap. Broche, ‒; July : ibid., ‒; June : PMV, ‒, #;Papadopoli, :‒, #; Cap. Broche, .⁷¹For each mark of silver turned into grossi, the costs of refining were set at £., with an addi-tional £. for the refiner and £. for charcoal and other supplies. The wages to workmenwere set as £. per mark for the workers, £. for the emenders, and £. for the strikers.Among the mint staff, the wardens were to get £. per mark, and the masters and weigherswere to share another £.. The total brassage for these grossi can then be seen to add up to£., or . grossi for a mark of silver, which made ½ grossi. A later act makes it clear thatthese fees were the total charge to merchants for coining their free silver into grossi: Aug.: Cap. Broche, ‒.⁷²The quinto was still in effect, as a few days later the doge specified that it be minted half intogrossi and half into soldini: June : ibid., .⁷³ May : ibid., ‒; Papadopoli, :‒, #.⁷⁴ Oct. : Cap. Broche, .

could export it by land or to the western Mediterranean on the condition thatthey bring one-fifth of it to the mint to be coined on the pound-for-pound basisdescribed above.

In the rebellious Dalmatian colony of Zara was ordered to use onlyVenetian coins, and the Hungarian and Aquileian coins that circulated there wereto be replaced with a new Venetian issue, modeled after the Aquileian friesach-ers.⁷⁵The Dalmatian wars had other effects on the mint. As in earlier periods ofwar, salaries of state employees were reduced; the mintmasters went from £

a year to £, the weigher from £ to £, and the engravers from £ to£.⁷⁶ Another familiar wartime provision was the decree that Venetians couldhave their jewelry and plate turned into coins for the payment of taxes withoutbeing subject to the quinto.⁷⁷ Finally, the state realized that it could no longercontinue to subsidize the production of silver coins; it decreed that henceforththose wishing to have free silver minted would have to pay the brassage of £.per mark of grossi and £. per mark of soldini.⁷⁸ This is consistent with the£. per mark charge for the mezzanini for Verona a few years earlier and soseems an accurate reflection of the expenses of the wage workers excluding sal-aries, overhead, and seigniorage.⁷⁹

The most serious consequence to the mint of the Dalmatian wars, however,was the enmity that Venice aroused on the part of the emperor Sigismund, whohad controlled much of the Dalmatian coast. For the next two decades, Sigis-mund placed Venice under an economic embargo, which had the specific goal oflimiting the amount of bullion reaching its mint.⁸⁰ The preamble of an exten-sive act of the Venetian Senate in was probably only slightly overdramaticin saying that the silver mint was nearly in desolation and reduced to almostnothing.⁸¹ According to this text, the cut of soldini to the mark could notbe maintained because it had been established when the ducat was worth sol-dini on the open market. The ducat had risen to soldini, and no one was nowwilling to sell his silver at the customary rate of . ducats a mark and receive soldino coins, even with no fees taken out. The mint had apparently gottenaround this by not controlling the weight of coins and allowing everyone to cull


⁷⁵ May : Papadopoli, :‒, #; Aug. : Cap. Broche, .⁷⁶ Jan. []: ASV, SM, R. , f. .⁷⁷ June : ASV, SM, R. , f. .⁷⁸ Apr. : Cap. Broche, .⁷⁹ Sept. : Cap. Broche, ‒; the text is also in ASV, Senato Secreta, R. , f. v.⁸⁰Stromer, “Kontinentalsperre,” ‒.⁸¹ Nov. : Cap. Broche, ‒.

the heavy coins. Only the light coins remained in circulation, with an effectiveweight of to to the mark.

The new regulations extensively revised the provisions concerning silver inVenice. All silver brought into the city was to be refined at the mint for a fee of£. per mark, about . percent of its value. Three-quarters of the silver wasto be made into stamped ingots, which could be exported by anyone without re-strictions. The remaining quarter, and more if desired, was to be put in the mintand turned into coins with the owner paying £. of the £. cost of bras-sage and receiving his coins on a weight-for-weight basis. Soldini were to be cutat to the mark, with grossi four times as heavy. With the subtraction of thebrassage of £. ( soldini) per mark, the mark would then be worth £.( soldini), just below . ducats at the current exchange rate of £. per ducat.

The minting costs of grossi and soldini were set out in this document;they include most of the salaried individuals: the masters, weighers, wardens, andscribes, as well as the wage-earning refiners, workers, emenders, and strikers (table.). When the £. for soldini is averaged with the £. for grossi, the bras-sage comes to £. per mark. For the one-quarter obligatory silver, this leaves£. per mark as profit from the £. fee for the state (or at least to cover theoverhead and unaccounted-for salaried staff such as the engravers and the smith).For free silver, the fee was reduced to £., and the state made up the £. permark shortfall. So even on the “captive” quarter of the silver, the successor tothe quinto, the state was forgoing its profit, and the minting costs were barelycovered; for free silver there was an active subsidy by the Venetian government.If any arrangement was likely to bring silver to the Venetian mint, this shouldhave worked.

However, the problem appears to have been beyond the simple question ofoffering the most advantageous terms at the mint for merchants to bring silverto Venice. The embargo of Sigismund must have had some effect, little silverappears to have been available in Europe for minting, and other destinationsmay have offered its holders more intrinsic advantages than transport to Veniceand through it to the Levant. Two years after the historic reform of the Sen-ate noted the failure of the new policies; whereas , marks of silver per yearhad flowed into Venice at some unspecified period in the past (“per avanti”), therate for the past two years had been under , marks a year (about . met-ric tons).⁸² A special new council was established to draft even more radical re-forms in the silver policy.


⁸² Dec. : ASV, SM, R. , f. .

In January the brassage charged to holders of silver was lowered fur-ther.⁸³ All who brought silver into Venice could have it minted for a fee of £.;the state would pay the rest of the production costs and forfeit any seigniorage.A year later, however, the Senate concluded that the silver mint was in such a badcondition that it could be considered destitute and that something more neededto be done immediately.⁸⁴ A new council made a new set of regulations a weeklater. The weight of the soldino was lowered again, from to the mark to .⁸⁵A small economy was made by switching the production from half soldini andhalf grossi to one-quarter soldini and three-quarters grossi. Although the stan-dard of grosso-grade silver was to remain at carats from pure or less (.%),the mintmasters could buy silver that was as bad as carats below pure; othersilver could be refined by the mint for the small fee of soldino per mark. Tosave a bit more money, one of the positions of mintmaster and that of scribewere abolished and the number of apprentices reduced from eight to six. Suchmeasures might have helped in a marginal case, but they were clearly not suffi-

cient to change so serious a situation.Even the newer, lighter soldini were heavier than those that had gained cir-

culation before the reforms of . In , it was noted that these culled, lightold soldini were circulating at to the ducat, rather than , as was intendedfor the new ones.⁸⁶To purge the circulation of these underweight coins and allowthe new, heavier ones to circulate, the state chamberlains and provisioners wereinstructed to go through the coins they received and bring all light soldini andgrossi to the mint, where they would be reminted into pieces of the acceptablerate. Although this process must have kept the mint active, it brought in no in-come to the mint or state. It does, however, appear to have been successful, as ayear later it was declared that the circulating coinage was where it should be andthat the mint was no longer to recoin lightweight pieces for officials.⁸⁷

The economics of the fifteenth century were different from those of thethirteenth and fourteenth, and the silver mint came to learn how to function inits new environment. Silver grossi of about grams were no longer the preferredmedium of long-range trade; gold coins had replaced them, as eventually muchheavier silver coins would in turn come to dominate. On the other hand, Venicewas expanding as a territorial Italian power. The tornesello had taught Venice


⁸³ Jan. []: Cap. Broche, ‒.⁸⁴ Jan. []: ASV, SM, R. , f. v.⁸⁵ Feb. []: Cap. Broche, ‒.⁸⁶ Mar. : ASV, SM, R. , f. v.⁸⁷ Mar. : ASV, SM, R. , f. .

the profits and mint activity to be derived from the production of petty coinagefor possessions. The soldini and bagattini for the new colonies of the Terrafermamight not have been as glamorous as the production of grossi for the Easterntrade, but with care they could be made as lucrative.

The minting of gold in Venice differed from that of silver in several signi-ficant aspects. Gold has always been much rarer and more valuable than silver;in the medieval period it usually sold for at least ten times the silver price.⁸⁸ Itwas, if anything, easier to coin than silver. Thus, if it cost grossi worth of laborto coin a mark of silver, this would have been a significant addition to the value;about percent. The same labor costs for a mark of gold, however, would addonly about . percent. This left quite a bit of leeway either for realizing a siz-able seigniorage for the state or for keeping added value down near zero. On theother hand, users were far more insistent on the careful maintenance of stan-dards of both fineness and weight, as the slightest deviation could be worth asignificant amount. Medieval moneychangers, and many merchants, could testthe quality of gold coins within one or two percentage points with touchstones;silver could be tested only by a complicated and problematic assay process.Within the mint, loss through theft and carelessness was a greater threat with goldthan silver; again, only a small volume of material would contain a great deal ofvalue.

For medieval Venice, however, the main difference between coining the twometals was the competition. The Venetian grosso was the first large fine-silverLatin trade coin; as long as it kept itself recognizable and generally up to stan-dard, it could hold its own easily against competitors, be they Italian, French, orLevantine. Lower denominations were intended for use either within Venice orin its colonies, and legal, political, and economic power could be applied to makethem circulate, even when greatly overvalued or recently debased. The ducat, onthe other hand, was a latecomer to gold coinage and was in a defensive positionthrough at least the first half century of its minting against the preexisting Byzan-tine and Islamic coinages and, especially, the florin and (to a lesser extent) thegenovino. After the mid-fourteenth century, when it had been established as thedominant gold coin of eastern Mediterranean trade, the ducat came under attackfrom imitations, mainly of Aegean and Anatolian origin, and needed to main-


⁸⁸See Spufford, Money and Its Use, ‒, for medieval gold-silver ratios.

tain its standards against these often base competitors. So, while the Venetiansilver mint went through a series of debasements and experiments with regimesof purchasing and profiting from bullion, the gold mint continued to turn outa single product with no change for the entire Middle Ages and well into themodern era.

Establishing the Ducat

The ducat was authorized by a simple act of the Forty on October ;twenty-seven members voted aye, twenty-two abstained, and there were no nays.⁸⁹The act as it has come down to us has no preamble and no detail other than theweight ( to the mark), the fineness (as fine as the florin, i.e. carats, or %pure), and the value ( grossi). The appearance of the new coin and furtherdetails were left to the doge and his council.

In April , the vice-lords of the German fondaco were instructed that,in order for the ducat to circulate, German merchants could sell their gold di-rectly to the mint, instead of being limited to the auction at the Rialto.⁹⁰ ThatJune, the Great Council passed a detailed set of provisions to further the circu-lation of the ducat.⁹¹ The value of the ducat, set the previous year at £. (grossi), was raised to about £. (£ a grossi).⁹² A series of fixed prices was setfor the purchase of gold at the mint. Venetians or foreigners could sell gold thatwas already refined into Venetian ingots at a rate of £. per mark, or £.

per ducat. The mintmasters could choose whether to pay for gold bullion withgold ducats or with silver grossi. This discretion on the part of the mintmasterswas intended to allow the state to stabilize the price of gold, but if the priceoffered by the mint was out of line with market values, merchants would haverefused to sell their gold to the mint and kept it at the Rialto auctions. For goldthat was less than carats fine, the mintmasters could buy it at the quality esti-mated by the gold estimators, paying at a rate of £. per carat’s fineness,amounting to £. per mark. A special provision allowed Venetians seekingducats for overseas trade to have their fine gold minted for a flat fee of £. permark during the summer months only, before the departure of the convoys tothe East. In order to have the coins to give foreigners immediately for their bul-


⁸⁹ Oct. : PMV, ‒, #; DMC, :, #; Papadopoli, , .⁹⁰ Apr. : PMV, , #; DMC, :, #.⁹¹ June : PMV, , # (as May); DMC, :‒, #; Papadopoli, :, #.⁹²The grosso was worth pennies from to ; see Lane and Mueller, Coins and Moneys ofAccount, ; see also ibid., ‒, for the lira a grossi.

lion, the mint was to be given capital from the state amounting to the value of, ducats.

These figures allow us to make some calculations of the economics of mint-ing gold. The ducat was minted with great care both for its standards of weightand fineness and for its appearance. It is probable that the brassage costs weresomewhat higher than those for the grosso, which in work out to about£. per mark (see table .). The fixed fee of £. per mark for Venetians seek-ing ducats for the Levantine trade is probably an accurate reflection of total mint-ing costs including salaries and overhead; the refining of gold and minting ofducats took more care than for the silver grossi, but fewer than half as manycoins were cut from the mark. In this case, the state would have been forgoingits seigniorage as a boon to Venetian merchants. This provision was repeated atleast twice in the following decade.⁹³

For the gold bought at £. per mark, a brassage of £. per mark wouldhave brought the cost of bullion plus minting to £., leaving a seigniorageof £. per mark. This would amount to a profit of about . percent on thepurchase price of gold. For gold of varying fineness, the lower mint price of£. per mark probably allowed for the cost of refining and potential loss inthe smelting process. It is this latter, lower rate that was to become fixed in thefuture.

The provision for payment in ducats or grossi plus the allocation of capi-tal for the payment of foreigners imply that the mintmasters were to pay sup-pliers of gold bullion at the time of purchase. This is different from the silvermint, where in most periods it appears that individuals, foreigners as well asVenetians, left their bullion at the mint for weeks and months until it had beencoined or paid moneychangers an agio to have coins immediately. This new pol-icy for gold was apparently an attempt to attract bullion in competition withother mints.

The supply of capital for the mint to pay for gold on the spot is the focusof much succeeding legislation. Two months after the assignment of state fundsfor this use, the Great Council authorized the mintmasters to borrow an unlim-ited amount of private funds at the rate of percent per year as capital for goldpurchases.⁹⁴ As this capital would have been reused many times in the course ofthe year, this was not an added percent on the cost of minting gold, but it could


⁹³ May and June : DMC, :, # and , #; Sept. : PMV, , #, andDMC, :, #. These are extensions of otherwise unknown authorizations, and it may bethat the Forty passed such provisions annually.⁹⁴ Aug. : PMV, , #; DMC, :, #.

have seriously eroded profit margins if not well controlled. A less expensive waywas found around this problem. In , silver grossi on deposit with the Procura-tors of San Marco were allocated to the mint to use as payment for gold bullion.⁹⁵A limit of £ value was set on these loans, and the mintmasters were obligedto give the Procurators ducats of the value of the grossi they had borrowed withinthree days of the completion of the minting of the purchased bullion. The mintthen had a supply of the capital it needed to buy gold and in the process mintedsome of the silver of the state treasury into ducats at a no-charge rate.

In another provision of the same year, , Byzantine hyperpyra that hadbeen imported into Venice were ordered to be reminted into ducats on a charge-free basis; the state was to receive no profit from the procedure, nor was it toincur any loss.⁹⁶ The next year, a special rate was given to gold derived fromcoins rather than ingots; it would be paid at a rate of £. per ducat rather thanthe usual £..⁹⁷This was clearly intended to encourage merchants to have theirgold coins reminted into ducats, as the coins in question had to be melted andrefined like other gold (specifically in the presence of the mintmasters); the re-duction of seigniorage was a sacrifice by the state to get its gold coin establishedwith the melting of competing currencies.

The Fourteenth Century

At the end of the thirteenth century, the price of gold shot up against thatof silver throughout Europe.⁹⁸ In terms of Venetian currency it went from £.

per ducat’s weight before to £. a ducat in that year, and to £. a ducatthe next year.⁹⁹ Clearly the mint could no longer pay in silver at the old rate of£. and maintain the standards of the ducat. Rather than having the price paidby the mint for gold be set by councils, the mintmasters, or the market, the mintsimply began to pay for gold with ducats. It set up its own unit of account toexpress the way it was paying for gold.¹⁰⁰The old rate of £. a ducat was main-tained as a fixed price but expressed in terms of the a grossi unit of account, in


⁹⁵ Aug. : PMV, , #; DMC, :‒, # (with limit given as £, rather than£, as in MS); Luzzatto, Prestiti, , #. Cf. Mueller, Procuratori di San Marco, .⁹⁶ Dec. : PMV, ‒, # (with sum given as , hyperpyra), and DMC, :‒, #.⁹⁷ Mar. : PMV, , #; DMC, :, # (with price given as £. rather than £. as inMS).⁹⁸See Spufford, Handbook, lxi–lxiii, for exchange values, especially in Venice.⁹⁹ Sept. and Aug. : Monticolo and Besta, Capitolari, : ‒, cc. and .¹⁰⁰This system was worked out by Lane in “Vecchie monete,” ‒, reprinted in his Studies inVenetian Social and Economic History and taken up in Lane and Mueller, Coins and Moneys of Account,

which it was equivalent to £. a grossi per ducat. The rate of payment wouldthen be determined by what the value of the ducat was defined as in lire a grossi.Thus, when the ducat was defined as £. a grossi, gold brought to be mintedwould be paid out in ducats at the rate of . percent (£¹⁹³⁄£²⁰⁰). If the ducatwas quoted as £., payment would be percent.

In the Great Council instructed the mintmasters to use a value of£. a grossi for the ducat when paying for gold instead of the £. a grossithey had been using as a value.¹⁰¹This would have meant a change in payout forthe ducat from . percent to . percent and a raise in the gross mint profitfrom . percent to . percent. In advice written about , the Florentine spec-ulator Lippo di Fede del Sega explains the sale of gold in Venice, citing a pay-back of . ducats per mark of pure gold, or . percent return.¹⁰² By , themint was valuing the ducat at £. (.%) when paying for gold from withinthe Adriatic and £. (%) for all other gold, an incentive to German mer-chants not extended to those bringing Hungarian gold from Dalmatia.¹⁰³ It wasapparently up to the Forty to set the value of the ducat for mint payments onan annual basis. In the fragment of the acts of that council from to ,the rate was confirmed at £. on October for a year and again on Octo-ber for another year.¹⁰⁴

Towards the end of a large supply of gold began to arrive in Venice bysea.¹⁰⁵ The staff of the gold mint was increased and divided into two separateteams; when more than marks of gold was to be minted, both teams worked;if less, only one. No change appears to have been made in the way in which goldwas purchased or ducats distributed. An undated chapter in the capitulary ofmintmasters for gold appears to date from this era.¹⁰⁶ In this the masters are


‒ and ‒. It is discussed in Pegolotti, Pratica, (from around ), with the ducatworth shillings.¹⁰¹ July : BG, , #. The act is published incorrectly (as well as misdated) in DMC,:, #, and PMV, , , where the italicized section of the following is omitted: “Capta fuitpars quod addatur in capitulari massariorum monete quod, sicut ipsi dant ducatum pro solidistriginta novem et medium ad grossos illis qui dant eis aurum, ita debeant dare ipsum de cetero prosolidis XL ad grossos”: ASV, AC Cerberus, f. v; the original in ASV, MC Pilosus, f. v, istoo smudged to be legible.¹⁰²Charles de la Roncière, Un changeur florentin du trecento: Lippo di Fede del Sega ( env.– env.),École Pratique des Hautes Études, VIe Section, Affaires et gens d’affaires, (Paris, ), .¹⁰³ Mar. : PMV, ‒. #.¹⁰⁴DQ , :, #, and :, #.¹⁰⁵ Dec. : DQ , :, #; June : DQ , :‒, #‒.¹⁰⁶CMO, ff. v–, c. ; this lies between c. , undated in the capitulary but equivalent to June (DQ , :, #), and c. , dated , in this chronological section of the capitulary.

required to record the number of marks of gold minted in their period of dutyand the profit (vadagno) realized, including in this a profit to the state of £.

per mark. At the defined value of the ducat at £., as seems to have been ineffect in this period, the mint was returning percent of the gold it took inand keeping about percent, which would amount to £. per mark (see table.). If the seigniorage due to the state was £. per mark, this would have leftabout £. a mark for brassage. The total added value on the coinage was about percent, which would certainly have made the Venetian mint competitive in themarket for gold bullion. With a maximum capacity of the gold mint of ,

marks per year following the expansion of , the total potential profit to thestate from the minting of the ducat was only £, per year, compared withthe £, calculated above for the silver mint in the same period (see table .).

The system of quotation for payment for gold at the mint appears to haveremained in effect through the end of the fourteenth century; there is no evi-dence of the rate of payment at £. (%) having been altered in this periodeither. The rate of pay was still £. at the end of the century and the earlydecades of the fifteenth according to the information in merchant manuals ofthe period.¹⁰⁷ In , as part of a series of regulations to tighten up the account-ing of the gold mint, the Forty specified that the profit that was now recordedas £. for mint expenses and £. to the state be recorded in general as £.

with mint expenses to be itemized and deducted.¹⁰⁸With the ducat worth £.at this time, the mark of gold would be worth £., and these figures wouldexpress a gross added value of about half a percent.

In a half century, the seigniorage rate had declined slightly from £. permark to £., while the amount allowed for production expenses had been cutfrom £. to £. (see table .).¹⁰⁹This cutting of corners in the mint to allowa reduced rate of total added value while maintaining seigniorage was probably


¹⁰⁷Tarifa zoè noticia, ‒ (mid-fourteenth century); Borlandi, Manuale di mercatura, , c. (mid-fourteenth century); Cesare Ciano, ed., La “Pratica di mercatura” Datiniana (secolo XIV), Bibliotecadella rivista Economia e storia, (Milan, ), (s); Franco Borlandi, ed., El libro di mercatantieet usanze de’ paesi, Documenti e studi per la storia del commercio e del diritto commerciale ital-iano, edited by F. Patetta and M. Chiaudano, (Turin, ), , c. (early fourteenth cen-tury, attributed to Chiarini); Antonio da Uzzano, La pratica della mercatura, in Della decima e delle altregravezze . . ., ed. G. F. Pagnini della Ventura (Lisbon, ), :, c. .¹⁰⁸ July : recorded in Latin in the capitulary of the account officials, ASV, Rason Nuove,R. , ff. v–, and in vernacular in CMO, c. , f. v. I am taking the numbers to be in lire agrossi; they are given as shillings, shillings, and shillings, respectively. If they are intendedto be in moneta, the profit levels would be proportionally lower.¹⁰⁹The decrease was even greater in terms of silver, as the lira of account had lost percent ofits metallic equivalence in the period (see table .).

responsible for many of the problems that would face the gold mint in the com-ing decades (see above, Chap. ). Unlike the silver mint, the gold mint does notappear to have suffered greatly from a bullion famine in the early years of thefifteenth century.¹¹⁰The simplicity of payment for gold bullion in a fixed amountof gold coins of unchanging weight and fineness may not have been whatattracted gold to Venice, but the low added value and consistent product cer-tainly were important in establishing the ducat as the one product of the me-dieval Venetian mint, and one of the few coins of the entire European MiddleAges, which would survive unchanged well into the modern era.

The monetary policy of medieval Venice was dominated by its identity asa merchant republic; those people who set mint policy were the same individu-als as those who used the coinage in long-distance trade. Although state incomewas always a desirable outcome of minting, it never dictated Venetian coinagedecisions as it did in other states.

The early history of Venetian minting, especially its economic aspects, isobscure, but it is evident that indigenous coinage was of little importance eitherto the fisc or to trade before the late twelfth century. Then, political and eco-nomic factors moved Venice away from reliance on foreign coins (chiefly Byzan-tine) for its trade at the same time that it was establishing mercantile dominancein the eastern Mediterranean. The grosso became established as the basis of thistrade, and it was of utmost importance to Venice to maintain its standard un-changed, especially in the contexts of the debasements typical of so many othercoinages of the day. Silver seems to have been plentiful in this age, and Germanand other merchants were eager to exchange their bullion for Venetian merchan-dise, so the state could maintain a low seigniorage rate, about percent, and stillderive significant income from the mint. The penny and other petty coinageswere chiefly for local usage and small change and, though they were heavily over-valued, were more of a nuisance to the mint than a source of fiscal profit.

Venice was so successful with the silver grosso that it delayed the mintingof gold until more than three decades after its rivals of Florence and Genoa hadbegun minting in the metal. It eventually became apparent that the grosso couldnot hold out on its own, and in Venice introduced the gold ducat. This coin


¹¹⁰In the blacksmith of the gold mint was given a raise in recognition of his service and ofthe great quantity of gold being brought into Venice: Aug. : ASV, GR, R. , f. . Ingeneral, see below, Chap. .

was always minted at competitively low profit margin, with great concern for themaintenance of the pureness of its gold and the control of its weight. Even withbarely a percent gross markup, the ducat must have brought significant incometo the state, especially in the mid-fourteenth century, when Venice experiencedan unprecedented flood of gold in the face of volatile gold-silver ratios. Thegold mint was less affected by changes in the supply of bullion in the later Mid-dle Ages than the silver mint, and the Venetian ducat continued to be mintedvirtually unaltered until the fall of the republic in the Napoleonic era.

Silver was a different story. By the early fourteenth century, Venice could nolonger keep the grosso unchanged and still retain it as a functioning coin in itsdomestic as well as trade economy. It took the step of separating the two mon-etary spheres in the s, creating lower denominations for domestic use andletting the grosso float free as a trade coin against the moneta currency. Theselower denominations followed those of most European silver coinages, with pro-gressive debasements that averaged about half a percent a year. These coinageshad, however, much higher levels of added value than the grosso and ducat and,in combination with the forced minting of one-fifth of imported bullion at afixed price, produced significant profit for the mint and the state. In the mid-fourteenth century, Venice followed the example of territorial lords in produc-ing a highly overvalued billon coinage, the tornesello, whose circulation it suc-ceeded in limiting to its Greek colonies. This produced huge amounts of stateincome, which helped finance wars both overseas and on the Terraferma.

Eventually, the silver famine of the later Middle Ages hit the Venetian zeccaas it did other European mints. By the first decade of the fifteenth century, thesilver mint of Venice was functioning at only a fraction of its earlier volume.Desperate for coinage for trade, the Venetian government slashed the mintingprofits, at times even subsidizing the minting of bullion brought from abroad.The establishment of new colonies in the Adriatic and Italy produced the op-portunity for new, overvalued petty coinages, but these did not bring the activ-ity or the profits of the tornesello. The mint remained in operation through thefifteenth century, unlike those of some of Venice’s northern neighbors, coiningwhat silver did come through and waiting for new bullion sources, which wouldeventually develop close to home, in the Tyrol, and far away in the New World.



Table .. Mint Accounting in Medieval Venice



Table .. The Lira of Medieval Venice in Grams of Silver

Table .. The Price of Silver in Venice, in Lire per Mark (. grams)




Table .. Wages for Workers on Grossi and Soldini in Pounds, per Mark of Silver,

Table .. Minting Profits and State Finances



The Circulation of �enetian Coinages

Once the coins left the zecca, their future life occasioned only limited inter-est on the part of the Venetian government. Even within the city of Venice itself,foreign coins as well as Venetian were usually allowed to circulate with no regu-lation, and merchants seem to have been free to trade with whatever currencythey wished. Only when the competition of foreign issues or the action of userson Venetian coins threatened the profitability of minting or the acceptability ofVenetian issues did the state take an active role. The circulation of its coins was,however, of great importance to the mint, as a widely accepted currency increasedthe utility of the issues and hence the amount of demand among holders of bul-lion for its conversion into Venetian coinage. Merchants also benefited from thesuccessful circulation of the coinage; not only did it give them a readily acceptedmedium for their transactions, but it encouraged foreign traders to bring theirbusiness to Venice in the expectation of being paid in preferred coins.

The circulation patterns of Venetian coinage were distinct for the variousdenominations.¹The preambles of certain of the laws introducing coins or chang-ing their conditions of minting indicate that certain markets were intended bythe councils that initiated the issues. The areas of circulation changed over time,as the political and economic position of Venice altered and as competing coin-ages grew or shrank in importance.

The sources for the knowledge of the areas of circulation of Venetian coin-age in the Middle Ages are incomplete and often problematic. Many documentsmention sums of money but often give no indication of what kind is intended.Even when “money of Venice” or “ducats” are specified, these are usually mon-

¹See Alan M. Stahl, “The Circulation of Medieval Venetian Coinages,” in Moneta locale, monetastraniera: Italia ed Europa XI–XIV secolo, ed. L. Travaini, Società Numismatica Italiana, Collana dinumismatica e scienze affini, (Milan, ), ‒.

eys of account. Occasionally, written sources do indicate the actual coins usedin a transaction. Some account books list coins paid before translating these intostandard moneys of account, as in the case in the records of papal tithes, whosecollectors specified the totals of various coinages taken in before reducing all tothe standard florin used in papal accounts; these payments may not, however,have been representative of the total circulation. Court records are a most use-ful source of documentation on specific coins in certain contexts, often as theobject of thefts but occasionally the result of the challenge of a normal payment.

Numismatic finds are a rich source of information on coin circulation, butthey, too, are of limited representativity of overall circulation. Finds from exca-vations offer a body of coinage which was not consciously selected, but they areusually representative only of the least valuable coins in circulation at a site.Hoards containing medieval Venetian coins are plentiful but comprise a groupof coins consciously selected for burial, which are all the less representative ofcirculation in that they were not recovered by their burier. The lack of repre-sentativity of hoards is particularly acute for late medieval northern Italy, wheredeposit banking offered many people the opportunity to store at least some oftheir money in an alternative (if not always safer) mode.

By combining an analysis of documentary and numismatic sources, it ispossible to sketch the general development of the circulation of medieval Vene-tian coinage on a denomination-by-denomination basis. Unlike the operationof the mint, for which added documentation is unlikely to appear in significantquantity, this is an area in which the new publication of documents (especiallyof an accounting, trial, and notarial nature), as well as of finds, archaeologicaland hoard, is likely to clarify and alter the general outline presented here.

,

The first issues of coins in the name of Venice are silver pennies bearing thename of Louis the Pious, Carolingian emperor from to . They belong toClass II of these coins, an issue that was minted from to at imperialmints, though there is no certainty that it was not continued after this date inVenice.² Although there is doubt as to the legal status of the Venetian issue, thecoins seem to have circulated alongside those of mints from within the Empire.In the two French hoards composed mainly of Class II denars of Louis the Pious,the coinage of Venice accounts for percent of all coins present in one and


²MEC, :‒.

percent in the other.³Venetian coins from this issue appear in six additional findsfrom the Netherlands and Germany.⁴

Coins of the succeeding imperial issue of Louis the Pious did not bearthe names of mints within the Empire, but Venice adapted this type to identifyitself; two examples were found at Hermenches (Vaud), Switzerland, in a hoardof three hundred coins, the rest of which were of unmarked French mints.⁵Thenext issue bearing the name of Venice was in the name of Lothar I, Carolingianemperor from to ; no finds are known of these coins.⁶ After this time,the mint name of Venice disappears from coinage in the name of Carolingianrulers and their successors, as do those of the other northern Italian mints. PhilipGrierson has identified the Venetian issues on the basis of style; if his identifi-

cation is correct, Venetian coins figure prominently among those appearing asbooty in Hungarian graves of the late ninth and tenth centuries.⁷

The designation of the coinage of a specific mint appears in documentswhen the values of the issues of various mints are recognized to have movedapart and there is a motive for recording or demanding payment in a specificcoinage. For Venetian coins this appears to have happened about the end of themillennium. Before then, the products of the Venetian mint appear not to havebeen distinguished from those of its neighbors, either in transactions or in record.The earliest documentation of such a distinction is from , when a paymentin Friuli was specified as having to be either pennies of Milan or of Venice.⁸Specification of Venetian coinage begins in Rimini in and in Treviso in theyear .⁹ It appears in Padua in , in Ravenna and Faenza in , and inPesaro in .¹⁰

The Circulation of Venetian Coinages

³Aprement [Veuillin] (Cher): Jean Duplessy, Les trésors monétaires médiévaux et modernes découverts enFrance, vol. , ‒ (Paris, ), ‒, #, and Morrison and Grunthal, Carolingian Coinage,‒, #; Belvézet (Gard): Duplessy, Trésors monétaires médiévaux, , #, and Morrison andGrunthal, Carolingian Coinage, , #.⁴Morrison and Grunthal, Carolingian Coinage, ‒, # (Dorestadt); , # (Frankfurt amMain); ‒, # (Ide, Netherlands); , # (Boppard, Germany); , # (Neumünster,Germany); ‒, # (Schowen, Netherlands).⁵Colin Martin, “Un ripostiglio di monete italiane del IX secolo,” Atti del I º Convegno Internazionaledi Studi sull’Alto Medioevo (Novara, ), ‒.⁶Morrison and Grunthal, Carolingian Coinage, , #.⁷MEC, :; Saccocci, “Moneta nel Veneto,” ‒.⁸Muratori, “De moneta,” .⁹Zanetti, “Delle monete riminesi,” ; Ughelli, Italia sacra, : cc. ‒.¹⁰Brunacci, “De re nummaria,” ; Zanetti, “Delle monete di Faenza,” ; Annibale Olivieri,“Della zecca di Pesaro e delle monete pesaresi dei secoli bassi,” in Zanetti, Nuova Raccolta, :.

These mentions are not isolated, but they are by no means universal; othercurrencies are regularly mentioned in other charters of the same places in thesame era. In the early eleventh century, Venetian coinage appears to have beenone of several Italian coinages available as the basis of payments and contracts.Like them, it identified the ruling German emperor in the legends on each coin,as well as the name of the minting city. Its use was centered in Venice itself, butit was recognized and occasionally specified in other centers of northeasternItaly. Venetian coins from the early eleventh century are known from excavationsin Padua and from an eighteenth-century find in Rimini.¹¹

In the later years of the eleventh century, the penny of Verona establisheditself as the leading denomination in the region; it came to predominate overthat of Venice in documents of Padua and even appeared frequently, if not dom-inantly, in purely domestic charters drawn up in Venice itself.¹² The interplaybetween the two coinages is evident in a charter drawn up in by the abbotof a monastery in Padua acknowledging payment of a debt by an abbess of Venicein the form of £ of coins of Verona and £ of Venetian albulos, as the pen-nies of Venice were sometimes called.¹³ It can also be seen in the contents of ahoard laid down in the middle of the century in Ponte di Brenta, a few kilome-ters northeast of Padua, which had pennies of Venice and of Verona.¹⁴

In the reign of Sebastiano Ziani (‒), the Venetian penny underwenta reform that brought it even in standard with that of Verona and replaced thename of the German emperor with that of the reigning doge. This equivalencewas recognized in documents within Venice and without, with payment allowedin either coin.¹⁵ By the Venetian penny was the only Italian coin identifiedin domestic documents.¹⁶ Venetian pennies from the late twelfth century havebeen found in excavations in Torcello, Noventa di Piave, Padua, San Giorgio diNogaro (Udine), and Asolo (see below, App. B, table B., #, , , , ). A largehoard from the end of the twelfth century found in Carinthia contained about


¹¹Saccocci, “Moneta nel Veneto,” .¹²Brunacci, “De re nummaria,” ; e.g., charter of July , Rialto, ASV, Arch. Fam. da Molin,S. Zaccaria, B. , transcribed in Codice Diplomatico Veneziano, typescript transcribed byLuigi Lanfranchi in ASV, vol. , , #.¹³ Dec. : ASV B. , publ. in Flaminio Corner, Ecclesiae venetae antiqua monumenta (Venice,), :.¹⁴Jimenez et al., “Un ripostiglio,” ‒.¹⁵Robbert, “Venetian Money Market,” ‒.¹⁶In documents drawn up in the Rialto, Chioggia, and Torcello in the years ‒, sums arespecified in pennies of Venice in twenty-five documents, simply as pennies in two, and they arenever given either as pennies of Verona or as pennies of either Venice or Verona: ASV, CDV, vol., passim.

one thousand Venetian pennies and more than three thousand pennies of Verona(see below, App. B, table B., #). The Venetian piccolo was, however, losingits importance farther down the Adriatic coast; coinage of Venice is last speci-fied in documents in Faenza in ; after that date it was replaced by penniesfrom Lucca and then eventually from Ravenna (map ).¹⁷

With the inception of the minting of the grosso around the year , theproduction of piccoli was halted in Venice, not to resume until the reign ofLorenzo Tiepolo (‒). But the old pennies appear to have continued to cir-culate in the meantime; the four major hoards of Venetian piccoli from the earlyfourteenth century all have a significant representation of twelfth-century coins(see below, App. B, table B., #‒). In a journey in ‒, Bishop Wolfgerof Passau, patriarch of Aquileia, was able to change his currency into Venetianpennies in Pordenone, Treviso, and Padua.¹⁸ A transaction in Padua in wassettled in Venetian grossi and piccoli.¹⁹ Robbed by men in the employ of themarquess of Ferrara in , the Venetian merchant Bonfiglio da Molin lost £

of Venetian piccoli as well as £ of grossi and £ of coins of Ravenna.²⁰ Amongthe coins that Belingarda, the daughter of a Florentine merchant, received fromthe prior of Padua in were £ of Venetian piccoli.²¹

After minting of the piccolo was resumed, its use was apparently mandatedfor small purchases within Venice.²² Piccoli were dominant in purses stolen inVenice in and .²³ They also circulated among other pennies in a rela-tively broad regional distribution, with an apparent emphasis on the lands to thenorth and east. Along with pennies of Padua and Verona, the Venetian piccolowas one of the three low-denomination coins allowed to circulate in Padua ac-cording to the statutes of .²⁴Venetian pennies from the issues following theresumption of minting are found in excavations in the Veneto and Friuli and inhoards from the Veneto, Triest, Austria, and Slovenia.²⁵ It was a shortage of Ve-


¹⁷Zanetti, “Delle monete di Faenza,” ‒, .¹⁸Ignaz V. Zingerle, ed., Reiserechnungen Wolfger’s von Ellenbrechtskirchen (Heilbronn, Germany, ),.¹⁹Brunacci, “De re nummaria,” .²⁰DMC, :.²¹Brunacci, “De re nummaria,” .²² Dec. : DMC, :. This law is known only from a rubric and might have specified thatsuch purchases be recorded in terms of piccoli, not be paid in them.²³ Jan. []: ASV, SN, Sentenze, R. , f. ; Mar. : ASV, SN, Sentenze, R. , f. v.²⁴Gloria, Statuti del Comune di Padova, .²⁵See below, App. B, table B., #‒ (Venice); (Torcello); (Noventa di Piave); (Asolo); (Padua); (San Giorgio di Nogaro); (Sattendorf ); (Piovene Rocchette); (Trieste); (Vrh Trebnje).

netian piccoli (and their replacement with bianchi worth half their value) whichimpelled the Commune of Treviso to reopen its mint in after centuries ofreliance on imported coins.²⁶ Though undocumented in Greek excavation andhoard reports, the Venetian piccolo appears to have circulated at least in thecolony of Crete, where its refusal was forbidden in for transactions under grossi in value and the receipt of a bag of them is documented in .²⁷

Once the soldino was initiated in (along with attempts at establishingthe mezzanino), the piccolo appears to have had a limited circulation, even inVenice. Of five women whose purses were snatched within the city in , twohad soldini, one had mezzanini, and two had coins of Verona; none had pic-coli.²⁸The few finds from the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries with Vene-tian piccoli are from the Veneto and Friuli.²⁹

The coins beneath the piccolo, the halfpenny usually called a bianco and


²⁶Azzoni, “Della zecca,” ‒.²⁷Vidulich, Duca di Candia, , #; Morozzo della Rocca, Lettere, , #.²⁸ May , ASV, SN, Sentenze, R. , ff. v–.²⁹See below, App. B, table B., # (Noventa de Piave); (Torcello); (San Giorgio di Nogaro); (Asolo); (Feltre).

Map . Piccolo finds. For maps , , , and , excavation hoards are indicated by , hoard finds by , and

hoards located off the map by a symbol surrounded by a dotted line.Source: For maps ‒, references to finds are in appendix B.


the farthing called a quartarolo, appear to have had generally local and restrictedcirculation. Seven bianchi were in the purse stolen in (along with piccoliand grosso), and quartaroli in that taken in (compared with piccoliand grossi).³⁰ In , a seller of oil was lacking in bianchi and so made changewith nuts; nine years later a boy buying oil got in trouble for pocketing thebianco that was part of his change.³¹ In there was bianco along with about£ worth of larger coins and ducat in a purse stolen in the Piazza San Marco.³²Finds of bianchi and quartaroli are reported for the tomb of San Secondo inthe Church of the Gesuati in Venice and for Torcello, as well as in Asolo, at sev-eral sites in Friuli, singly at Corinth and Athens, and even in Crusader contextsof the Levant.³³

The Venetian heavy silver grosso was introduced sometime during the reignof Enrico Dandolo (‒).³⁴ It appears to have been known to the mathe-matician Fibonacci (Leonardo Pisano), who included in his Liber abbaci, compiledin , an arithmetic problem involving a pound of Venetian coins worth hypo-thetically pounds shillings of Pisan money.³⁵ By it was in use in theEnglish exchequer as a counter.³⁶ In the early s it appears as a circulating coinin documentary sources, cited in Aquileia, Padua, and Treviso (see above, Chap.). An exchange initiated in Tunisia in involved the payment of , dinarsthere to be repaid in Venice as £, of Venetian grossi.³⁷

It is not until the s, however, that documentary references to the circu-


³⁰See above, n. .³¹ Nov. and Sept. : Vincenzo Padovan, “Numismatica,” Nuovo archivio veneto ():‒.³² Mar. : ASV, SN, Processi, R. , f. v; though the trial records speak about £ “parvo-rum,” the lack of soldini or grossi in this and similar records makes it likely that this termincluded any coins accounted in the moneta system.³³See below, App. B, table B., #, , , and . Bruno Callegher, “Monete medioevali dei secoliXI–XIII in Friuli,” in Härtel, Die friesacher Münze, , # (Aquileia); , # (Torviscosa); ,# (Udine). R. Cantilena, Ricerche archeologiche a Napoli, Lo scavo in borgo S. Aniello (‒)(Naples, ), ; I am grateful to Andrea Saccocci for supplying me with this information.D. M. Metcalf, “Some Hoards and Stray Finds from the Latin East,” American Numismatic SocietyMuseum Notes (): , #‒.³⁴See above, Chap. , for a discussion of the exact chronology.³⁵Pisano, Liber abbaci, .³⁶Pipe Roll John, ed. R. A. Brown (London, ), ; I am thankful to Nicholas Mayhew forcalling my attention to this reference.³⁷ June : ASV, CI, B. , summarized in CMI.

lation of the Venetian grosso become common. This is probably because up tothat point Venetian coinage had been represented by a single current coin, firstthe piccolo and then the grosso, so there was no need to specify denominationin accounting. With the reintroduction of the piccolo, however, the two denom-inations moved apart in relative value, and it became necessary to indicate withwhich a payment was made or expected.³⁸ Thus the document of whichrecorded the receipts of Belingarda from the prior of Padua specified that shereceived £ of grossi of Venice (worth pennies each), along with the £ ofVenetian piccoli and quantities of Veronese and Tyrolean grossi.³⁹

Venetian grossi turn up in a fairly wide field in the papal tithe collectionsof ‒, the earliest such record that specifies in what coin payments weremade. In Emilia the Venetian grossi collected amounted to about percent ofthe value of the receipts.⁴⁰ In the Diocese of Todi grossi represented about percent and in Urbino about percent.⁴¹ In the receipts from Viterbo for thiscollection, the £ s d of Venetian grossi equivalent to about florins wereworth more than the florins taken in in gold florins or any other singlecoinage enumerated.⁴² In the Diocese of Salzburg, , Venetian grossi consti-tuted about one-half of percent of the tithes of ‒.⁴³

In this period, Charles of Anjou administered his kingdom of southernItaly and Sicily on the basis of the Venetian grosso; in he changed , goldunzie into almost , Venetian grossi to pay salaries and in recordedalmost marks worth almost , grossi in the denomination.⁴⁴ This useof the grosso in Apulia is confirmed by the find in southern Italy of a hoardmixing Venetian grossi up to with gold augustales and tari minted in thesouth (see below, App. B, table B., #). At the end of the thirteenth century,Venetian coinage (no doubt mainly grossi) constituted one-third of the foreignentries in the accounts of the Tyrolean treasury.⁴⁵

Large, bright, and valuable, the Venetian grosso is not the type of coin to


³⁸Lane and Mueller, Coins and Moneys of Account, ‒.³⁹See above, n. .⁴⁰Pietro Sella, ed., Rationes decimarum Italiae nei secoli XIII e XIV: Umbria, Studi e testi, (VaticanCity, ), (cf. ‒ for equivalents of the various coins).⁴¹Ibid., and , for partial accounts for Todi and for a partial account for Urbino.⁴²Giulio Battelli, ed., Rationes decimarum Italiae nei secoli XIII e XIV: Latium, Studi e testi, (Vati-can city, ), ‒.⁴³S. Steinherz, “Die Einhebung des Lyoner Zehnten im Erzbisthum Salzburg (‒),” Mit-teilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung (): .⁴⁴Carabellese, Carlo d’Angiò, n. and n. .⁴⁵Rizzolli, Münzgeschichte, ‒.

show up in great numbers among excavation finds; the significant presence ofexamples from before at Corinth and Athens, then, is all the more evidenceof its established circulation there (see below, App. B, table B., # and ).Hoards with substantial numbers of grossi from this period, other than thesouthern Italian one cited above, comprise five finds from northern Italy andfive from Greece, plus a large find of Venetian grossi mixed in with many moreSerbian grossi in Macedonia and one of twenty-one coins of one doge in Bul-garia (map ).⁴⁶ The lack of hoards containing significant numbers of Venetiangrossi from central Italy may in part derive from the advanced systems of bank-ing and the general dearth of hoards of any kind from this period there.⁴⁷

With the introduction of the gold ducat in , the grosso took on a sec-ondary role among Venetian coins. Papal tithe records document that it contin-ued to circulate throughout Italy for the succeeding two decades. It is not sur-prising that circulation was strongest in the areas closest to Venice: in the provinceof Aquileia, Venetian grossi accounted for more than half of the collection of.⁴⁸ In Ravenna the , Venetian grossi taken in were worth percentof the amount taken in in the coinage of Ravenna itself.⁴⁹ Even in Tuscany theVenetian grosso made a significant presence; it accounted for percent of thetotal value of the tithes of Lucca from to .⁵⁰ The presence of Venetiancoins dropped off in Tyrolean accounts after .⁵¹ In the account books of theFlorentine moneychanger Lippo di Fede del Sega from the first decades of thefourteenth century, Venetian grossi constituted about . percent of the value ofcoins enumerated.⁵² Even as far away as Portugal, Venetian grossi were in thetithe accounts of .⁵³ The grosso certainly continued to be used in Crete and


⁴⁶See below, App. B, table B., # (Aquileia), (Digoman), (Monte Magre), (Neu-markt), (Istrago), (Thessaly), (Ioannina ), (Kirkhigiates), (Trikhala), (Cisano), (Gradac), (Zrancha), (Verona), (Ayios Andreas). This listing includes onlyhoards of known find spot with ten or more Venetian coins.⁴⁷This dearth of find evidence is also true for Tuscan grossi, for which only one hoard from themid-thirteenth century is known: Alan M. Stahl, “The Orte Hoard of Tuscan Grossi,” in Pro-ceedings of the XII International Numismatic Congress (Berlin, ).⁴⁸Pietro Sella and Giuseppe Vale, eds. Rationes decimarum . . . Venetiae-Histria, Dalamatia, Studi e testi, (Vatican City, ), ‒.⁴⁹Angelo Mercati et al., eds., Rationes decimarum . . . Aemilia, Studi e testi, (Vatican City, ), .⁵⁰Martino Giusti and Pietro Guidi, eds., Rationes decimarum . . . Tuscia, Studi e testi, (VaticanCity, ), :‒.⁵¹Rizzolli, Münzgeschichte, :.⁵²De la Roncière, Un changeur florentin, ‒; it should be noted that Lippo himself traveled toVenice several times during this period.⁵³Emil Göller, ed., Die Einnahmen der apostolischen Kammer unter Johann XXII, VQ, (Paderborn,Germany, ), .

other Venetian colonies until the soldino was introduced there; in silvergrossi were paid out in Candia (Heraklion) for an exchange to be completed by gold dinars in Alexandria.⁵⁴

By the s gold coinage and the smaller Venetian silver coins had over-whelmed the Venetian grosso for at least the collection of papal tithes. In Veniceitself, the grosso accounted for only percent of the value of papal receipts in‒, whereas the ducat and florin (recorded together) accounted for per-cent and smaller coins percent.⁵⁵ The merchant manual of Pegolotti, com-piled around the s, recounts the use of the grosso in Venice and in the east-ern ports of Constantinople, Clarenza, and Alexandria; it is silent about its use inEurope.⁵⁶ On an Aegean journey in ‒, the count of Holland used Venetiangrossi in Ragusa, Clarenza, Modon, Candia, and Famagusta.⁵⁷ Soon after mid-


⁵⁴ASV, Notai di Candia, Angelo de Cartura, B. , f. v, publ. in Alan M. Stahl, ed., The Docu-ments of Angelo di Cartura and Donato Fontanella: Venetian Notaries in Fourteenth-Century Crete (Washing-ton, ), #.⁵⁵Sella and Vale, Rationes . . . Venetiae, .⁵⁶Pegolotti, Pratica, , , , ‒.⁵⁷H. G. Hamaker, ed., De rekeningen der Grafelijkheid van Holland, Werken van het historisch Genoot-schap, n.s. , pt. (Utrecht, ), ‒.

Map . Grosso hoards.Hoards buried before are indicated by , those from ‒ by , and those

from ‒ by .


century the issue of the grosso had been stopped, not to be resumed until .The coin finds of grossi of the period between the introduction of the ducat

in and the end of minting of the grosso by include eight hoards fromnorthern Italy, eleven from the northern Balkans, eight from Greece, and fourfrom the eastern Mediterranean.⁵⁸This shows a great broadening of circulationfrom the earlier period, when only two hoards were from the northern Balkansand none from the eastern Mediterranean. The distribution describes a broadarc of grosso circulation which follows the eastern shore of the Adriatic Sea andstretches across the northern shore of the eastern Mediterranean.

From this time on, documentary sources for the circulation of the grossoare almost exclusively in relation to the eastern Mediterranean. Two Italians trav-eling in the region at the end of the fourteenth century reported the commoncirculation of the grosso there. The Florentine political leader Niccolò Fres-cobaldi, who traveled to the East in , took , grossi with him to Alexan-dria; he reported that Venetian grossi were the only European silver coins accept-able there.⁵⁹ He noted that Venetian grossi were also acceptable for admissionto the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem.⁶⁰ Emmanuel Piloti, a Venetian born in Crete,reported on his voyage to Egypt and Syria in that Venetian grossi were cur-rent there at that time, as well.⁶¹ However, an Arabic source noted that after

grossi were refused in Syria in favor of ducats.⁶²The “deathbed oration” attrib-uted to Doge Tomaso Mocenigo may have been composed after its supposeddate of and may not be accurate in terms of numbers, but its report that


⁵⁸See below, App. B, table B., # (Lurate Abbate, Italy), (Carribollo, Italy), (Bassano),Italy), (Rosola, Italy), (Concorezzo, Italy), (Trentino, Italy), (Monfalcone, Italy), (Ospitaletto, Italy), (Gala, Croatia) (Dobriste, Macedonia), (Usje, Macedonia), (Dolenja Vas, Slovenia), (Macedonia), (Kostandovo, Bulgaria), (Kranj, Slovenia), (Kicevo, Serbia), (Staro Korzo, Macedonia), (Rakitovo, Bulgaria), (Granitza, Bulgaria), (Ioannina , Greece), (Delphi , Greece), (Capandriti, Greece), (Thessaloniki,Greece), (Polopotamos Phlorines, Greece), (Hagios Silas, Greece), (Asomato Veroias,Greece, (Siderunda, Greece), (Tiberias, Israel), (Aleppo, Syria), (Sheiza, Syria), (Belgrakapi, Turkey).⁵⁹Niccolò Frescobaldi, Viaggio di Lionardo di Niccolò Frescobaldi fiorentino in Egitto e in Terra Santa, ed.Guglielmo Manzi (Rome, ), and .⁶⁰Ibid., .⁶¹Emmanuel Piloti, Traité d’Emmanuel Piloti sur le passage en Terre Sante (), ed. Pierre-HermanDopp (Louvain, Belgium, ), , c. , and ‒, c. .⁶²Cited by Ashtor, Métaux précieux, . The statement on the same page that hoards up to thattime comprised only grossi seems to be based on the contents of hoards known only after theywere donated to the Bibliothèque Nationale and have little likelihood of having been complete(see below, App. B, table B., #).

grossi were being shipped in significant numbers to Syria, Egypt, and the Vene-tian colonies probably reflects the common knowledge of the fifteenth century(see below, Chap. ).

Hoards including grossi from after the resumption of minting in the latefourteenth century include one from northern Italy, six from the northern Bal-kans, and six from the eastern Mediterranean.⁶³ A significant shift in the circu-lation of the grosso can be seen after the mid-fourteenth century, with it losingimportance in northern Italy and disappearing completely from Greece, whilesignificantly strengthening its presence in the eastern Mediterranean.

When Venice introduced the ducat in , it was more than three decadesbehind Florence and Genoa, both of which had established a standard gold coin-age in . It expressly modeled its coin on that of Florence, requiring that itbe of at least as fine gold as the florin and sizing it at to the mark of Venice,which resulted in a coin a hair heavier than the florin (. gr vs. . gr).⁶⁴ Atthis point the florin had not yet been established as the accounting basis for pa-pal revenues, a development that was to give it a special importance throughoutCatholic Europe.⁶⁵

The intended market for the new coin was not specified in the enabling leg-islation, nor is there much evidence from documentary or numismatic sourceswhat the area of circulation of the ducat was in its first half century. It is cer-tain, though, that within a few years it was being exported to the eastern Mediter-ranean: a Venetian ship that was seized by Arabs in was carrying about ,

ducats as well as Venetian grossi, silver bars, and gold bars.⁶⁶ There is a bit ofnegative evidence from Tana on the Black Sea: in a Venetian merchant was


⁶³See below, App. B, table B., # (Lonca di Rivolto, Italy), (Siroka Kula, Croatia), (SanGiorgio di Pola, Croatia), (Kniazheva, Bulgaria), (Svica, Croatia), (Villa Decani,Croatia), (Lipova Glavica, Croatia), (Lebanon), (Antioch, Syria), ‒ (Hamah,Syria), (Sidon, Lebanon), (Syria), (Beirut, Lebanon); hoards with fewer than tengrossi have not been cited here.⁶⁴ Oct. : Cessi, PM, ‒, #; Papadopoli, :.⁶⁵Cf. for examples Battelli, Rationes . . . Latium, ‒ and , and Sella, Rationes . . . Umbria, ,, , and ; in these extracts from the ‒ collections all sums were recorded in thecurrencies in which they were paid. A summary of translated all sums from that year intoflorins: Battelli, Rationes . . . Latium, ‒. By all payments were converted into florins, evenfor the tithes of Venice itself: Sella and Vale, Rationes . . . Venetiae, ‒.⁶⁶ Aug. : G. M. Thomas and R. Predelli, eds., Diplomatarium Veneto-Levantinum, Monumentistorici, ser. , , (Venice, ‒), :‒, #; the value of the ducats is given as about ,

forgiven for the illegal transport of a small amount of silver bullion there becausehe understood that neither ducats nor grossi could be found there.⁶⁷

The rest of the documentary citations for this period, however, are fromwestern Europe and show a modest mingling of ducats there among the morecommon florins. In the accounts of the Florentine moneychanger Lippo di Fededel Sega (who visited Venice) from the early decades of the fourteenth century,Venetian ducats were specified as about percent of the currency he received,compared with percent for florins.⁶⁸ Of the total revenues of the Papal Seein Avignon from to , about , ducats were taken in, compared withwell over million florins (and genovini).⁶⁹ Even in Ancona, south of Veniceon the Adriatic coast, an obligation of , ducats was paid with ducatcoins and , florins, with the rest in other money.⁷⁰ The ducat did move farto the west, albeit in small quantities. The tithe payments from Castile and Por-tugal of included ducats along with florins; the major currency com-prised about , gold doblas and , French deniers tournois.⁷¹

In papal collectors in Lombardy collected , ducats but had tochange them into florins, at an agio, because ducats were not acceptable to theCuria.⁷²The estate of the bishop of Monte Cassino in included ducats(compared with more than , florins), but of the ducats were found tobe underweight and were discounted.⁷³ In , the bishop of Novara and Lu-chino Visconti, lord of Milan, settled debts with the papacy for the vicariate ofPiacenza and other obligations. On June they met an obligation of ,

florins with a payment of , ducats, but the next day their payment valuedat , florins comprised , florins of Savoy, , genovini, and ducats.⁷⁴The estate of the bishop of Vercelli in contained ducats (comparedwith florins, , florins of Savoy, and genovini), and that of the bishopof Maguellone (near Montpeler) in , ducats (along with florins, of


Alexandrine besants. The besant of Alexandria was quoted as shillings of Venetian money in, compared with the ducat of about shillings: Spufford, Handbook, and .⁶⁷ Mar. : ASV, GR, R. , f. v.⁶⁸De la Roncière, Un changeur, .⁶⁹Göller, Die Einnahmen . . . Johann XXII, .⁷⁰Ibid., .⁷¹Ibid., .⁷²Giuseppe Garampi, Saggi di osservazioni sul valore delle antiche monete pontificie (Rome, ), .⁷³Emil Göller, ed., Die Einnahmen der apostolischen Kammer unter Benedikt XII, VQ, (Paderborn,Germany, ), .⁷⁴Ludwig Mohler, ed., Die Einnahmen der apostolischen Kammer unter Klemens VI, VQ, (Paderborn,Germany, ), and .

which were underweight, and florins of Savoy, of which were under-weight).⁷⁵

As might be expected, no excavations have produced ducats as isolated finds.Among the hoards laid down before , none has a significant number ofducats; the Lurate Abbate hoard of Italy had seven and the Ioannina, Greece,hoard only two (see below, App. B, table B., # and ).

The flood of gold to Venice which commenced around brought a greatincrease in the production of ducats. Circulation in western Europe certainlycontinued after this time. In a withdrawal was made from the papal treasuryin Avignon to fund the war in Romagna; among about , florins’ worth ofcoins taken from the “upper tower” were , Venetian ducats (along with ,florins and about , royal French gold coins).⁷⁶ In the ducat was notedby papal collectors as circulating in Spain, along with the florin.⁷⁷

Most of the documentation for the circulation of the ducat after the mid-dle of the fourteenth century, however, relates to the eastern Mediterranean.Whether this results from a change in circulation or in the nature and survivalof sources is not clear. Pegolotti’s merchant manual notes equivalents for theducat in Bruges, Constantinople, and Cyprus.⁷⁸ He gives equivalences in florinsfor most of the remaining markets, east and west, but this is not significantbecause he was a Florentine merchant, compiling a manual for use by his peers.

The flood of Venetian ducats quickly saturated the Aegean. By the end of, Francesco Bartolomei was writing from Crete to his correspondent in Venicethat the ducat no longer commanded a premium and that he wished to be paidin silver soldini instead.⁷⁹ This glut had ebbed, at least temporarily and region-ally, by in the Peloponnese, where the agent of Marie de Bourbon was unableto find enough ducats on the marketplace; he had to leave half of the , ducats’worth of silver received with an agent in Clarenza in the hope that the next gal-ley from Venice would carry enough of the gold coins for exchange.⁸⁰ Throughmost of his travels in the region of the Black Sea in to , Amadeus VI


⁷⁵Ibid., and .⁷⁶Hermann Hoberg, ed., Die Einnahmen der apostolischen Kammer unter Innozenz VI, pt. , VQ, (Paderborn, Germany, ), .⁷⁷Garampi, Saggi, .⁷⁸Pegolotti, Pratica, , , ; in each case the equivalence is given to the “fiorino d’oro o veroducato d’oro,” which does not imply that the ducat was preferred in these markets.⁷⁹Morrozzo della Rocca, Lettere, ‒, #; , #.⁸⁰Jean Longnon and Peter Topping, eds., Documents sur le régime des terres dans la principauté de Moréeau XIV e siècle, École Pratique des Hautes Études, VIe Section, Documents et recherches, (Paris,), and .

of Savoy received Byzantine coins as advances due back in Venice in ducats, butat Selymbria on the Sea of Marmora as well as at Ragusa on the return voyagehe received Venetian ducats.⁸¹ Even in the early fifteenth century there were short-ages of ducats in Greece; in the Venetian Senate allowed the feudatory rulerof Charystos to pay his annual payment of ducats in local currency (no doubttorneselli), as ducats were not conveniently found in Negroponte.⁸²

By the end of the fourteenth century, ducats were documented as being thesole European gold coinage recognized and accepted in the eastern Mediter-ranean. The Florentine traveler Niccolò Frescobaldi concealed ducats in thefalse bottom of a trunk on his voyage to Egypt in along with the ducatsand ducats’ worth of grossi he declared.⁸³ He reported that in Alexandriaonly Venetian ducats were in circulation and that ducats was the standard pay-ment for a Westerner’s first entrance into the Church of the Holy Sepulcher inJerusalem.⁸⁴ Beginning at the very end of the fourteenth century, Muslim sourcesattest to the widespread use of the ducat, both in exchange rates and in suchstatements as “the ducat is used in all the cities of the world, such as Cairo, oldCairo, Syria, Asia Minor, the East, Hijaz and Yemen.”⁸⁵ In , Piloti reportedthat in Egypt and Syria the only gold coins accepted were Venetian.⁸⁶

The hoard finds of the ducat from after the mid-fourteenth century con-firm the continued circulation of the ducat in western Europe as part of a mixedgold currency (map ). Of the eighteen published hoards that contain more thanten ducats minted before , eight are from Germanic lands, where the ducatsare usually found with florins from the Rhineland and Hungary as well as Flo-rence.⁸⁷ This mixture of ducats among other gold coins is typical for the fivehoards from northern Italy and two from the region south of Chieti.⁸⁸

The reporting of finds of ducats from the eastern Mediterranean is sur-


⁸¹E. Bollati di Saint-Pierre, ed., Illustrazioni della spedizione in Oriente di Amedeo VI (Il Conte Verde),R. Deputazione di Storia Patria, Biblioteca storica italiana, (Turin, ), , #, and , #.⁸² Apr. : C. N. Sathas, ed., Documents inédits relatifs à l’histoire de la Grèce au Moyen Âge (Paris,‒), :‒, #.⁸³Frescobaldi, Viaggio, .⁸⁴Ibid., and .⁸⁵Jere L. Bacharach, “The Dinar versus the Ducat,” International Journal of Middle East Studies (): ‒.⁸⁶Piloti, Traité, , c. .⁸⁷See below, App. B, table B., # (Erfurt, Germany), (Wittlich, Germany), (Marbach amNeckar, Germany), (Regensburg, Germany), (Landau an der Isar, Germany), (Rhäsüns, Switzerland), (Finges, Switzerland), (Mondsee, Austria).⁸⁸See ibid., # (Veneto, Italy), (Faenza, Italy), (Chignolo Po, Italy), (Salvarosa, Italy), (Vigevano, Italy), (Giulianova, Italy), (Torrevecchia, Italy).

prisingly meager: one each from Romania, Ukraine, Greece, and Turkey, as wellas one from India.⁸⁹ There are certainly differences in reporting patterns whichwould explain some of the lack of publication of finds from this region, butfinds of silver grossi are fairly well represented for these regions, as are ancient,Byzantine, and Islamic gold coins. There are a few further unpublished findsfrom this region. Philip Grierson has reported that there were an unspecifiednumber of ducats in an unpublished hoard of the late thirteenth century foundin Aleppo in the s which contained florins.⁹⁰ Ariel Berman, a memberof the Israel Antiquities Authority, recalls having seen a hoard in the stock of ajewelry dealer in Nazareth in the s which contained about one hundredMamluk coins plus several Venetian ducats of Michele Steno and Tomaso Mo-cenigo.⁹¹ A hoard of about three thousand gold coins reportedly found at Pho-cea (Turkey) in comprised mainly Aegean imitations of ducats but also hadabout percent genuine ducats up to Francesco Foscari.⁹²

That many rulers in the Aegean modeled their gold coins after the ducatand many unsigned imitations of ducat issues of the fourteenth century are be-


⁸⁹See ibid., # (Brâesti, Romania), (Teodozja [Caffa], Ukraine), (Euboea, Greece), (Ephesus, Turkey), (Broach, India).⁹⁰Grierson, “Interpretation of Coin Finds,” vi n. .⁹¹Robert Kool, Israel Antiquities Authority, communication to the author, .⁹²Simon Bendall, Apr. , and Robert Leonard, May , communications to the author;

Map . Ducat hoards.


lieved to have been made there might be taken as evidence for the circulation oftrue Venetian ducats in the region, as well.⁹³ However, the common presence ofimitations of reduced fineness might have also been a block to the circulationof genuine, fine Venetian issues. The adoption of a standard based on the ducatin Egypt in is also only indirect evidence for the circulation there of actualissues of the Venetian mint.⁹⁴ For the present, at least, we must rely on the doc-umentary sources for evidence that ducats circulated in great numbers in the Eastand trust that they were speaking of genuine ducats of Venetian manufacture.

The initiation of the minting of the soldino and mezzanino around represented an effort to debase the value of both the pound based on the pennyand that based on the grosso by creating replacement coins valued at respectively pennies and half a grosso. The soldino was to be the basis of the internaleconomy of Venice and the mezzanino the silver basis of its trade.

The first mention of the new denominations appeared in Ragusa (modernDubrovnik) in . On June of that year the governing council of that repub-lic, modeled in many ways on those of Venice, declared that the new mezzaninocoins minted in Venice should circulate there at the value of half a grosso.⁹⁵ Sixmonths later, the same council banned the use there of the soldino, threateningpunishment on anyone who might try to pass one as a mezzanino.⁹⁶ Ragusa wasin the region in which the grosso appears to have circulated most strongly, whilethe Venetian penny never played a role in its currency. It therefore seems to havebeen willing to accept the mezzanino, especially as the principal rival to it was thegrosso of Serbia, which had been undergoing debasement for several decades.⁹⁷

In November , townsmen of Treviso complained to their Scaligeri lords


see the “Buy or Bid” catalogue of Numismatic Fine Arts, Sept, , lots ‒, for coinsfrom this hoard.⁹³See Ives and Grierson, Venetian Gold Ducat, for a review of the imitations and, for the attribu-tion of unsigned ones, Bendall and Morrisson, “Un trésor,” ‒.⁹⁴Eliyahu Ashtor, “L’apogée du commerce vénitien au Levant. Un nouvel essai d’explication,” inVenezia centro di mediazione tra Oriente e Occidente (secoli XV–XVI), Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Civiltàveneziana, Studi, (Florence, ), :. What had previously been thought to be a parcelderived from a hoard of ducats of the fourteenth century found in Egypt has now been iden-tified, on the basis of fineness, as a group of imitation ducats: Grierson, “Fineness of the Vene-tian Ducat,” ‒.⁹⁵Racki, Monumenta Ragusina, .⁹⁶Ibid., .⁹⁷Lane and Mueller, Coins and Moneys of Account, ‒.

that the new coinage of Venetian mezzanini and soldini which they were en-countering seemed worse than the Veronese grossi of pennies which they wereaccustomed to using.⁹⁸ They were particularly bothered by the soldini, whichthey called cenoglelli, referring to the kneeling figure on them; they had quicklyrecognized the main visual difference between the obverses of the two new coins.They especially feared the possibility of false examples of these coins, with evenless intrinsic value than the Venetian ones. The representative of the Scaligeriresponded that both of these denominations had come to circulate commonlywithin Verona and Padua, with no one even thinking about whether to acceptthem or refuse them. If there was a problem with counterfeiting them in Tre-viso, this would be dealt with, but otherwise the issue was not one of concernto him.⁹⁹

In the next couple of years Venice acted to ensure the circulation of the newcoins. In the Senate ordered their use in Crete and other colonies and soinstructed its officials there, who would presumably use them henceforth in theirpayments.¹⁰⁰ In the Great Council instructed all state officials to pay allsalaries in the coins “that circulate today, that is, ducats or soldini”; if they tookin grossi, they were to exchange them with any profit going to the state.¹⁰¹ Ifmezzanini were still being produced by this date, they were clearly not consid-ered as circulating within Venice. The immediate success of the soldino is evi-dent in the papal collections from Venice in to , where the amount col-lected in “parvi” (presumably mainly soldini, as these then made up the basis ofthe piccolo system) was valued at florins, while that taken in as grossi wasonly worth florins.¹⁰²

The primary function of the soldino was to stand as the basis of the mon-eta system at home and in colonies near and far. Evidence for the use of the sol-dino in Venice is scattered, as most sources either discuss payments in terms ofthe lira di piccoli or, if they discuss the coins themselves, describe them only asmonete. The plea concerning a fine given a moneychanger in , however, makesit clear that the monetas he was giving in exchange for ducats were soldini, albeit


⁹⁸Verci, Storia della marca, pt. :‒, #‒.⁹⁹The Treviso merchants may have been reacting to a realistic threat of counterfeit false soldini;in the Venetian Council of Forty had to move against the influx of counterfeit soldini madein Slavonia by instructing officials at home and abroad to seize them and fine the bearer: Nov. , NMC, ‒.¹⁰⁰ Mar. : Cessi et al., Deliberazioni, :, #.¹⁰¹ Nov. , ASV, MC, Spiritus, f. v.¹⁰²Sella and Vale, Rationes . . . Venetiae, .

occasionally false ones.¹⁰³ In another case came before officials, in which amerchant from Bologna was accused of grabbing soldini from the box of a mer-chant who was counting out old and new soldini for him in exchange for ducats.¹⁰⁴

Reports of thefts similarly document the common circulation of soldini inVenice. Two of the five women whose purses were snatched in by Giovanniof Mantua were carrying soldini, this in a year when the denomination was notcurrently being minted.¹⁰⁵ Soldini were stolen from the collection boxes of Vene-tian churches in and , in the earlier case along with a gold ducat andmezzanini.¹⁰⁶ A bag of soldini was among the coins stolen in from the homeof Matteo of Rimini, a wine merchant who lived in the parish of San Bartolo-meo.¹⁰⁷ The Senate took measures to increase the production of soldini in

to meet a lack of these coins in circulation, a situation exemplified in the theftsof Borasino of Ragusa that year, who snatched purses containing quantities ofpennies, ducats, genovini, and grossi as well as some monetas that may have beensoldini.¹⁰⁸

As noted above, soldini were put into circulation in Crete and other coloniesoverseas from the initiation of their minting. In a merchant in Crete soughtpayment from Venice in soldini rather than ducats, because the flood of goldhad made the silver coins more desirable.¹⁰⁹ Their circulation there continuedeven after the introduction of the tornesello in , which represented a de-basement of the local system of account and might have been expected to drivesoldini out of circulation. A theft from the town hall in Candia in nettedthe thieves a barrel half full of soldini, as well as another full of torneselli and gold ducats.¹¹⁰ Soldini also circulated in Greece outside the Venetian colonies


¹⁰³ Sept. : ASV, GR, R. , f. v.¹⁰⁴ Sept. : ASV, SN, Processi, R. , ff. v–; the merchant had asked the moneychangerwhether he had aquilini or bolognini and was told that he had only soldini.¹⁰⁵ May : ASV, SN, Sentenze, R. , ff. v–. Two of the women were carrying Veronesegrossi of pennies, and the fifth had mezzanini, the denomination that was briefly beingminted as the base of the moneta system.¹⁰⁶ Oct. : ASV, SN, Processi, R. , ff. ‒; Mar. : ASV, SN, Processi, R. ,f. ‒v.¹⁰⁷ Feb. []: SN, Processi, R. , f. v.¹⁰⁸ Mar. : ASV, SN, Processi, R. , f. v; among the things in a purse he stole were“canonis de cana ubi ponunt parvulli pro pauperes ad permutandum soldinorum,” cane con-tainers for carrying piccoli to be given to beggars as change for soldini: cf. Cecchetti, “Appuntisulle finanze antiche,” n. .¹⁰⁹Morozzo della Rocca, Lettere, ‒, #‒.¹¹⁰Stahl, Tornesello, n. .

there and continued to do so after the introduction of the tornesello, as in Crete.In , the agent of Marie de Bourbon in the Peloponnese collected her rev-enues in silver soldini, which he had trouble changing into ducats in Clarenza.¹¹¹Five years later Amadeus VI of Savoy received repayment in Clarenza for anexchange he had made in Venice in the form of Venetian monete, presumablysoldini.¹¹²

A special case in the circulation of soldini abroad was constituted by theiruse in England under the term galley halfpennies.The penny of England around theyear was . fine and weighed . grams, thus having . grams of finesilver.¹¹³ Silver coins in general were minted in England in extremely small quan-tities in this period.¹¹⁴With about . grams of silver, the Venetian soldino wasnot only convenient as a halfpenny but also filled the need for a circulating pettycurrency. With significantly less silver than the coins it replaced, it threatened todrive out the local petty coinage entirely. The circulation of these soldini causedquite a bit of concern in the House of Commons in the period from to, and many measures were taken to proscribe their importation and circula-tion.¹¹⁵ By , these efforts had pretty well been curtailed, and other importedcoins were cited as the cause of concern; at the end of the fifteenth century, Ve-netian soldini would again appear in significant quantities in England. Finds ofsoldini from England confirm this importation in the decade following the year (see below, App. B, table B., # and ).

Soldini are found regularly in excavations in the region of Venice and inmainland Greece, where their presence seems to run into the reign of AndreaContarini (‒).¹¹⁶ The distribution of hoard finds is quite specific (map). There are relatively few from Italy, and these are in the area of Venice.¹¹⁷Thecirculation of the soldino outside the city itself may have been limited by com-peting coinages, and Italians in general had better ways of protecting their wealth


¹¹¹Longnon and Topping, Documents, , .¹¹²Bollati di Saint-Pierre, Illustrazioni, , #.¹¹³Challis, New History of the Royal Mint, .¹¹⁴About £, total was minted in silver in England in the decade ‒, compared withmore than £, in a comparable period half a century earlier: ibid., and .¹¹⁵Peter Spufford, “Continental Coins in Late Medieval England,” British Numismatic Journal (): ‒.¹¹⁶See below, App. B, table B., # (Torcello, Italy), (Noventa di Piave, Italy), (Padua, Italy), (S. Giorgi di Nogaro, Italy), (Asolo, Italy), (Truden, Italy), (Loutsika, Greece), (Soudeli, Greece), (Sparta, Greece), (Delphi, Greece), (Meteon, Greece), (Athens,Greece), (Thespis, Greece).¹¹⁷See ibid., # (Salvarosa, Italy), (Oderzo, Italy), (Molina di Ledro, Italy), (Treviso,Italy).

than by storing large quantities of small silver coins in the earth. Nine soldinohoards are from Croatia, the Adriatic part of the northern Balkans, while noneare from areas farther east.¹¹⁸ In these Croatian hoards the soldini are frequentlyfound with Venetian ducats and grossi, as well as silver coins of Aquileia andHungary. They include issues reaching into the early years of the fifteenth cen-tury. Another important group of hoards of soldini is from Greece, scatteredthroughout the area.¹¹⁹ Here these coins are not found hoarded with higher-denomination coins, but frequently with torneselli. In none of these hoards dothe soldini date from after , though two contain later torneselli, implyingthat the importation of soldini into Greece was curtailed by the end of the four-teenth century. Only a single hoard of soldini is from east of Greece, from theregion of Constantinople, confirming that the coin played no significant role inthe trade with the eastern Mediterranean.¹²⁰

Venice sought to establish a half-grosso coin three times in the period from


¹¹⁸See ibid., # (Jezerane, Croatia), (Gornji Klaznic, Croatia), (Siroka Kula, Croatia), (San Giorgio di Pola, Croatia), (Svica, Croatia), (Villa Decani, Croatia), (LipovaGlavica, Croatia), (Pridraga, Croatia), (Vukovar, Croatia).¹¹⁹See ibid., # (Agrinion, Greece), (Patras, Greece), (Caparelli, Greece), (Elis,Greece), (Eleusis, Greece), (Pyrgos, Greece), (Eretria, Greece), (Dephi, Greece), (Cephalonia, Greece).¹²⁰See ibid., # (Belgrakapi, Turkey).

Map . Soldino finds.


to , but the minting of each issue of the mezzanino was halted withinthe reign of the doge under whom it was introduced. The preference of Ragu-sans for the mezzanino over the soldino in noted above was a single brightspot in the life of an otherwise doomed denomination. No mention is made ofthis issue of mezzanini after , nor are any such coins in the name of FrancescoDandolo known from excavations or hoards.¹²¹

The next attempt at a mezzanino was in , in the reign of Andrea Dan-dolo, when the new coin was introduced as a replacement for the soldino. Itsminting was abandoned by the doge’s death in . The minting of this issuewas accompanied by a proclamation that it circulate in Crete, at the value of

pennies, with a fine for anyone refusing it.¹²² This time the coin seems to havestayed in circulation, even if its minting was not resumed for half a century. Mez-zanini were in one of the purses snatched by Giovanni of Mantua in andwere among the coins in the collection box of Santa Sofia looted in byOgnebene of Trent.¹²³ Even as late as , there were mezzanini in the strong-box at the Venetian home of Matteo of Rimini, which must have been of thisissue and so at least forty years old.¹²⁴ Mezzanini probably continued to circu-late in Crete, as well; a proclamation accompanying the shipment of newly de-based piccoli in ordered that they circulate at the rate of to the tornesello, to the soldino, and to the mezzanino.¹²⁵ Finds of the midcentury issue ofmezzanini illustrate their success in circulation.¹²⁶They are found in four hoards,two from Italy and two from Croatia, among other Venetian denominations. Inall these cases, the hoards were buried several decades after the mezzanini wereminted.

The third issue of mezzanini was that of , in the name of Doge MicheleSteno.¹²⁷ This was occasioned by the extension of Venetian rule on the Terra-


¹²¹The mezzanino of Francesco Dandolo is not, however, a particularly rare or valuable coin interms of collecting today, so unrecorded hoards must have been dispersed in modern times: cf.Paolucci, Monete dei dogi, , #.¹²² Jan. []: ADC, Proclami, B. , f. , #.¹²³See above, nn. and .¹²⁴See above, n. .¹²⁵ Sept. : ADC, Proclami, B. bis, f. ‒v, #.¹²⁶See below, App. B, table B., # (Molino di Ledro, Italy), (Lonca di Rivolto, Italy), (Gornji Klaznic, Croatia), (Svica, Croatia). A hoard was recently found at an undisclosed sitein the Veneto, which contained about three hundred coins, mainly Venetian mezzanini of thisissue, Paduan carrarini, and Veronese grossi, as well as heavily clipped coins of the Tyrol: Sac-cocci, “Produzione e circolazione,” .¹²⁷ Sept. : Cap. Broche, ‒ (with date in ASV, Senato Secreta, R. , f. v); Feb.[]: Papadopoli, :‒, #.

ferma to Verona and Vicenza. The coinage of Verona had diverged in value fromthat of Venice in the two centuries since the introduction of the grosso, whenthey were at par. In order for Venetian coinage to circulate widely on the main-land it was necessary to mint, at least temporarily, denominations that fit intothe existing system in a convenient way. Mezzanini in the name of Michele Stenoare known from two hoards, both found on the mainland to the west of Venice.¹²⁸Both hoards were buried around and contain Venetian coins of five differ-ent denominations, from the ducat down to the piccolo; the Molina di Ledrohoard contains mezzanini of Andrea Dandolo (which must have been a centuryold by the time of their burial) as well as of this issue, while that of Salvarosahas examples of the mezzanino initiated in under Francesco Foscari, whichcopied that of the s.

The tornesello was the final new denomination issued by Venice in theperiod under investigation here. It was initiated in as a three-penny pieceexpressly for circulation in the Venetian colonies of Greece, that is, Crete, Coron,Modon, and Negroponte.¹²⁹ It represented a debasement in terms of both theVenetian moneta system based on the soldino and the Frankish deniers tournoisof Athens and Achaia from which it took its name. It fit evenly into the fourdifferent accounting systems of Greece, each of which was called a hyperpyronbut which had distinct values.¹³⁰The coin quickly established itself both withinthe Venetian colonies and throughout independent parts of Greece, though itseems to have coexisted with the ducat and soldino, at least through much ofthe rest of the fourteenth century.

Finds of the tornesello confirm its dominance in Greece and its totalabsence elsewhere, either in Italy or in the eastern Mediterranean (map ).¹³¹ Itsimportance at excavations is exemplified by the fact that at Athens and Corinth,both independent of Venetian rule, Venetian torneselli represent more than

percent of all coins minted between and . The hoards as well illustratethe tornesello’s dominance in late medieval Greece, not only by their numberand size but by the very fact that for so many people the only practicable way to


¹²⁸See below, App. B, table B., # (Molina di Ledro, Italy) and (Salvarosa, Italy.).¹²⁹Stahl, Tornesello, ‒.¹³⁰Ibid., ‒.¹³¹Ibid., ‒ and ‒, plus App. B below, table B., # (Cephalonia, Greece), (Gortyna, Greece), a (Arta, Greece), and (Somkhepon, Greece).

store their wealth was in large quantities of this extremely base and overvaluedcoin. The steady encroachment of Ottoman forces and continual fighting amongChristian rulers no doubt contributed to the number of these hoards that werenot retrieved by their original owners. The very commonness of finds of thesecoins and the low level of precious metal in them have added to the likelihoodthat they remain in recognizable parcels for numismatic study rather than hav-ing been dispersed or melted before being recorded.

each had adistinctive pattern of circulation. In some cases this was clearly intended fromthe initiation of the denomination; in others it resulted from factors of politi-cal and economic interaction and the competition of other coinages.

After a brief debut as a significant part of the network of Carolingian coin-age in the ninth century, the Venetian penny remained a very localized denomi-nation, the basis of petty transactions within the city itself and its colonies butnot far beyond that. The grosso was a long-distance coin from the start; it be-came common throughout Italy and the lands to the east in the thirteenth cen-tury. In later years its area of circulation became increasingly concentrated in theeastern Mediterranean. The ducat also had a career as a European currency; asit was the same value as the standard florin, it made up a small but significant


Map . Tornesello finds.


part of the international gold currency of Europe. By the end of the fourteenthcentury it had established itself as the most recognizable and trusted Europeancoin in the eastern Mediterranean, though imitations of lesser fineness no doubttempered that trust. The soldino, and to a lesser extent the mezzanino, were thebasic coins of everyday transaction within Venice and its colonies and enjoyed asuccessful circulation along the Croatian coast and in Greece. The tornesello wasdesigned for circulation in Greece and eventually drove out virtually all othercoins, Venetian and others, from there.


Cullers, Clippers, and Counterfeiters

Like circulation, illicit treatment of the coinage after it had left the mintwas often a concern of the Venetian state. Not only was it important that Ve-netian coins be recognized as widely as possible, but it was crucial that they betrusted as containing a fixed weight and fineness of precious metal. Regulationof the standards was possible, if sometimes difficult, within the mint, but oncethe coins had entered circulation, they were subject to various kinds of tamper-ing which the state had little power to deal with.¹

The most common alteration of the circulating currency, and the hardestto control, was culling, the systematic removal of heavier coins from circulation.Culling appears to be a factor in virtually all coinages that contain preciousmetal, even if it serves no immediately discernible ends. From the moment theUnited States and most European countries switched from silver to nonpreciouscoinage in the s, a large percentage of the population has held on to the oldsilver coins, even though few followed through with the steps necessary to cashthem in above face value until the silver boom of the late s made it over-whelmingly attractive.

In the medieval European monetary system, virtually all coins had preciousmetal that could be retrieved through a refining process that any goldsmith orsilversmith could perform. As long as coins were counted rather than weighedin transactions and no discount was made for light coins, most people actively

¹See Reinhold C. Mueller, “Il circolante manipolato: L’impatto di imitazione, contraffazione etosatura di monete a Venezia nel tardo medioevo,” in Italia, ‒: Tra crisi, trasformazione,sviluppo (Pistoia, ), ‒, for an overview of this subject.

engaged in commerce would pay attention to the weight of individual pieces andfollow a policy of spending the lighter ones and saving the heavier ones. This isone aspect of what is commonly known as Gresham’s law: “Bad money drivesout good.”² If the difference between the weight of the piece saved and the stan-dard weight of the coinage differed enough to cover the added value of the coin-age plus the costs of refining and selling the metal, the culling would be imme-diate and widespread. If the divergence was less significant, culling would stilltake place, but its effects would be less dramatic. The word for cull in both Vene-tian and Latin was trabucare, derived from the French trébuchet, a trip balance.³Thisindicates how the process would generally have been carried out; a small balancewould sit on a table, and individual coins of a given denomination would betossed on its pan. If the pan rose, the coin was underweight and should be spent;if it fell, the coin be retained. Such a machine would certainly be on the table ofany moneychanger, but it would probably also have been part of the standardequipment of anyone who used coins frequently.

The first known attempt of the Venetian state to regulate the culling ofcoins in circulation was in , when Venice responded to competition from anew Paduan coin as well as the debt of the War of Chioggia by lowering theweight of the grosso and soldino by a bit over percent.⁴ The mint tolerancewas a maximum of soldini per mark, about . percent above or below thestandard weight, a tight margin indeed. In addition to banning the import offoreign silver coins by any other than pilgrims and invoking the longstandingstrictures against clippers, the authorization specifically set fines against thosewho culled out the heavier of the new coins. Twelve years later, culling was stilla problem. After renewed attacks against clippers, the Senate recognized thatthere was “great danger” in the city “from the culling of new coins, from hold-ing on to the heavy and spending the light.”⁵ This time it realized the futility ofgoing after consumers and decided to strengthen the procedures within the mint


²For a review of how Gresham’s law operated in medieval Europe, see Lane and Mueller, Coinsand Moneys of Account, ‒.³The French word in turn seems to be derived from a German word for trunk: cf. Webster’s NewInternational Dictionary of the English Language, d ed. (Springfield, Mass., ), s.v. “trebuchet”; itwas also used for a military machine that relied on a trip-balance mechanism. For an argumentthat the medieval instrument was more likely a pan balance than a trip balance, see GianluigiRusso and Michele Chimienti, “Il trabocco nella monetazione medievale italiana,” RIN (): ‒.⁴‒ May : PMV, ‒, #‒.⁵ May and May : Cap. Broche, ‒: Cum coruptio maxima sit in civitate nostra intrabucando monetas novas, in consumando graves et permitendo leves.

so that coins would be issued with a minimum of weight variation. After a seriesof adjustments, the final tolerance was set at about . percent above or belowthe standard, a remedy five times that originally proposed (see above, Chap. ).

By , many factors had come together to leave the silver mint “almost indesolation” and occasioned a “grandissima e notabel reformation.”⁶ One prob-lem was culling; in recent years the mint had reduced its control to the point atwhich the coins it issued had huge weight discrepancies and were uniformlyculled. The result had been that instead of the standard of soldini to themark (. gr each), those that were actually circulating were said to be no bet-ter than to the mark (. gr), a discrepancy of almost percent below thestandard. The reform legislation noted, “Any coin in the world can be culled,but if these provisions are followed this coinage will be so exact that the profitfrom culling it will be so small that no one will waste their time for such a trifle.”⁷

This act, apparently intentionally, neglected to set a permissible tolerance forthe new issues it authorized.

The effects of consumer culling can sometimes be distinguished by an analy-sis of surviving coins and distinguished from the mint’s holding back of under-weight and overweight coins. If no selection factors at all were in operation, coinsfound today would have a weight distribution that would fall within the toler-ances established for the mint, with the mean weight corresponding to the de-creed standard. The mean would correspond to the most common weight ob-served (called the mode) as well as the central point in the distribution (themedian). This would produce a bell-shaped curve (a normal, or Gaussian, dis-tribution) when the number of coins in each weight class was plotted against theweight. Nonselective factors such as wear from circulation and corrosion in theground would act to shift the entire curve below the documented standard butwould not change its shape. The action of the mint in removing all coins aboveand below the remedy would be to truncate the curve at both ends, but the mean,mode, and median would still coincide. Cullers of circulating coinage (or mintofficials who held back only overweight pieces) would produce a coinage in whichmore coins were under the standard than over, with the mode still perhaps rep-resenting the standard but the mean and median less than it. This would be acurve skewed to the left, with an abrupt drop to the right of its highest point.

Distributions of torneselli from given hoards generally follow an almostperfect standard distribution, with the mean weight a couple of percentage points


⁶ Nov. , Cap. Broche, ‒.⁷Ibid., , and ASV, SM, R. , f. v.

below the mode.⁸ This suggests that the tornesello was not regularly culled, asmight have been predicted from its low silver content (about %) and the lackof concern over its tolerance in minting documents. The soldino issues imme-diately before and after , when Venice enacted its legislation against culling,also are represented by almost standard distributions in the Cephalonia hoard.⁹This observation suggests that the concerns of the Senate were unwarranted atleast in terms of circulation in Greece; the soldini appear to have circulated withvirtually no culling. This might be an indication that they were weighed ratherthan counted for transactions in Greece, as such a circulation would have removedany incentive for culling.

It was extremely easy to clip (L: tondere; V: stronzare) a medieval coin; shearscould easily remove small amounts of metal from the edge of these thin (lessthan mm thick) pieces. All Venetian medieval dies had a beaded circle at theedge of the design which was intended to be matched up to the edge of the flanand thereby define the intended diameter of the coin. However, except for theducat, Venetian coins are frequently found to be struck off center with one orboth dies, an indication that the moneyers did not take the time and care to lineup the dies with the blanks and that the foremen and masters did not reject suchcarelessly struck pieces. The edge beading on circulating coins would then havebeen only of the most general use in discerning whether a coin had been clipped,and pieces would have had to have been regularly weighed to keep the currencynear its issued metal content.

For the most part, it can be assumed that individuals took the responsibil-ity of weighing coins before accepting them, as it would be their loss if they


⁸Cf. Stahl, Tornesello, ‒, for , torneselli in the name of Antonio Venier from the Chalkishoard with a modal peak at . grams and a mean at .; and idem, “The Cephalonia Hoardof Venetian and Hungarian Coins,” Nomismatika Khronika (): ‒, for , torneselli ofthe same doge from the Cephalonia hoard with a modal weight of . grams and a mean of.. Both curves are very close to bell shaped. The discrepancy of mode and mean from onehoard to the other may be attributable to the heavier wear on the Chalkis hoard, which wasburied about half a century after that of Cephalonia, or to differences caused by subterraneanenvironment or cleaning.⁹Stahl, “Cephalonia Hoard,” ‒. The soldini of Andrea Contarini Type (‒) havea modal weight of . grams compared with a documented standard of . grams, and specimens of his Type (‒) have a mode of . grams compared with the standard of. grams. The mean of each group is within . grams below the mode.

ended up with underweight coins that might then be rejected by another. How-ever, if a significant number of the coins in circulation were underweight, itwould make people less willing to pay for full-weight coins at the mint and wouldundermine the general reputation of the coinage. Therefore, from time to time,the Venetian state had to act to counter the practice of clipping of its coinage,at least within the city. Although it would seldom have been possible to provethat an individual had done the actual clipping of coins found in his or her pos-session, it would at least have been possible to identify clipped coins as such,unlike culled coins, which were physically identical to the way they had left themint.

The first line of defense against clipped coins was those that were taken inby state officials. In , all officials at home and in the region were instructedto examine the grossi they took in and to cut in half any that were clipped.¹⁰Two years later this was extended to all Venetians at home and in Crete, with theprovision that the mint would give new grossi for these cut ones on a weight-for-weight basis but that no one should buy such coins for the purpose of bring-ing them to the mint.¹¹ In their capitulary of , the mintmasters had to swearto report to the doge anyone within the mint or outside who counterfeited orclipped coins and to give new coins in exchange for old to any Venetian tradingabroad, destroying any clipped grossi he so received.¹²

In the following decades, threats to the circulation of the grosso appear tohave come primarily from competing coinages, especially Serbian grossi, whosestandard gradually fell below that of Venetian grossi (see above, Chaps. and ).Around , new attention was paid to clipped Venetian grossi. In , a certainBoniface of Milan, called “the priest,” was prosecuted for clipping grossi whilein Venice; he lost his right hand and right eye and was banished.¹³ Soon afterthis, all the regulations concerning grossi were revoked, and steps were taken sothat clipping would be controlled and the coins would no longer have to circu-late by weight.¹⁴ A new office was established to control clipping with the respon-


¹⁰ Sept. : DMC, :.¹¹ Sept. : PMV, , #, and DMC, :‒, #. The act was apparently canceled at thebeginning of the thirteenth century; it appears in ASV, MC, Fractus, f. , with cancellationsby a team active around (cf. DMC, :xiii) and is lacking in ASV, AC, Bifrons, compiled in.¹²CMM, cc. and .¹³ July : ASV, SN, R. , f. .¹⁴ Nov. , PMV, ‒, #. Lane and Mueller (Coins and Moneys of Account, and ‒)interpret this legislation as having established the principle that any grosso at percent officialweight or better had to be accepted at face value. The act, however, was specified as being in

sibility for monitoring the tables of moneychangers, and the populace was in-structed to check all coins for clipping and report to the authorities anyone whopersisted in trying to pass underweight coins. The problem was defined in termsof coins that had had part of their metal removed by clipping or sweating.

In , the jurisdiction of these officials was extended to ducats, whichhenceforth were to circulate in bags sealed by these officials.¹⁵ The circulationof ducats in sealed bags was maintained in Venice throughout the Middle Ages;it was effective in guarding against plated and counterfeit coins as well as clippedones. In March , the Lords of the Night Watch (Signori di Notte) weregiven jurisdiction over prosecuting individuals for clipping foreign coins withinVenice.¹⁶ From then through March eighteen individuals were prosecutedfor clipping Veronese and Tirolean grossi.¹⁷ In addition to the foreigners andVenetian popolani, charges were brought against the nobleman Tereno Foscarinifor selling coins to the noblewoman Maria Corner for clipping and against theson of the late ducal chancellor, who was accused of “frying” a clipped coin ona stone.¹⁸ Punishment in these cases ranged from confiscation and fines as lowas £ to banishment and jail terms of up to three years. The string of prose-cutions ended abruptly in March , probably because of the issue of soldiniand mezzanini, which replaced the foreign silver coins in circulation.

The new coins seem to have eliminated the problem of clipping for the nexttwenty-five years. In , after the elimination of the grosso and two debase-ments of the moneta within a ten-year time span, clipping became a major prob-lem again, and officials found that they had no law on the books to cover clippedsoldini and mezzanini.¹⁹The Forty affirmed that the procedures that had appliedto clippers of foreign coins would apply to Venetian ones, as well, and set thepenalties as loss of the right hand, a fine of £, and banishment (for womenthe loss of the nose replaced that of a hand). Two years later, the Forty declaredthat these punishments were ineffective as deterrents and that the act of clippingwas a sin abominable to God.²⁰ The punishment for anyone clipping ducats,


effect for one year only and is not known to have been revised or renewed. It was canceled in as no longer current: ASV, MC, Fronesis, f. .¹⁵See above, Chap. ; NMC, ‒.¹⁶ Mar. : NMC, ‒. The terms of this jurisdiction were disputed before the doge’scouncil the next year, and the presentation of indictments to the Forty was entrusted to thestate advocates: Dec. : ASV, AC, R.P, /, ff. v–.¹⁷These are contained in ASV, AC Raspe, R. /, ff. v–.¹⁸ Jan. []: ibid., f. .¹⁹ June : CMA, ff. v–v.²⁰ Feb. []: CMA, ff. ‒v.

grossi, mezzanini, or soldini within Venice or abroad was henceforth to consistnot only of the amputation of the right hand but also blinding and a fine of£,; for women, instead of the loss of hand and eyes, the punishment waslife imprisonment. Even these measures proved ineffective. The next year theForty demanded that all moneychangers keep all coins openly on their tables sothat officials could easily see if any were clipped.²¹ New assistants were autho-rized for the silver officials at the Rialto, who were required to inspect any coinsbrought to them and, if they were clipped, seal them in a bag that could be takento the mint; the coins would then be exchanged for new ones on a weight-for-weight basis.

Two cases brought before the Forty in the next few years illustrate how clip-pers operated. Ermolao Dolze used ducats to buy mint-fresh soldini, which hethen clipped.²² He melted down the clippings and used the remaining clippedsoldini to buy new ducats and repeated the process until he was caught. Gio-vanni de Marcadelis of Padua exchanged , ducats into new soldini with amoneychanger, who had gotten them freshly minted from the zecca.²³This wouldhave been more than , soldino coins, weighing about kilograms ofalmost pure silver. He took these coins back to Padua and patiently clipped themall, as well as gold ducats. He then returned to Venice to spend his clippedcoins at banks and the tables of the moneychangers. When he was caught, hehad in his possession about kilograms of clipped soldini, clipped ducats,and one small and four large bars of silver weighing more than . kilograms.

Again, a debasement in the silver coinage appears to have had the effect ofcurtailing clipping. After the debasement of , there is no evidence of theproblem until , when provisions were again enacted against clippers of sol-dini for the next couple of years.²⁴ A clipper caught in with about a quar-ter kilogram of clippings from soldino sought clemency from the Forty becausehe was a cleric and had been put in orders as a small child. On the second bal-lot he was sentenced to lose his right hand and both eyes; the sentence was car-ried at as usual between the two columns on the Molo, just outside the zecca.²⁵For the most part the debasement of seems to have solved the problem ofclipping, and for the next few decades the mint was lowering the weight of sil-


²¹ Feb. []: PMV, ‒, #.²² Sept. : ASV, AC Raspe, R. /, f. ‒v.²³ Jan. []: ibid., fasc. , f. v.²⁴ Nov. : PMV, ‒, #, and Cap. Broche, ; May : PMV, ‒, # (as May) and Cap. Broche, .²⁵ Apr. : ASV, AC Raspe, R. /, fasc. , ff. v–.

ver coins so frequently that private initiatives to this end no longer seem to havebeen a problem. In the Great Council authorized the hiring of an assistantat the state treasury office who was trained in recognizing false ducats and clippedcoins; apparently by this time the phenomenon of clipping was not so commonthat every treasury official could be counted on to recognize it.²⁶

The only record of a trial for clipping coins after is particular in sev-eral aspects: the coins were ducats, the accused was a nobleman, and the crimehappened in Alexandria. In March , the Forty considered the case of Leo-nardo Gradenigo, who had been accused by a Jewish moneychanger in Alexan-dria of passing clipped ducats to an Arabic merchant.²⁷ The Venetian con-sul in Alexandria investigated and discovered clipped ducats in Gradenigo’sstrongbox. The merchant fled from Alexandria and was tried in absentia in Veniceon the basis of the consul’s report. On the first two ballots, abstentions out-weighed votes for both acquittal and conviction, but on the third ballot Gra-denigo was found guilty and sentenced to the usual loss of his right hand andboth eyes and banishment. Fifteen years later he was still at large, and his wifeappeared before the Great Council and received its consent to permit the dogeto give her husband a pardon on the basis of his youth and inexperience at thetime of his offense.²⁸ The council consented, but the doge was apparently un-moved, because when Gradenigo was caught in Venice in , the sentence passedtwo decades earlier was carried out.²⁹

Many of the numismatic considerations for recognizing the effects of cul-ling in hoards apply also to the effects of clipping. Regular clipping would havethe effect of reducing all the overweight coins of an issue to the lowest rate ac-ceptable in circulation, resulting in a curve skewed to the left, with the modalweight higher than the mean. After a debasement (carried out by a reduction inweight rather than alloy), as long as the new coins were not discounted in trans-actions, the old coins can be expected to have been clipped down to the weightof the new ones.

This is not, however, the case for the few hoards of Venetian silver coins forwhich weights have been published. In the Cephalonia hoard, the soldini afterthe progressive debasements are lighter than the older ones, the opposite of theeffect that wear from circulation would have had on them.³⁰ As noted above, this


²⁶ June : ASV, MC Leona, f. v.²⁷ Mar. : ASV, AC Raspe, R. /, fasc. , f. .²⁸ June : ASV, MC Leona, f. ‒v.²⁹Marginal emendation to Mar. , n. above.³⁰Stahl, “Cephalonia Hoard,” ‒.

might be taken as a sign that they were accepted by weight rather than count intransactions, especially on the Greek mainland, away from the Venetian mone-tary system.

This observation, however, probably does not apply to the hoard from SanGiorgia di Pola, Istria, which would have been within the Venetian sphere by thetime of its deposition after .³¹The ducats in the hoard have a constant meanweight of about . grams throughout, but the grossi and soldini of the reignsof Antonio Venier (‒), Michele Steno (‒), and Tomaso Mo-cenigo (‒) show progressive decline in mean weight in accordance withdocumented debasements and contrary to expected loss from wear. These meanweights are, however, significantly below that of the documented standard, gen-erally by more than percent. This much of a reduction is unlikely to be theresult of loss of weight in the ground in this case of coins of fine silver foundwrapped in linen in a terra-cotta pot. It might be that each issue was clipped byabout percent soon after it entered circulation but that once the coins werecirculating they stopped being clipped. It may also be that the clipping hap-pened before they left the immediate region of Venice and that the coins didindeed circulate by weight once they were in Istria.

Parcels from three hoards of grossi of an unknown find spot which cameon the market in the s illustrate the variety in weight alteration of the coinsin circulation.³² One hoard contains coins up to , that is, all of grosso Type, whose standard was set at . grams. The weights of these coins are very tightin range, most between . grams and . grams; none is higher than . grams.It is evident from the weight distribution that all the coins have been clippeddown to a lower standard than that at issue, and this is confirmed by a visualinspection of the coins, few of which are as round as the typical Venetian grosso.In the second hoard, laid down just before , the coins of Type (all mintedbefore ) have a mean of . grams; even after decades of circulation theirweight is almost at the mint standard, and coins of Type and Type are respec-tively lower in weight but still close to the standards for their own issue. Neitherclipping nor wear appears to have affected the coins in this hoard. The thirdhoard, with no coins after , also shows a progressive decline in weight fromtype to type, but in each case the weight is about half a gram lighter than forthe same type in the earlier hoard. The most likely explanation for this diminu-


³¹Bernardo Schiavuzzi, “Ripostiglio di monete medioevali scoperto nel giugno sul colle SanGiorgio di Pola,” RIN (): ‒.³²Alan M. Stahl, “Three Parcels of Venetian Grossi in the ANS Collection,” RIN ():‒.

tion is from wear, but the peculiar physical features of these coins suggest thatthere may also have been weight loss during burial or in cleaning.

Counterfeiting represents the ultimate challenge to the coinage of a mint.Although culling and clipping could result in a circulating currency of lower-than-intended weight, this would have been relatively easy for consumers to rec-ognize and to compensate for by weighing coins. A successful counterfeiter couldput into circulation coins with a lower alloy than that used by the mint. If thecounterfeits could not be easily distinguished, this might induce uncertaintyabout the coinage as a whole and could lead consumers to suspect that the mintitself was not coining at the publicized standards. If the counterfeit coins wererelatively detectable, at least to the expert eye, they could still pose the threatthat people would pass them off on the unsuspecting and create the circulationof a “bad” coinage that could drive out the “good” issues of the mint.

Medieval Venice considered the controlling of counterfeiting so importantthat it was the main aspect of minting in the promises that doges had to makeupon investiture. As early as the doge promised upon accession that anyoneconvicted of making false coins would have a hand cut off.³³This provision wasrepeated in the oaths of subsequent doges and was amended in so thatJacopo Contarini had to swear that counterfeiters within Venice would be burnedto death and that any abroad who were caught would succumb to the same fate.³⁴The provision was included and expanded in the oaths of subsequent doges.³⁵Mintmasters for gold and silver were supposed to report all counterfeiters to thedoge and his council within three days of recognition.³⁶

The Council of Forty had jurisdiction by statute for trying cases involvingcounterfeit grossi; as no statutes covered other denominations, cases involvingother coins were tried by the Giudici del Proprio.³⁷ In , the Lords of theNight Watch were authorized to torture those suspected of counterfeiting as


³³Novissimum Statutorum ac Venetiarum Legum Volumen, pt. , f. .³⁴ASV, Secreta, Promissioni, R. , f. .³⁵ Apr. : ASV, MC Novella, f. v.³⁶CMM, c. ; CMO, c. .³⁷ May : ASV, MC Presbiter, f. ; cf. June : ASV, SN, R. , f. v (false grossi triedin the Forty); May : ASV, SN, R. , f. (false grossi tried in the Forty); Jan. []:ASV, SN, R. , f. v (false piccoli tried by Giudici del Proprio). For the jurisdictions of vari-ous Venetian judicial bodies, see Guido Ruggiero, Violence in Early Renaissance Venice (NewBrunswick, N.J., ), ‒.

they would suspected thieves, if all six members were of accord.³⁸ In , theForty authorized the Watch to torture suspects if only five of the six were inaccord.³⁹ By this time the Forty also seems to have had authority over lower de-nominations, as it tried a case of counterfeiting of piccoli the next year.⁴⁰

There were two tests for counterfeits in the Middle Ages, the only two thatare available to us today. One was by material; coins could be tested to see if theywere up to standard. If they were of proper fineness, counterfeits posed rela-tively minor threat to the mint issues. For gold coins, it was easy to check fine-ness with a touchstone, at least for a few well-trained individuals, but coins ofsilver or billon could be tested only by melting a sample of them and weighingthe component elements.⁴¹ Even today the detection of counterfeit medievalcoins by analysis of their metal is problematic, especially for thin coins of lowsilver content.

A more accessible way of exposing counterfeits is visually. Consistency ofimage was the essential element for ensuring the circulation of a mint’s issue.The primary way to achieve this was with control over the engraving of the diesand of the dies themselves. The Venetian mint used only dies engraved by theofficial engravers, individuals who were on salary and expected to work full-timeat the mint when demand warranted.⁴²They were not allowed to go abroad with-out permission from the mintmasters, and even then not for more than oneweek.⁴³ Engraved dies were kept in a vault before they were put into service, andall those for ducats were kept in a special strongbox for which only the masterof the quindena had the key.⁴⁴ All people within Venice were banned from hav-ing any coin dies, engraved or unengraved, except those so authorized by themintmasters.⁴⁵ To meet the threat of theft of ducat dies, the Forty enjoined themintmasters of gold in to keep a record of which die went to which strikerand to record the dies every evening when they were returned.⁴⁶The masters were


³⁸ Apr. : ASV, MC Magnus, f. v. The provision was canceled in because it had beensuperseded by that of Nov. .³⁹ Nov. : NMC, , #.⁴⁰ Apr. : ASV, AC Raspe, R. /, f. . This is the very first page of the earliest extantregister of trials held by the Forty, so it cannot be determined how much earlier they exercisedthis jurisdiction.⁴¹See above, Chap. , for efforts to control the circulation of counterfeit coins within Venice.⁴²See below, Chap. , for the die engravers at the zecca.⁴³CMM, c. .⁴⁴CMM, c. ; CMO, c. .⁴⁵ Dec. : NMC, , #.⁴⁶ Apr. : CMA, ff. v–.

to receive newly engraved dies directly from the engravers and to take charge per-sonally of the destruction of any dies deemed too worn or broken to be used.

In a mint employee named Pietro Grimani stole dies from the mint andbrought them to an accomplice, Pietro Butinus of Bologna, who used them tostrike false “tower pennies” in Venice.⁴⁷ As there were no Venetian issues at thattime which could be so described (the tornesello was not introduced until ),it seems likely that Pietro stole unengraved dies.⁴⁸ A case involving five mintemployees forging torneselli outside the mint was tried by the Giudici del Pro-prio in .⁴⁹ They had stolen dies from the mint and cut and struck blanks ofpure copper. Since the coins were made with authentic dies, the only way to provethat those found in the homes of the men were counterfeit was to perform anassay, which showed that they had no silver at all in them. The leader of theenterprise, who did the actual striking, was burned to death; his accomplice whomade the blanks for him in the mint lost his left eye and right hand.

To guard against outsiders making coins that would be mistaken for issuesof the zecca, it was necessary to make the dies in such a way that they could noteasily be copied. This may to some extent have been done through secret marks,subtle details such as the punctuation of the legends or the alignment of ele-ments like the stars on the ducat reverse.⁵⁰ The chief way in which the Venetianzecca, and other late medieval mints, guarded against counterfeiting was throughthe use of punches. By the mid-thirteenth century, each letter on the legend andeach main element of the design were engraved into the die with an individualpunch. Not only would a counterfeiter have had to make dozens of punches in


⁴⁷ Dec. : ASV, SN, R. , f. v.⁴⁸An alternative might be that the Venetian mint was itself striking coins of that description,most likely imitations of the deniers tournois of Achaia or Athens. There was a proposalpassed by the Great Council in for minting such a coin, but it was to have been struck inthe Venetian colonies of Coron or Modon, and there is no indication that this provision wasever carried out: Mar. : ASV, MC Magnus, f. , publ. in Vincenzo Lazari, Le monete deipossedimenti veneziani di Oltremare e di Terraferma (Venice, ), .⁴⁹ Oct. : ASV, SN, Processi, R. , ff. ‒. The men bought about pounds of copperfrom a merchant at the rate of shillings a pound. They cast the copper at the mint and thenhammered it down and cut it into blanks both at the mint and at home. They sold the resultingcoins, of pure copper rather than percent silver but struck with official dies, to Greeks forbetween shillings and shillings per ducat. As the common rate for torneselli in thisperiod was about shillings per ducat (see Stahl, Tornesello, ), the Greek buyers would haveprofited nicely from the venture. The counterfeiters did even better, as the pound of copperthey bought for shillings produced tornesello coins worth shillings in face value.⁵⁰No such “privy” marks have as yet been identified. The marks on the reverses of grossi struckbetween and which identified the master on duty at their striking would have had littlevalue in this context, as they could easily have been copied by counterfeiters.

order to produce a single counterfeit die, but each of the punches would havehad to be identical to that of the zecca for the new die to be a convincing copy.The importance of punches for protection against counterfeiting was stressedby Benvenuto Cellini in his sixteenth-century treatise on goldsmithing.⁵¹

Even with the extensive use of punches and the presence of state officialstrained to recognize forgeries, counterfeiting was a major aspect of Venetian coin-age in the Middle Ages. Individuals within Venice made copies both of Vene-tian coins and of popular foreign ones, and large-scale mints outside the citymanufactured imitations of Venetian issues, sometimes with the help of formeremployees of the zecca. It is difficult for anyone who has spent time in Veniceto envision any secret activities going on in the crowded islands of the Rialto,let alone one as noisy as minting. Nevertheless, a continuous series of arrests in-dicates that counterfeiting within the city was a continuous threat, possibly underthe cover of other sorts of metalworking.

There was an apparent rush of such activity in ‒, when three indi-viduals were convicted of forging Venetian coins within Venice.⁵² A certain PietroSaraceno, identified as from Reggio but by his name possibly an Arab, lost hisright hand and was banished for making counterfeit grossi, and Jacopo deRicheriis of Bologna lost both eyes for making false dies for grossi. An indi-vidual identified as Giovanni, doctor and writer of Bologna, was convicted ofcounterfeiting Venetian piccoli in and was banished after losing his righthand. The only known later prosecutions for the counterfeiting of Venetian coinsin Venice were for the forging of piccoli and torneselli, base coins that wouldappear to offer much less possibility for profit than higher denominations.⁵³


⁵¹Benvenuto Cellini, I trattati dell’orificeria e della scultura, ed. Carlo Milanesi (Florence, ), .The value of punches in aiding counterfeit detection can be illustrated by personal experience.In the course of cataloguing the Chalkis hoard of about , torneselli, I examined each coinat least three times: Stahl, Tornesello, ‒. Any coins with irregular spelling or unusual stylewere identified as counterfeits. Among the torneselli of Tomaso Mocenigo, there were nocoins so recognized as counterfeit, unlike the issue of Antonio Venier, which produced obvious forgeries among , coins. The Mocenigo coins were then subjected to a die study,which involved the careful comparison of all of them using magnification. From this examina-tion, four coins with perfectly correct legends and normal style were found to have had theirdies engraved by hand rather than with punches; they could then be identified as medieval coun-terfeits.⁵²See above, n. ; the concentration may be only apparent, as the series of records of the Sig-nori di Notte covering this sort of crime, Register (Sentenze penali, mainly of the Giudicidel Proprio), begins in and becomes progressively summary as it continues to . Thefull records of trials, Processi, are extant only intermittently from to and are lackingthereafter.⁵³See above, nn. and . Charges were brought against a goldsmith named Pascalis in for

In the early years of the fourteenth century there was much state involve-ment with false Veronese and Tyrolean coins (“grossi of pennies and pen-nies”), denominations that circulated commonly in Venice. In , the Lords ofthe Night Watch were given authority over false grossi of pennies, as theyalready had over false grossi of pennies.⁵⁴ Of those prosecuted in this period,in at least one case it is clear that some of the coins were made within Venice.⁵⁵Another case certainly involved many Venetians. In May an employee of thezecca named Paulus was accused of having made equipment for a clandestineforger’s mint operating in a castle named Tuderano in the region of Ravenna.⁵⁶A search was made of his house in Venice, and under a sponge in his well werefound dies, tongs, and punches for counterfeiting coins. Since Paulus had appar-ently not actually minted in Venice, he was not directly punished but was firedfrom the mint and warned that if he continued working in a mint outside Venicehe would be banished. This same illicit mint was also imitating Venetian piccoli;a Venetian formerly from Ferrara was put in jail the next year for helping tostrike false piccoli at Tuderano.⁵⁷ In the years ‒, four moneychangers werefined for buying false foreign grossi, and a mint employee and a goldsmith wereimprisoned for passing them.⁵⁸

Three decades later, in , another counterfeit mint (or perhaps the sameone) was busily at work in the same region minting false friesachers (presumablyof the Aquileian type).⁵⁹ The Venetian nobleman Nicolò Mocenigo worked to-gether with the moneychanger Vettore Stornado and associates to have these falsecoins brought from Romagna to Venice and passed there. The Forty sentencedboth men to the rather modest fines of £ each, taking two rounds of votingto accomplish this in the case of Mocenigo. Probably as a reaction to this inci-dent and the limited provisions on the books against such acts, the Forty passed


making false dies (though not apparently coins) but were dropped after a two-and-a-half-yearinvestigation: Dec. : ASV, XL, Parti, R. , f. v, and June : ibid., f. .⁵⁴ May : NMC, , #.⁵⁵ May : ASV, SN, R. , f. v.⁵⁶ May : ASV, AC Raspe, R. /, f. v.⁵⁷ Feb. []: ibid., f. v.⁵⁸ May : ibid., f. ; July : ibid., f. v; Sept. : ibid., ff. v–v.⁵⁹ Dec. : R. , fasc. , f. v; Dec. : DQ , :, #; Jan. []: ASC, ACRaspe, R. /, fasc. , f. . In , a German merchant was fined for importing into Venice ducats’ worth of friesachers, half of which were found to be false: Simonsfeld, Fondaco, :‒, #. This same counterfeit mint may also have been the one operated by Venetians around in “Corbola,” which turned out false coins of Ferrara: G. Ognibene, ed., “I capitoli dellazecca di Ferrara nel ,” Atti e memorie della R. Deputazione di storia patria per le provincie modenesi, thser., (): .

a series of regulations in and establishing jail terms and banishment forVenetians who participated in the counterfeiting of foreign coins within Veniceor imported such forgeries into Venetian territory.⁶⁰ This legislation does notseem to have deterred Mocenigo, who was back in court the following year withcharges of having organized the minting in Dalmatia of false bronze coins andfriesachers.⁶¹

Often the mints producing imitations of Venetian coins were operated byforeign rulers, and the control of the counterfeiting became an act of diplomacy.In a flood of false soldini, imitating the new Venetian issues, was identifiedas coming from Slavonia, in the northern Balkans above Serbia.⁶² An embassywas sent to count Bartholomeus there to no effect; another mission was sent thenext year, but it still failed to resolve the issue.⁶³ In the meantime, all that couldbe done was to call the public’s attention to the Slavonian counterfeits and tomandate their confiscation.⁶⁴ Five years later a letter was sent to the lord of Parmacomplaining about false soldini made in his district.⁶⁵ Emilia continued to be ahotbed of counterfeiting; in a goldsmith named Conradino of Parma wasprosecuted in Venice for running a counterfeit mint in the region of Reggio.⁶⁶By a vote of twenty-six to seventeen, the Forty voted to imprison him for fouryears rather than cut off his right hand.

In a Paduan named Paolo Notrus was caught passing gilt false ducatsin Venice.⁶⁷ These had been made by an associate in Padua, a goldsmith namedJacopo of Ravenna. Paolo was ordered to be dragged through the streets with acrown of the false coins on his head, down the Merceria, to the Piazzetta, wherehe would be beheaded between the two columns. His associate, Jacopo, was ar-rested in Padua, and a member of the Venetian Night Watch was sent there toarrange with the lord for extradition to Venice to face charges there.

Such diplomacy seems to have had occasional successes. In a mission


⁶⁰ Feb. []: DQ , :‒‒, #; Oct. : ASV, XL, Parti, R. bis (Sanudo), f. ‒v.; Oct. : Azzoni, Della zecca, ‒; June : Azzoni, Della zecca, ‒; Nov.: Azzoni, Della zecca, ‒.⁶¹ Nov. : ASV, AC Raspe, R. /, f. , and ASV, XL, R. bis (Sanudo), f. v, citedin Mueller, “Circolante,” .⁶² Oct. : ASV, SM, R. , f. v.⁶³ May : ibid., R. , f. .⁶⁴ Nov. : NMC, ‒, #; Jan. []: ibid., , #.⁶⁵ July : DQ , :, #.⁶⁶ June : DQ , :, #; June : ibid., ‒, #, and ASV, AC Raspe, R. /,fasc. , f. v.⁶⁷ Dec. : ASV, SM, R. , f. v, and ASV, AC Raspe, R. /, fasc. , f. v.

under the chancellor Raffaino Caresini went to the newly elected doge of Genoa,Simone Boccanegra, to complain about the imitation ducats that the Genoeseruler Francesco Gatilusio was minting in Mytilene.⁶⁸ In this lull between theThird and Fourth Genoese War, the mission was a success, and Boccanegra wroteto Gatilusio to stop the forgeries. It is not certain whether these instructionswere followed, but the ducats issued in Mytilene later in the century, though fol-lowing the Venetian model, clearly identify the mint and minter.⁶⁹ For counter-feit ducats coming from Germany in , the only defense seems to have beeninternal control.⁷⁰ German merchants had to show all their ducats to the vice-lords of the German fondaco and have them carried across the Rialto bridge tothe silver officials, who would check them for authenticity. Good ones would besealed in sacks, as were other ducats used within the city, and bad ones cut inquarters.

For the most part, from the early fourteenth century on, the concernsabout counterfeits of Venetian coins centered on the Aegean and were channeledthrough Crete, Venice’s main center there. In , the Venetian duke of Cretenoted the prevalence there of counterfeit grossi made in Chios and ordered theirconfiscation.⁷¹ Crete itself seems to have been a center of counterfeiting for afew years. In there was a proclamation on the island that no goldsmith wasto gild any silver coin and another one calling on all residents to turn in any falseducats they might have.⁷² In , the Venetian colonists in Crete rebelled againstVenice and apparently minted their own coins; in people were given oneweek to turn in any soldini or torneselli struck on the island during the revolt.⁷³The next year a goldsmith of Candia named Pietro Cavalcante was brought backto Venice and tried by the Forty for making ten dies and using them to strikesoldini in Crete during the rebellion; he was sentenced to three years in prison.⁷⁴

The Venetian duke of Crete served as a middleman in efforts to get theTurkish emirs of Aydin to stop minting imitation ducats in their capital, The-ologo (Ephesus). In March the Venetian Senate asked the duke to intercedein the matter.⁷⁵ In the duke issued a decree noting that such ducats were cir-


⁶⁸ Aug. : Padovan, “Nummografia,” AV (): .⁶⁹Ives and Grierson, Venetian Gold Ducat, ‒.⁷⁰ Oct. : PMV, ‒, #.⁷¹ Sept. : Vidulich, Duca di Candia, , #.⁷² Jan. []: ASV, ADC, Proclami, B. bis, f. , #, and Apr. : ibid., ff. v–, #.⁷³ Oct. : ibid., f. ‒v, #.⁷⁴ Aug. : ASV, AC, Raspe, R. /, fasc. , f. .⁷⁵ Mar. : ASV, SM, R. , f. .

culating within the island and, though they were of substandard alloy, werebeing accepted at par.⁷⁶ He ordered a stop to such circulation but established nomechanism of control or punishment for contravention. In the meantime, thediplomatic mission was a success, and the emir promised to stop the minting.⁷⁷The treaty and peace themselves were short lived, but there is no evidence thatthe emirs resumed minting ducats after this time.⁷⁸

It is difficult to estimate the importance of counterfeit coins among circu-lating Venetian denominations. Documents only report specific cases in whichan origin was determined. Coins from excavations tend to have an overrepre-sentation of false pieces and are often too corroded to permit a determinationsof authenticity. Hoard finds are also problematic in presenting a picture of coun-terfeit circulation, as they represent by their very nature a conscious selection byan individual of which coins were worthy of safeguarding. The Chalkis hoardof torneselli had about percent forgeries for the most popular issue, that ofAntonio Venier, and percent and percent forgeries for the succeeding twoissues, far fewer than implied by Senate decrees of and , which blamedthe loss of value of the denomination on the prevalence of counterfeits.⁷⁹ Of

soldini of Francesco Dandolo in the Caparelli hoard, were considered coun-terfeit on the basis of their texture and were analyzed as being of less fine alloy.⁸⁰A collection of ducats which is believed to derive from a hoard found in Egypthas been identified as containing only counterfeits on the basis of the finenessof the coins.⁸¹

It will only be by a careful examination of the dies and punches used in themanufacture of a large number of surviving Venetian coins that we will be ableto derive a reasonably accurate picture of the prevalence of imitations and ofthe importance of the genuine products of the Venetian zecca in the monetarycirculation of the Middle Ages.


⁷⁶ June : ASV, ADC, Proclami, B. bis, f. , #.⁷⁷ Oct. : Padovan, ‘Nummografia,’ .⁷⁸Cf. Zachariadou, Trade and Crusade, ‒.⁷⁹Stahl, Tornesello, ‒.⁸⁰Dorothy H. Cox, The Caparelli Hoard, American Numismatic Society, Numismatic Notes andMonographs (New York, ), ‒.⁸¹Grierson, “Fineness of the Venetian Ducat,” ‒.

�ithin the �int

The �intmasters

The running of the mint was in the hands of teams of mintmasters (L: mas-sarius; V: massero], men usually of noble status elected for terms of one or twoyears by one of the governing councils. For some men the position seems to havebeen a life’s career; for others it was a break from a professional career or a briefstep in a series of government posts. Although some families appear to have beenprominent among mintmasters (most notably the Papaziza), the office never be-came in any way the domain of a family or clan. Nor was minting ever priva-tized or farmed out; the master was always an employee of the state, workinglike most Venetian officials for a salary and income from fines. The performanceof the mintmasters and their administration of the mint were monitored pri-marily by the auditing of accounts that they were required to render on a regu-lar basis; often their reelection was tied in to such an audit.

Masters on active duty, and even those acting as associates, had to come tothe mint each working day, with fines specified for unexcused absence or exces-sive illness.¹ The masters were to be at their office by the end of the “officialbell,” which rang for one-half hour beginning a half hour after full sunrise.²They had to stay at least an hour, until terce. After noon they had to return tothe mint for another hour, until vespers. If bullion was being refined or coinsstruck they were to stay beyond these hours, but they could not deal with mer-

¹CMM, cc. , .²For the names and schedules of the bells that defined the medieval day, see Monticolo andBesta, Capitolari, :‒, and Bartolomeo Cecchetti, “Nomi antichi delle campane della torredi San Marco,” AV , (): ‒.

chants other than at the specified times.³ Especially in the gold mint the mas-ters were required to sleep in the mint when valuable bullion was left there atnight.⁴

They were prohibited from a wide range of personal transactions that mightbe viewed as a conflict of interests.⁵ They could not go abroad as merchantswithout giving thirty days’ notice and resigning their office.⁶ One mintmasterhad to get repeated grants of permission to travel to Istria to deal with his wife’sdowry, even when he was not in active service.⁷ Bianco da Mosto got special per-mission in to go to Rome on pilgrimage to fulfill a vow; five years later hewas charged with embezzlement, fled Venice, and was condemned in absentia.⁸ Al-though being a member of a noble family automatically gave mintmasters mem-bership in the Great Council after , they were explicitly excluded from ser-vice in the Senate while in the office.⁹

The teams of mintmasters were organized in such a way that at any timethere was one individual in each mint responsible for all bullion and minting: hewas called the master of the quindena.¹⁰ Any other masters in office at that timewere auxiliary; when there were three, the second was called the associate (socius)and was usually present at the mint, and the third was on call as a substitute orto settle disputes. On the penultimate day of his quindena, the current mint-master would pass along to the next one an account of all goods belonging tothe state and individuals, and on the last day he would pass along the keys.¹¹ Hewas supposed to have bought only as much bullion as he could have coinedduring his quindena; unprocessed silver could be passed along, but unfinished

Within the Mint

³CMO, f. v, c. ; possibly from Nov. . There is no corresponding regulation extant forthe masters for silver, but it is likely that this series of reforms by the advisors of wereapplied to both mints.⁴CMO, f. v, c. ; possibly Nov. ; Dec. : ASV, GR, R. , f. .⁵CMM, cc. , , , , .⁶CMM, c. .⁷Aug. : ASV, GR, R. , f. v; Nov. : ASV, SM, R. , f. .⁸Jan. []: ASV, GR, R. , f. ; June : ASV, AC Raspe, R. /, fasc. , f. v.⁹Besta, Senato, ‒.¹⁰The responsibilities of the master of the quindena of the silver mint as of are summa-rized in CMM, c. .¹¹CMM, c. .

blanks would have to be remelted and hammered out again.¹²The outgoing mas-ter would then retire to prepare his accounts.

The length of the quindena is not certain. The name quindena (V: quindex-ena) implies a period of fifteen days or two weeks, but this could well have beenan archaic term by the end of the thirteenth century. Certainly the length couldbe adjusted by the governing councils: in July the Forty extended the quin-dena of the silver master for the convenience of merchants who needed coinsfor the departing fleets, and in it was extended because of the festivities forthe inauguration of Doge Andrea Dandolo.¹³ According to the capitularyof mintmasters, each master for silver had to turn over his accounts to his col-leagues at the end of each quindena, and the three masters jointly had to filetheir accounts with the state every six months.¹⁴ If each had worked one quin-dena in this period, the quindena would have then been two months long by theend of the thirteenth century.¹⁵ This, however, is not explicit in the wording ofthe document.

In , Francesco de Bernardo, mintmaster for silver, was investigated for ashortfall in profit supplied to the state during the two quindene in which he hadworked.¹⁶ The amount of silver reported to have been worked was , marksfor the first quindena and , for the second, that is, , marks each on aver-age. The capitulary set seasonal limits on the amount of silver to be workedby the various staff members in a single day (chapter ). Each furnace of work-men could be given up to marks of silver per day in summer and in win-ter; as there were to be at most fourteen such furnaces (c.), the maximumamount of silver cut into blanks would have been from to marks a day.¹⁷Under these restrictions, , marks of silver would represent the maximumoutput of thirty-eight days in summer and fifty-seven days in winter. So thefigure of two months for the quindena in the late thirteenth century and earlyfourteenth seems reasonable.

In the Forty noted that the practice in effect then was for the masterto take the first forty days of his quindena to receive silver and the remaining

The Mintmasters

¹²CMM, c. .¹³ July : ASV, AC Brutus, f. v; Jan. []: DQ , :, #.¹⁴CMM, cc. , , .¹⁵As argued by Lane and Mueller, Coins and Moneys of Account, ‒.¹⁶ Sept. : ASV, AC Neptunus, f. .¹⁷The figures given in Lane and Mueller, Coins and Moneys of Account, ‒, result from a readingof c. as referring to the total amount given to all the furnaces and all the strikers, rather thanto each, despite the wording “non dabuimus alicui magistro fornacis in die ultra marchas XV.”

twenty to pay back the merchants who had brought it.¹⁸ They changed this,giving the master thirty continuous days to receive silver and then twenty work-ing days in which to pay out. Under most circumstances twenty working dayswould not have been a full month, so the quindena henceforth was slightly lessthan two months and variable according to the schedule of holidays.¹⁹ Withina year a large supply of silver (coupled, no doubt, with problems at the mintbrought on by the ravages of the Black Death) caused the Forty to extend thequindena of one mintmaster three times and call upon one of his colleagues tobegin processing new silver while he was still finishing up that which he hadacquired.²⁰

Towards the end of the fourteenth century, the number of mintmasters forsilver went from the usual three to two, with one permanently assigned to tor-neselli. Under these circumstances, the activity of the remaining master wouldhave been continuous. The division of his work into quindene of about twomonths’ duration is demonstrated in the case of Marco Baffo, who appears tohave been first elected in August and was accused of embezzlement in April.²¹ In less than five years in office he had performed twenty-four quindene,that is, a bit more than two months apiece.

The mintmasters for gold also operated with a rotation period called a quin-dena. No documents from the first century of the minting of the ducat give thelength of this quindena, but it is likely that when the gold mint was created in, the quindena of the new masters was based on that of the masters for sil-ver, that is, probably two months. It was certainly two months by the end of thefourteenth century; a mintmaster was charged for embezzlement carried out in and during four quindena periods, each specified as two months long.²²Two years later another mintmaster for gold was fined by the account auditorsfor a shortfall during his quindena of March and April .²³ In , legisla-

Within the Mint

¹⁸ Oct. : DQ , :‒, #.¹⁹A list of holidays for Venetian officials inserted in the capitulary of night watchmen around lists thirty festival days as well as the period from three days before Christmas until“annum novum,” presumably the traditional Jan. rather than the Venetian state Mar. ; on Sun-days the mint would also have been closed: NMC, ‒, #; see also for the holidays ofgoldsmiths: Monticolo and Besta, Capitolari, :‒. In order to meet the needs of a galleydeparting for the Levant in , the masters needed the permission of the Signoria and of thepatriarch to operate the mint on a Sunday: Sept. : Cap. Broche, .²⁰ Mar., Apr., and Apr. : DQ , :‒, #, , and .²¹ Mar. : ASV, AC Raspe, R. /. fasc. , f. ‒v.²² Apr. : ibid., R. /, fasc. , f. v.²³ASV, GR, R. , f. v.

tion for the reform of the gold mint referred to the quindena as being of twomonths’ duration.²⁴ As with the silver mint, the quindena of the mintmaster forgold could be extended by government councils as conditions required. In ,to meet the flood of gold arriving by sea, the mintmaster currently serving thequindena was authorized by the Forty to stay in charge until the current stockhad been processed.²⁵

In the thirteenth century the mintmaster for silver was expected to buy bul-lion at a price determined through negotiation between himself and the seller(see above, Chap. ). As the standards of the coins were constant, the profit ex-pected by the state fixed, and the expenses of minting fairly inflexible, the actualprice paid could have varied little over time. Certainly by the early fourteenthcentury a standard price was known to merchants, and the level of activity ofthe mint would have risen and fallen according to the amount of silver offeredat that price. After , the prices for silver were fixed by council decisions, boththat for the quinto silver and that for free silver.

The bullion acquired was then weighed by the weigher on duty, whosedetermination had to be accepted by the masters.²⁶ The silver was then meltedinto bars for assay; it was the associate master who was charged with giving it tothe smelters to be cast into ingots, weighing and recording the amount given andreturned.²⁷The assay of silver was carried out by the master of the gold mint.²⁸If the master of the quindena did not accept his findings, the second weigherand one of the other masters were to be summoned; the matter would be de-cided by the vote of two of these three individuals.

The acquisition of bullion by the master of the gold mint followed prettywell the same procedures as for silver. The new bullion was to be weighed by theweigher of the gold mint in the presence of both masters and then cast intoingots, with the runoff recorded.²⁹ In the Forty added a provision that themaster of the quindena, in addition to recording the weight and fineness of bul-lion in his own account book, was to make out a receipt for the supplier of the

The Mintmasters

²⁴ Apr. : ASV, SM, R. , f. v.²⁵ Dec. : DQ , :, #.²⁶CMM, c. .²⁷CMM, c. .²⁸CMM, c. [].²⁹CMO: PMV, ‒, #, c. .

bullion which was to be presented when the finished ducats were claimed; onthis receipt the fineness would be as determined by touchstone rather than byassay.³⁰ In the masters sought to have the original determination be bycupellation as well as touchstone, and the Forty decreed that the master of thequindena was to be out of the room while the bullion he had bought was beingassayed by the other master and the two weighers.³¹

At the end of the Trecento, problems arose between the gold estimators atthe Rialto market and the mintmasters for gold (see above, Chaps. and ). Dis-crepancies appear to have arisen between the fineness of gold bullion declaredby the gold estimators and that which the mint said it had found after refiningthe bullion. Various systems of regulation were imposed and revoked in a seriesof laws enacted from to . The final procedure was so complicated as tobe virtually unworkable. Merchants were to bring their bullion to the gold leafofficials, who would cast it into ingots and send it in sealed sacks to the goldestimators. The estimators would check it with the touchstone but would acceptit only if it was ½ carats fine or above. The mintmasters would then refine itto the purity demanded and cast it into ingots, which would be sent to the esti-mators for verification and stamping. The masters would then shave off a pieceof gold containing the estimators’ stamp and send this, in a sealed paper, to theaccount officials, who would save it until the accounts were presented and thentest it with touchstones to verify its fineness.

These elaborate procedures for the acquisition of gold bullion by the mint-masters testify to the dilemma of medieval minting. The procedures for the refin-ing and assaying of metal were difficult and (by later standards) primitive andwere subject to failure even when honestly attempted. They were even more sub-ject to manipulation by those charged with carrying them out, that is, the mint-masters and employees. On the other hand, procedures to safeguard the bullionand double-check on the work of the masters were by necessity cumbersome andimprecise and could easily lead to disputes that would involve decisions by thosewithout the technical expertise to settle them.

In addition to buying bullion ingots for coining, the mint also took incoins, Venetian and of other mints, for reminting. In the thirteenth century, themasters were to take in clipped silver Venetian coins and replace them with goodnew issues on a weight-by-weight basis.³² For Venetian merchants departing by

Within the Mint

³⁰ Mar. : CMO, f. , c. .³¹ Mar. : DQ , :, #.³² Sept. : PMV, , #; CMM, c. .

sea, the mint would also exchange old worn coins for new ones on a weight-by-weight basis.³³ Later, the mint took clipped coins only at specified times andpaid for them at set rates.³⁴ The mint also took in foreign silver coins at speci-fied rates. For Serbian imitations of Venetian grossi, the rate was to be set eachquindena on the basis of a report by the mintmaster.³⁵ To further the monetarypolicy of Venice on the Terraferma, the mint recoined Paduan coins in the latefourteenth century and those of Verona and Vicenza in the early years of theQuattrocento.³⁶ Occasionally gold coins were given a special tariff by the mint;in anyone bringing Byzantine, Sicilian, or other gold coins to the mint waspaid £. per mark instead of the £ for fine bullion.³⁷ A proposal in

to attract gold to the mint by paying special rates for various foreign gold coinsfailed to pass the Senate.³⁸

Writing with experience of the Venetian mint in the sixteenth century, Birin-guccio advised that the mintmaster know how to do all the operations of themint himself and, if possible, have a hundred hands and a hundred eyes and beeverywhere at once to guard against the negligence or malfeasance of the mintworkers.³⁹ The mintmaster of the quindena was personally responsible for thequality of the coins made during his tenure; his mark was to be placed on themso it would be known who was responsible for any shortfall in fineness, weight,or appearance.⁴⁰ Moreover, he was personally responsible for ensuring that the

The Mintmasters

³³CMM, c. .³⁴ Feb. []: PMV, ‒, #; May : Cap. Broche, .³⁵ June : CMM, c. []; PMV, ‒, #; DMC, :‒, #.³⁶ Jan. []: Cap. Broche, ‒. Feb. []: ASV, SM, R. , f. .³⁷ Mar. : PMV, , #; DMC, :, #.³⁸ Jan. []: ASV, SM, R. , f. v.³⁹Vanuccio Biringuccio, Pirotechnia (Venice, ), f. , bk. , c. .⁴⁰CMM, c. . A similar mark was required for the master of gold in CMO, c. , but is not evi-dent on ducats. Marks are also lacking on grossi from to , on soldini and mezzaninibefore , and on all lower denominations. Mint marks appear on grossi in the reign ofJacopo Tiepolo (‒) as small symbols around the feet of Christ on the reverse and con-tinue in this form through the end of the minting of the Type grosso around . Theyappear in the form of the initial letter of the Christian name of the mintmaster on the mez-zanino initiated in and the soldino that replaced it in . This form of mint mark alsoappears on the issues of the Type grosso from to . These mint marks are illustratedin the descriptions of the coins in Papadopoli , and the letters corresponding to the names ofthe mintmasters for silver are given below in App. A, table A..

state realized its prescribed profit from the coinage; he had to pay for any short-fall out of his own funds.⁴¹

Although the masters were in charge of the mint and responsible for its prod-uct, they did not have authority over the hiring of all personnel. The weigherswere elected separately, and the scribe was directly responsible to the central gov-ernment. The masters’ choices for the professional offices such as engraver andrefiner were subject to governmental review, as were the salaries and conditions ofthese offices. Along with the weighers, the masters hired the workmen, moneyers,and other mint employees with a system of ballots; when there were a total offive such officials, it took four positive votes to hire.⁴² If such a majority was notforthcoming, the three members of the Forty who supervised the mint were tovote, and five of the eight voting would be sufficient to hire. All employees sohired had to be Venetian, except for the refiners, who could come from abroad.⁴³

Generally the masters could hire only at the entry level; a raise in salary abovethe minimum or promotion to a higher level usually needed outside approval.An exception was in , when in the face of an unusually large supply of silverthe masters were given permission to promote workers to the rank of emenders,as long as they did not go over the number prescribed.⁴⁴ The masters were pro-hibited from taking in any former moneyer who had been away for more thanthree months; they had to guard against moneyers selling their offices to theirsuccessors.⁴⁵ The masters were specifically enjoined from hiring a worker whowas the illegitimate son or a relative of either a master or weigher.⁴⁶

The capitulary of allows a fairly complete view of the master’s role inthe production of grossi. When the purchased bullion had been weighed by theweigher, given to the smelter by the associate master, and turned into ingots ofappropriate fineness as determined by the assayers, it was the responsibility ofthe master of the quindena to see it turned into coins.⁴⁷ He gave the ingots tothe individual workshops of the workmen, where they were transformed intocoin blanks. Regulations limited the amount of silver he could give to any work-shop on a given day, scaled to the seasonal length of the workday. The masterwas responsible for seeing that the workmen made round and even flans and thatthe emenders made them of as even weight as prescribed. Whenever he rejected

Within the Mint

⁴¹CMM, c. .⁴²CMM, cc. , .⁴³CMM, c. .⁴⁴ Oct. : ASV, MC Commune II, f. .⁴⁵CMM, cc. , .⁴⁶CMO, c. , possibly from Nov. .⁴⁷CMM, cc. , ; CMO, c. .

flans and returned them for recoining, he could reduce the work given to thetransgressing workshop and level a fine on it; the fine went to the state.

The master of the quindena would then give the blanks to be blanched,keeping track of which workshop each batch came from.⁴⁸ He gave a sample of flans from each day’s product of each workshop to the weigher to weigh withhand balances. These were weighed individually, and samples that were above theremedy were to be returned for cutting down, while those that were too lightwere to be remelted. He then summoned the foreman of the emenders to deter-mine whose work had been rejected; the worker responsible—or, if he could notbe identified, the foreman—was to be fined. As usual, provisions were made toresolve disputes between officials as to whether the flans really were of properweight. In , faced with a massive culling of the circulating coinage whichwas blamed on poor control by the masters, the Senate instituted a special fore-man to control the consistency of the weight of blanks; the master was tosupervise him but also to continue his own regular weighing of blanks.⁴⁹ A sim-ilar problem arose in , and this time the Senate made the third master—thatis, not the one of the quindena or his associate—responsible for the daily super-vision of the emenders to make sure that the blanks were within the prescribedremedy.⁵⁰

The master was responsible for ensuring that the smith and engraver main-tained a sufficient backlog of dies to replace those that were broken and worn.⁵¹He had to visit the moneyers at least once each working day to check that theirdies were fresh.⁵² If he (or the weigher) deemed a die too worn to use, he wasto order it replaced with the spare that was to be kept ready at all times.⁵³ Toguard against ducat dies getting out for use by forgers, in the Forty requiredthe master for gold to sign out all dies in the morning and in at night; they wereto be stored in a safe in his office.⁵⁴

The master gave the blanched blanks to the moneyers for striking; the max-imum number per day was prescribed on a seasonal basis.⁵⁵ The master exam-ined the pieces after they were struck to make sure they were beautiful (pulcros),well centered (bene positos in medio et bene tractos extra), and not double-struck (non

The Mintmasters

⁴⁸CMM, c. .⁴⁹ May : Cap. Broche, ‒.⁵⁰ June : SM, R. , f. .⁵¹CMM, c. .⁵²CMM, c. .⁵³CMO, f. v, c. , possibly from Nov. .⁵⁴ Apr. : CMA, ff. v–.⁵⁵CMM, cc. , , , , .

referitos). If any did not meet these standards, they were cut, and the moneyer wasfined; if any moneyer was consistently unsatisfactory, the master and weigherrecommended to the doge and heads of the Forty that he be banned from themint.

The silver and gold mints operated under different procedures in the pay-ing out of newly minted coins to those who had brought bullion to the mint.For silver, the general procedure was to pay individuals back with their own sil-ver after it had been turned into coin, or at least with silver acquired at the sameperiod as theirs. The gold mint, on the other hand, was sometimes supplied bythe state with capital, so that it could pay off suppliers of bullion as soon as thequality of their gold was determined. This procedure certainly encouraged theprofitable minting of ducats, and it probably also served to keep down the amountof gold bullion in the mint at any time, an obvious security concern.

The silver masters were required to pay out grossi “as soon as possible,”with no deadlines specified.⁵⁶ They were to give out new coins only, except inthe case of worn Venetian coins that they had accepted from Venetian mer-chants, which they were allowed to pay out, presumably to foreigners. The wereenjoined from culling the coins, that is, going through them by weight and giv-ing out only those at or below the prescribed weight and reminting the heavyones.

In general, the mintmaster seems to have taken in bullion at the beginningof his quindena and paid it out at the end, rather than having a continuousprocess of receiving and paying. In , the Forty ordered that the mintmasterof the quindena take in as much silver as he could process in his term of office,with his successor then taking in the rest.⁵⁷ Each supplier of bullion was to bepaid in the order received; if the individual was not present, his payment wasto be held in a vault until he picked it up. In the merchant manual of Pegolotti,foreigners were advised that the Venetian mint usually took from fifteen to twentydays to pay suppliers of silver.⁵⁸

In , the Forty allowed the masters thirty calendar days for receiving bul-lion and twenty working days for paying out.⁵⁹ A year later, however, the system

Within the Mint

⁵⁶CMM, cc. , .⁵⁷ Aug. : ASV, MC Commune II, f. v.⁵⁸Pegolotti, Pratica, .⁵⁹ Oct. : DQ , :‒, #.

was not functioning as swiftly as prescribed; the executors of the estate of Gio-vanni Storlado brought about marks of silver to the mint on December, and did not receive their newly minted grossi until April .⁶⁰The mintwas still recovering from the devastating effects of the Black Death, so this fourmonth turnaround time may have been unusual.

When the ducat was first introduced, in , the mintmasters were giventhe discretion of paying for gold bullion with either silver grossi or gold ducats;soon, however, the payment was just in ducats (see above, Chap. ). In , topay Germans bringing gold to Venice, the Forty demanded that the mintmas-ters make payment within three days; if they did not have enough capital forbuying all the bullion offered, they were to take funds of the state on depositwith the Procurators of San Marco for this purpose.⁶¹ This provision was onlyfor Germans, however; a Venetian who got a German to present his gold at themint for immediate payment would be subject to a fine of £ per mark. Againin , to encourage Germans to bring their gold to the mint, the masters weregiven special grants of capital and ordered to pay the Germans for their bullionwithin four days.⁶² The executors of the estate of the Venetian Pietro Soranzo,however, had to wait four months to get ducats for their gold in .⁶³

In the early Quattrocento, merchants complained that they were not gettingtheir payment for gold fairly or as quickly as they should. As part of a generalreform of the gold mint, the Senate required that the masters pay for the goldin the order received; they were required to pay all the accounts of their quin-dena within a week of the start of their next one.⁶⁴Thus, it appears that by thistime the gold mint had adopted to the practice of the silver mint of having themaster receive bullion during the beginning of his quindena and pay out theminted coins at the end of it. Even this system does not seem to have functionedas it should have. Two years later merchants were complaining that they had towait as long as a year to receive their total payment for the gold they put in themint; a provision to punish masters who did not make full settlement withintwo months was defeated in the Senate.⁶⁵

The Mintmasters

⁶⁰ASV, PSM, Misti, B. a, notebook.⁶¹ Mar. : CMA, f. ‒v.⁶² Jan. []: PMV, ‒. #.⁶³ASV, PSM, Misti, B. , notebook.⁶⁴ Apr. : ASV, SM, R. , f. v.⁶⁵ Jan. []: ibid., R. , ff. v–.

The work of the mintmaster was not limited to guarding against poor per-formance or malfeasance by the staff. At least one of the masters made an orig-inal and valuable contribution to the minting process itself and was recognizedand rewarded by the government. Marco Sanudo was the only member of the oldand distinguished family documented as working at the mint in the Middle Ages.In he served as vice-lord of the German fondaco and the next year as silverofficial at the Rialto, both offices that put him in close contact with the bulliontrade. By he was mintmaster for torneselli, an office he held until .

In January , Sanudo sent a letter to the doge’s counselors seeking theirapproval for an innovation he had instituted in the mint; they solicited theapprobation of the Forty for formally instituting the new procedures.⁶⁶ Theinnovation consisted of changing the way in which the metal for torneselli wascast; instead of pouring it into ingots (verge), which would then be hammeredfor cutting, the metal was poured into tablets (tolle). According to Sanudo thisreduced the loss of metal in the flan-forming process from . percent to per-cent. Because the metal needed to be heated longer, the loss in refining wentfrom . percent to . percent. The net result was a diminution by percent ofthe amount of metal lost in the process.

This improved process allowed Venice to go from a production rate of£, worth of torneselli a year to £, worth, with a net gain in profitof £, a year. In addition, the savings on charcoal were calculated as £ ayear, from which Sanudo sought permission to add two laborers ( fenti) at asalary of £ per month each and to raise the salary of the smelters from pen-nies per mark to pennies. The state provisioners recommended these changes,and the Forty confirmed them. The workmen complained that the new proce-dure brought them added work; they were granted a pardon on earlier salaryadvances so that they had to pay back only £ of £ advanced to them.⁶⁷Sanudo himself filed an appeal that, in view of the savings he had brought tothe mint and the added activity that this had instigated, he also deserved a raise;he cited his predecessor, who had received a raise for less achievement. In April the Great Council and the Forty approved a raise in his salary from £ to£ a year.⁶⁸This does not seem an overly generous raise for such an important

Within the Mint

⁶⁶Cap. Broche, ‒.⁶⁷ Aug. : ASV, GR, R. , f. .⁶⁸ Apr. : GR, R. , f. v.

benefit to the state, and it is perhaps because of disappointment at this thatSanudo left the mint the following year.⁶⁹

The existence of multiple masters serving successive quindene within thesame mint was the first check on the masters. The associate master (the secondwhen there were three) was the one who took newly purchased bullion to besmelted; if some was left, it was put in a vault to which he alone had the onlykey.⁷⁰ He was to mediate disputes between the master of the quindena and theweigher as to the results of assays.⁷¹ He and the third master were responsiblefor the by-products of minting which were to be sold and for safeguarding thefunds that were kept in the mint.⁷²The third master was required to come whensummoned to settle disputes as to the weight of flans; in he was given spe-cific charge of supervising the emenders.⁷³

In addition to overseeing the assay of new bullion and the weighing ofblanks, the mint weighers were charged with checking up on the work of themasters. If they observed any wrongdoing in the mint, the weighers were to notifythe masters within three days; if the masters did not respond to the problem,the weighers were directed to present it directly to the state advocates.⁷⁴ Theywere to be present at the transition from one master of the quindena to the nextand to report any irregularities to the state advocates.⁷⁵ Mint weighers werespecifically forbidden to be related to masters.⁷⁶

Three members of the Council of Forty were charged with coming to themint once a week to inspect the operations and make sure that the coins wereattractive (pulcra et polita et rotonda); they were not charged with checking standards

The Mintmasters

⁶⁹Eventually this procedure was extended beyond the tornesello and other copper-based coins.Biringuccio noted in that while gold was cast into ingots that were then hammered, silverand copper were cast into plates (piastre), using an unguent to make the cast metal flow evenly:Pirotecnia, f. ‒v, bk. , c. .⁷⁰CMM, cc. , a.⁷¹CMM, c. .⁷²CMM, c. .⁷³CMM, c. ; June : ASV, SM, R. , f. .⁷⁴ Feb. []: CMA, f. ‒v.⁷⁵ Oct. : ASV, MC Commune II, ff. v–.⁷⁶CMM, c. . It is likely that any family ties among masters and weighers as well as betweenthem were forbidden. Even the Papaziza family, which had six members holding offices in themint in the fourteenth century, never appears to have had more than one member at a time asmaster or weigher.

of weight or fineness.⁷⁷They were to mediate in disputes over the hiring of staff

and to use their authority to chase away moneychangers who hung around themint when the master was negotiating a purchase of bullion.⁷⁸ In the first halfof the fourteenth century these men, identified as “those three of the Forty con-stituted to provide for the mint,” introduced legislation ranging from the pro-motion of an assistant die engraver to a full-scale reform of the gold mint.⁷⁹These officials are not documented after the mid-fourteenth century, and theirduties may have been eliminated as the direction of the mint passed from theForty to the Senate (see above, Chap. ).

The office of mintmaster presented many opportunities for illegal profit,and the state had to exercise vigilant oversight of the activities of the masters.The chief mechanism of this control was through a system of audits of accountswhereby various officials outside the mint could determine that the proper pro-ceeds from the minting were being turned over to the state. These accounts tookthree basic forms: the periodic reports of individual masters sent to various otherofficials; the semiannual statements of mint accounts, which were the combinedwork of all mint officials; and the ledger kept by the masters and duplicates ofthem kept by other officials. No examples of any of these accounts are extantfor the medieval Venetian mint.

Each mintmaster was required to write up the results of his quindena assoon as it was completed. He was required to give a written account to the nextmaster of the quindena along with the bullion and coins that were the propertyof the state and mint.⁸⁰ At the same time, the other two masters, those not onactive duty, were to report to the Accounts Office the proceeds of any sales bythe mint of by-products such as charcoal or copper. In the mintmasterswere required to send to the doge and the heads of the Forty an accounting ofall their transactions at the end of each quindena; the actual profits were still tobe passed along to the next master until the semiannual accounting, at whichtime profits were to go to the State Chamber.⁸¹

Within the Mint

⁷⁷CMM, c. ; CMO, c. .⁷⁸CMM, cc. , .⁷⁹ June : ASV, MC Presbiter, f. ; May : NMC, ‒, #; Mar. : CMO,f. , c. ; Oct. : DQ , :‒, #.⁸⁰ Dec. : DMC, :‒; CMM, cc. , ; CMO, c. .⁸¹ Oct. : ASV, MC Comune II, ff. v–; this act of the Forty is not in the parallel regis-ters MC Socius or Capricornus or in the copy in AC Bifrons.

In it was required that the report to the doge (called a cedula in Latinand cetola in vernacular) be read out loud in the Council of Forty at the end ofeach quindena.⁸² These accounts of the quindena soon took on a special func-tion; they were examined by the Council of Forty at the time of the review(L: proba; V: prova) when the master was considered for reelection. In the mid-s the masters for gold were required to send statements at the end of theirquindena to both the doge and the Accounts Office so that their accounts couldbe read at the time of their reelection review; they also were required to bringtheir ledgers to the Accounts Office when requested.⁸³ In , just after the dis-ruptions of the Black Death, the reading of these accounts was codified into theformal election procedures of masters for silver and for gold.⁸⁴

The drawing up and rendering of accounts was a major part of the job ofthe mintmasters. In the masters noted that after their quindena of sixty daysthey were allotted one month to report their profits to the Accounts Office.⁸⁵They opposed a proposal to shorten this accounting period to two weeks, sincethere would not be an opportunity to refine leftover scrap metal and consider itin the calculations. The Forty provided for this by instructing the succeedingmaster of the quindena to refine the remaining scraps and coin them before otherbullion, rendering the resultant coins to his colleague to be included with theprofits he was to send to the state with his accounts.

Twice a year, at midyear and at the end of the elected terms of the masters,the three masters, together with the weighers, were to draw up full accounts ofall the bullion that was processed by the mint and all the seigniorage derivedfrom it.⁸⁶ This statement (L: ratio; V: raxion) went to the Accounts Office, whilethe actual profits went to the State Chamber.⁸⁷ There were significant fines fora delay of two weeks and more serious ones if the delay was a month; if the mas-ters were unable to compile their accounts because of delay by the weighers, thelatter officials would bear the fine.

Even though the semiannual statements were rendered jointly by the threemasters, each was responsible for the conduct of the mint in his own quindene.⁸⁸Thus, at the end of his year in office, Matteo Aldoaldo was held responsible for

The Mintmasters

⁸² Oct. : ASV, Secreta Capitolare, Capitolare degli Ufficiali di Levante (formerly MSBrera ), f. v.⁸³CMO, c. , just after a chapter from June .⁸⁴ Oct. : DQ , :, #; Oct. : DQ , :, #.⁸⁵ Oct. : DQ , :‒, #.⁸⁶CMM, c. ; CMO, c. .⁸⁷For the various accounting offices of medieval Venice, see Besta, Senato, ‒.⁸⁸CMM, c. .

the accounts of his two quindene; the state advocates charged him with a short-fall of £. His statements were reaudited by the account officials, who reportedthat the shortfall was more than compensated by a surplus of £ in his secondquindena; the Great Council followed their recommendation to have the chargesdropped.⁸⁹ A similar case involved Francesco de Bernardo; he was short on theprofit for both of his quindene reported in the biennial statement, but since thefault was found to derive from wax sticking to a balance at the mint, whichcaused some grossi to go out over weight, he was absolved from responsibility.⁹⁰

All officials of medieval Venice who handled money were required to keepa ledger (L: quaternum; V: quaderno) in which they recorded all transactions.⁹¹Themintmasters were to record in their ledgers all bullion that was worked in themint, as well as all purchases and sales of supplies and by-products.⁹²These rec-ords were very detailed; the master for gold was to record each day the names ofeach workman who made blanks for ducats and the amount of gold he wasgiven. These ledgers were the property of the officials; they were to retain themand keep them under lock and key after they left office.⁹³ They could be calledupon for such records in later years; around all the mintmasters who hadserved in the previous ten years were required to turn in new sets of accounts tothe Accounts Office and the three members of the Forty who supervised themint.⁹⁴

In , two specially elected auditors were authorized to examine the ledgersof the mintmasters, as well as those of other officers.⁹⁵ Within three monthscharges were brought against Filipo Barbarigo, mintmaster for silver, for havingwithheld profit from the minting of piccoli. The auditors had been able to reviewhis ledger for the previous six years and had discovered a total of £, thathad been withheld from state proceeds. For the previous eleven years in whichhe had held the office, Barbarigo was unable or unwilling to produce his accountsand was fined an arbitrary but generous £, for these years. The charges wereupheld by the Senate, and Barbarigo’s possessions were seized to pay off thefine.⁹⁶ Barbarigo’s successor, Marco Baffo, was charged with the same crime. In an audit of his ledgers turned up a shortfall of about £, in twenty-four

Within the Mint

⁸⁹ June : DMC, :, #.⁹⁰ Sept. : ASV, AC Neptunus, f. .⁹¹ Aug. : DMC, :; Oct. : CMM, c. .⁹² Dec. : DMC, :‒; CMM, cc. , , , ; CMO, cc. , , , , , .⁹³ June : CMM, c. .⁹⁴CMM, c. .⁹⁵ Apr. : ASV, SM, R. , f. ; June : MC Leona, f. v.⁹⁶ May : ASV, SM, R. , f. v; July : AC Raspe, R. /, fasc. , f. .

quindene over the past five years.⁹⁷ It appears that in both of these cases the reg-ular audit of returns had failed to turn up the embezzlements, and the ledgerswere the fallback source of evidence.

In addition to the accounts of the mintmasters, a duplicate set was kept andrendered by an official for whom this was the principal responsibility: the scribe.⁹⁸The mint scribe was appointed directly by the doge’s council and was responsi-ble only to it.⁹⁹ He kept a set of records of all transactions undertaken by themasters, which was handed in and audited alongside theirs. Like the weigher, hewas to report to the state advocates any irregularities in the transfer of quin-dene.¹⁰⁰ Following a scandal in in which one scribe was bribed by a masterinto falsifying the records of another, the mint scribe was required to send arecord of the master’s quindena to the state advocates in addition to the one hecustomarily sent to the doge.¹⁰¹ As part of a general reform of the gold mint in, the scribe was required to appear before the state provisioners every twomonths and testify under oath whether the masters were in violation of pre-scribed procedures.¹⁰²

The earliest mention of mintmasters in Venice is from , when thoseelected to the office swore on their capitulary in the presence of the doge andhis council.¹⁰³ According to extant rubrics, there were three masters for grossiand two for piccoli in .¹⁰⁴ Following the opening of the gold mint in ,the number of minters for silver was cut back to three in total and seems to haveremained at that number for almost a century.¹⁰⁵ In there were only two mas-ters for silver, of whom one concentrated on torneselli.¹⁰⁶ In the number ofmasters for silver was raised from two to three, with one specifically designatedfor torneselli.¹⁰⁷ In , with added expenses from the war on the Terraferma

The Mintmasters

⁹⁷ Mar. : ASV, AC Raspe, R. /, fasc. , f. ‒v.⁹⁸For the scribe in general, see below, Chap. .⁹⁹CMM, cc. , a.¹⁰⁰ Oct. : ASV, MC Commune II, ff. v–.¹⁰¹ Oct. : DQ , :‒, #.¹⁰² July : CMO, ff. v–, c. .¹⁰³ Mar. : DMC, :, #.¹⁰⁴ Aug. : DMC, :.¹⁰⁵CMM, cc. , . The last date at which three masters are documented is : May :ASV, XL, Parti, R. , f. .¹⁰⁶ July : Cap. Broche, ‒; Sept. : ASV, SM, R. , f. .¹⁰⁷ May : PMV, , #; Stahl, Tornesello, , #.

and a reduction in the production of the tornesello, this special third master waseliminated and his work assigned to the other two.¹⁰⁸

The capitulary of mintmasters for gold assumes two masters for ducats inthe sections that appear to date from .¹⁰⁹This number was raised at the timeof the great influx of gold in the mid-fourteenth century. By , when the mas-ters for gold were forgiven fines for a law that had not been renewed as required,there were three of them.¹¹⁰ In , at the height of the supply of gold, the num-ber was raised to four masters.¹¹¹ By the supply had waned, and the num-ber was lowered back to two.¹¹²

According to the capitulary of mintmasters of , the election of themasters was to be by the doge, his counselors, and the three heads of the Forty,with ballots.¹¹³ Since there was no formal nomination in a council, there was nonominator to act as pledge, and the master himself had to supply a bond of£, in case he should default on any fines. In , the Great Council, whichheld the ultimate authority for all elections and appointments, transferred theelection of both sets of mintmasters to the Council of Forty.¹¹⁴ The normalelection of masters can be seen in the earliest extant fragment of the acts of theForty, from and . In January one master for silver was elected, and twowere reelected in March; one of the gold masters was reelected in June.¹¹⁵ In Jan-uary of the following year, the first master for silver was reelected with no oppo-sition and with the votes of thirty-six members of the Forty; a new silver mas-ter was elected in February, and the third was reelected.¹¹⁶

The Black Death of brought chaos to the election of masters, with sixmen elected to the three positions as mintmaster for silver and eight men to thetwo positions as master for gold within a two-month period.¹¹⁷ The followingyear the system of elections for both sets of masters was changed. The mastersfor silver were still to be elected in the Forty, but instead of serving a one-year

Within the Mint

¹⁰⁸ June : ASV, SM, R. , f. .¹⁰⁹CMO, Oath, c. .¹¹⁰ Dec. : ASV, GR, R. , f. .¹¹¹ June : DQ , :‒, #.¹¹²CMO, c. .¹¹³CMM, c. . For the election of Venetian officials in general, see Donald E. Queller, The Vene-tian Patriciate: Reality versus Myth (Urbana, ), ‒.¹¹⁴ Aug. : Papadopoli, :, ; DMC, :, #.¹¹⁵ Jan. [], Mar. , May : DQ , :, #; , #; , #.¹¹⁶ Jan. [], Feb. [], Feb. []: DQ , :, #, , #, and , #.¹¹⁷See below, App. A, tables A. and A., and Stahl, “Prosopography,” for details and documen-tation on these elections.

term, they would henceforth be elected for two years.¹¹⁸The procedures for elect-ing the masters for gold were reviewed, and annual elections were maintained forthem with a provision for the reading of the accounts of the quindena beforeany reelection.¹¹⁹ Weighers at both mints could henceforth be elected masters,in contrast to earlier tradition. Three years later the term of the masters for goldwas extended to two years, the same as that for silver.¹²⁰

In , Costantino Nani, a master for gold who had been elected six yearsearlier at the height of the plague, was charged with embezzlement.¹²¹ A weeklater, the Forty was stripped of the right to elect and review mintmasters, andtheir election was taken over by the Great Council, the ultimate source of allauthority in the Venetian state.¹²² This was to be accomplished by two teams ofnominators (manus) in the Great Council and one in the doge’s council; sixpledges of £, each were to be required for each master elected. This systemwas put into effect immediately; in fact, the first election in the Great Councilwas so rushed that the doge’s council was not given a chance to make its nomi-nation, and the results had to be reviewed by the counselors.¹²³ In the pro-cedure was changed so that the masters would be elected from four teams ofnominators, all of the Great Council.¹²⁴ A decade later, the system of two teamsof nominators from the Great Council and one from the doge’s council wasrestored, at least for the masters for gold.¹²⁵

Although the election of the masters was now in the control of the GreatCouncil, the Forty continued to exercise the right to review those in office and,by approving them, in effect reelect them.¹²⁶ The practice of reviewing the ac-counts of the masters in the Forty and eliminating at least one of them appearsto have fallen into disuse in the next decade. In , following the discovery of

The Mintmasters

¹¹⁸ Oct. . DQ , :, #.¹¹⁹ Oct. : DQ , :, #.¹²⁰ Mar. : CMO, c. .¹²¹ Mar. : DQ , :, #.¹²² Apr. : ASV, MC Novella, f. v; CMO, c. . The designation of the masters for silveras “inferiores” or “de soto” apparently refers to the fact that their mint was on the groundfloor, below that of the masters for gold.¹²³ Apr. : ASV, CN, R. , f. , #.¹²⁴ May : ASV, MC Novella, f. v.¹²⁵ Mar. : ibid., f. .¹²⁶A record of the Forty which reports the election “per scrutinium in Consilio de XL” of amintmaster is problematic; the most likely explanation for it is that the election was actually ofa mint weigher, since Pietro Magno, the individual who is named in it, is known to have been aweigher before and after but never otherwise mentioned as a master: July : ASV, XL, Parti,R. , f. .

the long-term embezzlements by Filipo Barbarigo, master for silver, the GreatCouncil ordered that the Forty observe the act requiring this review.¹²⁷ Thisreview of the silver masters, which must have been an unwelcome effort in ac-count analysis, was shifted to the Senate in , to the Forty in , and backto the Senate in .¹²⁸The mintmasters for gold continued to be elected in theGreat Council throughout this period, and their review was in the Forty until, when it was moved to the Senate.¹²⁹

Venetian officials profited from their offices in two ways: directly throughsalaries from the government and indirectly through a share of fines and feesassessed in the line of duty; the latter revenues were referred to as the “utilities”of the office. Some officials also took advantage of their offices and informationgathered there to profit unofficially and even illegally. The mintmasters alwaysreceived a salary from the state, but information on other sources of income isremarkably sparse. Their salaries tended to be personal, that is, one master couldbe awarded a raise while the others continued at their old rates; incoming mas-ters often received a lower salary than their colleagues. The salaries of mastersfor silver were always distinct from those of masters for gold.

Although there were provisions limiting the kind of commercial activity themasters could engage in to prevent conflicts of interest, they were not bannedfrom commerce in general or even from holding other offices simultaneouslywith that of the mint. As noted earlier, they were required to come to the minttwice on each working day, in the morning and after lunch, and stay at least anhour each time. This would leave them time to attend to their own business,though at times of heavy minting, they would have had to be at the mint all dayand even into the night. In their requests for raises, mintmasters often com-plained that they were working so hard at the mint that they could not earn anyoutside income.¹³⁰ Though forbidden from departing on a foreign voyage ofcommerce, masters did see to their personal affairs; Secondo Aventurado received

Within the Mint

¹²⁷ Aug. : ASV, MC Leona, f. .¹²⁸ Sept. : Cap. Broche, ‒. An example of this review is recorded for Nov. : ASV,SM, R. , f. . July : ASV, MC Leona, f. ‒v. Apr. : MC Ursa, f. v.¹²⁹ Mar. : ASV, MC Leona, f. . Later that year the nomination was changed from fourteams in the Great Council to two there and one in the doge’s council: Apr. : ibid., f. . May : ibid., f. v. Apr. : ASV, SM, R. , f. v.¹³⁰E.g., Apr. : ASV, GR, R. , f. v.

five official pardons to make extended trips to Istria to manage his wife’s dowergoods.¹³¹ In order to recover the amount that Filipo Barbarigo embezzled fromthe mint, the state advocates petitioned and received access to some of his in-vestment in a merchant vessel currently at sea.

The capitulary of mintmasters for silver set their salary at £ per year,payable after five months and after eleven months.¹³² (See graph . for a com-parison of their salaries with those of other officials connected with the mint.)There is no other record of the salary of the masters for silver for another cen-tury. In , as part of a general reduction of salaries following the cripplingWar of Chioggia, the Senate lowered the salary of the masters for silver from£ a year to £.¹³³ The act specifically says they were entitled to all otherusual sources of income (utilitates). The customary salary of £ a year can becompared with that enumerated for other officials in the same document. Ac-count officials received £, provisioners of grain £, merchant consuls £,state chancellors £, copper ghetto officials £, gold leaf officials £, andvarious judges from £ to £ a year; none of these officials is specified asreceiving “utilities.”

In , the master who replaced the embezzler Filipo Barbarigo was given£ a year, as Barbarigo had received, with the express injunction that he getnothing else of any kind (“non habendo aliquid alliud ullo modo”).¹³⁴ In ,as a result of austerity caused by the Dalmatian war, the salary of the mintmas-ter for silver was again lowered from £ to £.¹³⁵ The customary salary of£ must have been restored and raised in the next decade, since as part of aneffort to save expenses in it was decided that one of the positions as mas-ter for silver be eliminated and that his salary of £ a year be saved; the “util-ities” due this office would go to the state.¹³⁶

The minting of the tornesello, the base coin for circulation in Venice’s Greekcolonies, reached its height in the last decades of the fourteenth century.¹³⁷The reduction of salaries, after lowering the salary of the masters for silver from

The Mintmasters

¹³¹CMM, c. .¹³²CMM, c. .¹³³ Sept. : ASV, SM, R. , ff. ‒v.¹³⁴ Aug. : ASV, MC Leona, f. . Barbarigo was probably working on torneselli and receiv-ing a £ supplement to the reduced salary of £; though the indictments charge that he tookthe profit from “parvi,” the only low-denomination coins known to have been minted in theperiod ‒ were torneselli: Papadopoli, :‒.¹³⁵ Jan. []: ASV, SM, R. , f. .¹³⁶ Feb. []: Cap. Broche, ‒.¹³⁷Stahl, Tornesello, ‒.

£ to £ a year, notes that the one of them in charge of torneselli used toget £ extra a year for this responsibility (“propter hoc”); the supplement wasthen lowered to £.¹³⁸ In May , a third post of master was added specifi-

cally for torneselli; the man to be elected for this post was to get £ a year. In the master of torneselli petitioned the Forty for a raise, saying that he hadimproved the technology of casting blanks, had raised production fourfold, andgave so much of his time that he had no opportunity for other income.¹³⁹

The extra income of the master for silver was limited by restrictive legisla-tion. He was specifically enjoined from speculating in silver while in office, par-ticipating in any foreign minting, receiving any gifts, culling heavy coins for him-self, and buying the ashes of the mint.¹⁴⁰ He had to include in his accounts andrender to the treasury any fines he collected and the proceeds from any sales ofmint by-products.¹⁴¹ All profits from the minting of grossi were to be renderedto the state. If these were less than the specified rate, the shortfall was to comefrom the pocket of the master; but if there was a surplus, it all went to thestate.¹⁴²

A few specific sources of income beyond the salaries, “utilities,” are docu-mented. In the thirteenth century, the master for silver was encouraged to makepiccoli by being given penny (£.) per mark of them coined above the

marks required.¹⁴³ In , the masters were allowed to charge owners of silver penny per ingot for all silver they certified; this special payment was called thebagattino, the vernacular name for the piccolo.¹⁴⁴ In , they were expressly al-lowed to keep half of the fine levied on the foreman if he arrived late or leftearly; the remainder went to the state.¹⁴⁵ Beginning in , with the introduc-tion of the grosso of Type , the masters for silver were given a share in the mint-ing expenses of the coinage. The masters and weighers shared pennies (£.)per mark of the total minting charges of £. per mark.¹⁴⁶ A year later, an addi-tional pennies per mark from this minting was awarded to the masters by theGreat Council.¹⁴⁷ In , as part of a major reform of the silver mint, the mas-

Within the Mint

¹³⁸ Sept. : ASV, SM, R. , f. .¹³⁹ Jan. []: Cap. Broche, ‒; Apr. : ASV, GR, R. , f. v.¹⁴⁰CMM, cc. , , , , .¹⁴¹CMM, cc. , , , .¹⁴²CMM, c. .¹⁴³CMM, c. a.¹⁴⁴ Feb. []: DQ , :, #; May : PMV, , #.¹⁴⁵ May : Cap. Broche, ‒.¹⁴⁶ June : ibid., .¹⁴⁷ July : ASV, MC Leona, f. ‒v.

ters were given £. per mark of all silver minted into soldini and grossi.¹⁴⁸ In, they were given pennies for each mark of piccoli and torneselli minted.¹⁴⁹

The salary of the mintmasters for gold seems to have been more erraticthan that of their colleagues at the silver mint. The original salary set for theoffice in was £ per year.¹⁵⁰ This figure was cut in half in the course ofthe next half century; in the mintmasters for gold were given a raise from£ a year to £ a year.¹⁵¹ In , they had to get a special grazia to get thisrate, which was being blocked by the state advocates.¹⁵² This rate was in effectin but had become £ by , when it was raised to £ a year; in

it went to £.¹⁵³The salary of the mintmaster for gold became the object of political dis-

pute in the late fourteenth century. At the time of the across-the-board reduc-tions following the War of Chioggia in , the five advisors recommended re-ducing the salaries of the mintmasters for gold from £ a year to £.¹⁵⁴ Inthis case, exceptionally, their proposal was favored by only thirteen members ofthe Senate voting, while a majority of forty-five favored the recommendation oftwo counselors and one of the heads of the Forty that their salary be reducedto £. In , before the five-year period of these reductions had expired, theSenate declared that a salary of £ was to be given to the master for gold tobe elected to replace the one who had just moved to the silver mint.¹⁵⁵The nextmonth, the Great Council elected Jacopo Trevisan to the office, but he declined,claiming he could not find the requisite pledges.¹⁵⁶ The Great Council declaredthat the “£” [sic] that had been voted for the office was too high and loweredit to £ a year on a motion of the doge and his counselors. Four months later,no one had come forth to fill the office, and an act was passed in the Great Coun-cil raising the salary to £.¹⁵⁷ Five years later this was lowered to £, but aneffort to lower it to £ was defeated.¹⁵⁸

In the early years of the fifteenth century, the salary was raised considerably

The Mintmasters

¹⁴⁸ Nov. : Cap. Broche, .¹⁴⁹ Dec. : ibid., .¹⁵⁰CMO, c. .¹⁵¹Known from a petition ten years later: Dec. : ASV, GR, R. , f. .¹⁵² Jan. []: ASV, MC Spiritus, f. v.¹⁵³ Dec. : ASV, GR, R. , f. ; Apr. : Regolazione, :, #; Mar. : MCNovella, f. .¹⁵⁴ Sept. : ASV, SM, R. , f. .¹⁵⁵ July : PMV, ‒, # (as July).¹⁵⁶ Aug. : ASV, MC Leona, f. .¹⁵⁷ Dec. : ibid., f. v.¹⁵⁸ Jan. []: ibid., f. v; Mar. : ibid., f. .

in order to attract qualified applicants. In March , the salary for the mint-master for gold was set at £ a year and the required pledges reduced from fiveat £, each to only two at £, each.¹⁵⁹ A month later, when no candidateswere forthcoming, the salary was raised to £.¹⁶⁰The master for gold hired atthis time, Nicolò Trevisan, was removed from his office and fined more than£, for issuing coins of poor gold and cheating on his accounts.¹⁶¹ On theargument that the position of mintmaster for gold was more of a ministry thanan office, the Great Council then raised the salary to £ a year by a vote of to .¹⁶² During the economies for the Dalmatian wars of , when thesalaries of the mintmasters for silver went from £ to £, those of the mas-ters for gold were lowered from £ to £.¹⁶³

In , no masters for gold could be found, and one of the gold estima-tors of the Rialto was brought to the mint and authorized to keep his old salaryand receive that of the mintmaster at the same time.¹⁶⁴ In an effort that year toreform the gold mint, two new masters were authorized to assist the existingones; the new men were to receive £ a year, and the salary of the original twomasters was returned to £.¹⁶⁵ Another attempted reform two years later re-duced the number of masters to two and their salaries to £ a year apiece, not-ing that their “utilities” were worth about £ a year each.¹⁶⁶

Just what constituted these extra sources of income is not certain. Such“utilities” tended to be unrecorded, and only restrictions on income are well doc-umented. Like the masters for silver, those in the gold mint were prohibited fromprofiting from their office in bullion speculation and the refining and sale of by-products.¹⁶⁷They were to turn over profit to the state and account fully for theiractivities at their review in the Council of Forty.¹⁶⁸ For every mark of goldprocessed, there was a fee of £., of which the master had £. that he coulduse for production costs without accounting; the rest went to the state. After, even the £. had to be accounted for in specific terms.¹⁶⁹

Within the Mint

¹⁵⁹ Mar. : ibid., f. .¹⁶⁰ Apr. : ibid., f. .¹⁶¹ June : ASV, CN, R. , f. , #; GR, R. , f. v: the date of the approval of thispardon in installments is missing from the MS.¹⁶² Aug. : ASV, MC Leona, f. v.¹⁶³ Jan. []: ASV, SM, R. , f. .¹⁶⁴ Apr. : CMA, f. v.¹⁶⁵ Apr. : ASV, SM, R. , f. ; May : ASV, MC Leona, f. .¹⁶⁶ Jan. []: SM, R. , ff. v–.¹⁶⁷CMO, cc. , .¹⁶⁸CMO, c. .¹⁶⁹ July : CMO, c. ; ASV, Ufficiali alle Rason Nuove, R. , f. .

It is indicative of how unrepresentative the extant documentation on prac-tices of remuneration is that the only record of the traditional “utility” of themasters for gold survives in an eighteenth-century compilation of regulations ofthe silver mint.¹⁷⁰ The ad hoc committee that had dealt with the lack of a mint-master for gold in by transferring the gold estimator from the Rialto to themint ruled that this estimator was entitled to the half grosso (£.) per markof gold which the mintmasters were “accustomed” (soliti) to take and share withtheir scribes and other staff. With the volume of gold exceeding , ducatsin the mint at a time, this customary half grosso per mark could amount to £

per year.¹⁷¹

-

Twenty mintmasters of the period ‒ are known to have gotten introuble with the state as a result of their performance of this office.¹⁷² Three ofthe cases were simply fines for late accounts for all three mintmasters of ; allwere forgiven their fines.¹⁷³ In two cases, a master was held responsible for theftsthat had occurred in the mint during his tenure; in Giovanni Storlado wasforgiven the £ loss, and in the heirs of Andrea Bon were given specialtrade rights to help them make up the £ owed to the mint because of a theftduring their father’s administration.¹⁷⁴

Five masters were held responsible for passing along insufficient profit tothe state from the minting under their jurisdiction. In one of these cases an in-vestigation showed that the shortfall was caused by a piece of wax that adheredto one of the pans of the balance used by the master, Francesco de Bernardo,and therefore grossi had left the mint a shade too heavy, leaving the profit mar-gin too low. De Bernardo was forgiven the necessity of making up the short-fall.¹⁷⁵ In the four other cases, the masters were given pardons to pay off the

The Mintmasters

¹⁷⁰Dated only May, among acts of in this chronologically arranged capitulary: CMA,ff. ‒.¹⁷¹ Apr. : CMO, c. , and ASV, SM, R. , f. . This calculation assumes that the figureof , ducats in the mint at a time is the number produced in a quindena of two months:see below, Chap. .¹⁷²See Stahl, “Office-holding,” ‒; for criminal procedures in medieval Venice in general, seeRuggiero, Violence in Early Renaissance Venice, ‒.¹⁷³ June : ASV, AC Neptunus, f. v: Francesco de Bernardo, Pietro Dente, and MarcoTanoligo.¹⁷⁴ Sept. : ASV, AC Raspe, R. /, f. ; Aug. : ASV, GR, R. , f. .¹⁷⁵ Sept. : ASV, AC Neptunus, f. .

money owed in installments.¹⁷⁶ In this category, the number known may be seri-ously underrepresented, as only those whose fine was in some sense modified inthe grazia process are documented. One master, Giovanni Papaziza, was chargedwith accepting money from moneychangers and was removed from the office andbanned from holding others. When his son died in a shipwreck, leaving him inpoverty, he petitioned for and received a renewal of the right to hold office.¹⁷⁷Either he or a relative of the same name eventually returned to the position ofmaster at the mint.

There is only one documented case of mintmasters prosecuted for produc-ing coins below standards. In , both of the masters for silver, Daniele daCanal and Fantino Morosini, were charged with knowingly stamping ingots ofinferior silver and issuing coins that were deficient in both weight and fine-ness.¹⁷⁸ The doge and the state advocates proposed that the men, members ofprestigious families, be deprived of all future offices relating to gold and silver,be fined £ apiece, and be imprisoned for four months; this proposal got fif-teen votes in the Senate. Three of the counselors suggested that the jail term beonly one month and the fine £; this received the support of thirteen sena-tors. The sentence that passed, with forty-one votes, was proposed by one of thecounselors and one of the heads of the Forty; it called for a fine of only £

and no jail term. This treatment of two nobles who debased the silver coinagecan be contrasted with that meted out to two mint employees convicted of mak-ing torneselli of pure copper in their homes: the striker Giovanni Maioranawas burned to death, and the worker Antonio Balbi lost his left eye and righthand.¹⁷⁹

The greatest number of masters charged with an offense, eight individuals,were cited for embezzlement. In Filipo Venier, master for silver for at leastsix years, was accused of forcing a new scribe to falsify accounts and indicatethat a payment of about ducats’ worth of mezzanini was given to a money-changer who had brought silver to the mint, when in fact the payment had notbeen made. Venier was tried before the Forty, which chose a fine of £ and afive-year ban on holding office over a counterproposal of a fine of £ and atwo-year ban.¹⁸⁰ Five years later the master for gold Costantino Nani, who had

Within the Mint

¹⁷⁶Donato Bobizo and Pietro Gomberto: July : ASV, GR, R. , f. v, #; Nicolò Tre-visan: : ibid., R. , f. v.; Giovanni Emo: Mar. : ibid., R. , f. .¹⁷⁷ July : ibid., R. , f. v.¹⁷⁸ Mar. : ASV, AC Raspe, R. /, fasc. , ff. v–; SM, R. , ff. v–.¹⁷⁹ Oct. : ASV, SN, Processi, R. , ff. ‒.¹⁸⁰ Aug. : DQ , :‒, #, and ASV, AC Raspe, R. /. fasc. , f. v.

served for at least six years, was found to have stolen £, worth of funds fromthe mint; his case was tried in the Great Council.¹⁸¹The amount taken was madegood by his pledges, who the doge’s council ruled could not participate in thedeliberations concerning his punishment, and he was banned from all offices forone year and from the mint forever.

In , the Senate passed a law covering all Venetian officials who “puttheir hands in the state’s goods,” which standardized the punishment for em-bezzlement.¹⁸² Any official convicted of taking more than £ ad grossos (about£) was required to pay back the amount taken plus a fine of half the amountwithin three days of the conviction; he was to be banned forever from holdingany domestic or foreign office. If he was convicted of taking less money, thefine would still be restitution plus percent, but he would be banned onlyfrom the specific office in which he took the money. The official could appealto a special committee that comprised the doge, his counselors, the heads ofthe Forty, the account officials, and the state advocates; if they determined thatthe shortage occurred without intent to defraud, the official would only haveto pay back the money, with no penalty. The state advocates were given theright to sell movable and immovable possessions of the convicted official in orderto satisfy the requirements of this act. They were able to charge the pledges ofthe official for the amount of money taken up to the amount pledged at thetime of election.

The first mintmaster against whom this statute was applied was Bianco daMosto, who was prosecuted in after at least five years as master for silver.¹⁸³Da Mosto fled after the state advocates accused him of taking £, worth offunds from the mint; about £ worth was found in his strongbox at the mint.After a month of waiting for him to appear, he was tried in absentia in the Forty.His pledges were held responsible for the remainder of the missing money, andhe was to be declared banned from all offices of the state. Seven months later,his pledges made up the lacking funds.

The case that best illustrates the working of the controls on mintmasters,and probably attracted the greatest attention in its day, was that of Filipo Bar-barigo. Barbarigo, of an old and prestigious family, was mintmaster for silver asearly as . During his tenure at least two episodes of tampering with the alloyof bullion worked in the mint were brought before the authorities; the mint was

The Mintmasters

¹⁸¹ May : ASV, AC Saturnus, f. v; AC Raspe, R. /, fasc. , f. ‒v; CN, R. , f. v,#.¹⁸² July : ASV, SM, R. , f. .¹⁸³ June : ASV, AC Raspe, R. /, fasc. , f. v.

characterized as being in disorder.¹⁸⁴ In May , Barbarigo and the mint scribewere charged with speculating with the mint’s funds, and the Senate passed a res-olution offered by two of the doge’s counselors that the proceeds from this spec-ulation were to go to the state and that Barbarigo’s accounts were to be checkedby the two officials who had recently been designated, Marino Bon and AndreaDonato.¹⁸⁵

In June, Barbarigo was charged with having taken the state’s goods and wasgiven the requisite three days for paying back the amount taken with penalty.¹⁸⁶When this period had passed, his name was proclaimed at the Rialto bridge, andhe was given one week to appear to defend himself. When he failed to do this,the Forty voted twenty-six to one to prosecute him in absentia. Two weeks laterthe charges were brought before the Senate; Barbarigo was accused of havingtaken a total of about £, worth of the profit from piccoli in the course ofseventeen years at the mint.¹⁸⁷ When he refused to pay back this sum plus percent penalty, the Senate voted fifty-one to forty-four to prosecute him underthe act of .

Less than two weeks later, further charges were brought against Barbarigo.This time he was accused of having embezzled the profits from the coinage offree silver into grossi for a total of more than £,.¹⁸⁸ Again, the charges werebrought in the Forty, which voted twenty-four to one to prosecute. When thecharges were brought before the Senate, it took five ballots over three weeks tofind him guilty according to the act, by a margin of only thirty-one votesfor, versus nine against, guilt, with twenty-four abstentions. He was held respon-sible for restitution of the £, plus an equal amount for a penalty and wasbanned permanently from all state offices. Over the next month and a half, theproceeds from the sale of Barbarigo’s holdings in a ship were seized to cover the

Within the Mint

¹⁸⁴ Dec. : ASV, AC Raspe, R. ., fasc. , f. ; July : Cap. Broche, ‒, andASV, GR, R. , f. v.¹⁸⁵ May : ASV, SM, R. , f. v; Apr. : ibid., R. , f. . This resolution was inval-idated in October by the Signoria, which unanimously concluded that the vote of the Senateconstituted a change in the capitulary of the office of mintmaster (i.e., a change in the basicconditions of the office), which could only properly be enacted by the Great Council: Oct.: AC Raspe, R. /, fasc. , f. ‒v.¹⁸⁶ July : ASV, XL, Parti, R. , f. .¹⁸⁷ July : ASV, AC Raspe, R. /. fasc. , f. . A marginal note to the record of thiscase documents the seizure of funds from Barbarigo’s assets toward the restitution of this theftand the penalty.¹⁸⁸ July : ASV, XL, Parti, R. , f. ‒v; Aug. : AC Raspe, R. /, fasc. ,f. .

restitution and most of the penalty. Over the next two years the remainder waspaid off with credits that he had with the Salt Chamber.¹⁸⁹

All in all, the controls over the misappropriation of funds by mintmastersseem to have been moderately successful. In cases of clear fraud, the master couldbe prosecuted and made to restore the money taken plus a penalty. He wasbanned from future such office holding but seldom jailed, much less subjectedto the kinds of corporal and capital punishment meted out to non-noble mintemployees. In the cases of manipulation of the accounts by which the masterturned over less profit than expected, the councils seem to have been hesitant tocharge with theft and invoke the penalties for it. The fact that several of the pros-ecutions were for acts that occurred years before the case was brought suggeststhat the procedures for auditing accounts were not rigorously applied through-out the period.

There was no formal requirement that the mintmaster be of a noble fam-ily, which after meant being a hereditary member of the Great Council. In, the mintmaster for silver Pietro Dente was not a member of the GreatCouncil, but his colleagues were; he was made a member by virtue of the office.¹⁹⁰A few years later, however, the Forty decided that just being mintmaster shouldnot in and of itself qualify someone to be in the Great Council.¹⁹¹ Despite thelack of specific prohibition, only two mintmasters known to have served afterthe Serrata of the Great Council were from families not known to be noble bythe time of their election: Giovanni Stornado, mintmaster for silver from ,and Pietro Gomberto, his colleague in .

One family admitted to the nobility after the Serrata made a great contri-bution to the administration of the mint: the Papaziza. Three members of thisfamily were made members of the Great Council for their role in the suppres-sion of the Querini-Tiepolo conspiracy of .¹⁹² At least four members of thefamily held the position of mintmaster at some time in the fourteenth century,

The Mintmasters

¹⁸⁹These were probably state bonds (prestiti) amortized with receipts from the Salt Office—in these could be liquidated at percent face value: Jean-Claude Hocquet, Le sel et la fortune deVenise, d ed., vols. (Lille, France, ), :.¹⁹⁰ Dec. : ASV, AC Magnus, f. v.¹⁹¹ Jan. []: ASV, MC Commune II, f. v.¹⁹²ASV, MC Presbiter copia, ff. and v.

and at least three others served in the offices of mint weigher, silver official, andgold estimator. The family does not, however, appear to have had any extraordi-nary hold over the mint or claim to mint positions; no Papaziza sons are knownto have succeeded their fathers at the mint, and no more than one individual inthe family is documented to have held a post at the mint at a time.

There is no extant regulation forbidding two members of a family to bemaster at the same time, but such a prohibition probably existed; it is knownthat masters could not be related to weighers, and neither of these could be re-lated to other mint employees.¹⁹³ There are two known cases of sons succeed-ing fathers at the mint, both times with the authorization of the Forty. The firstsuch case occurred when Giovanni Navager replaced his father, Marco, in July, just after the first effects of the Black Death had been felt at the mint.¹⁹⁴In the second case, Giusto Foscarini substituted for his (presumably ill) father,Andrea, in and was given a special pardon to replace him at his death.¹⁹⁵

Although virtually all mintmasters of the fourteenth century and early fif-teenth were members of the hereditary nobility of Venice, they came from widelydifferent families. In the mid-fifteenth century, certain noble families were char-acterized as “long” (twenty-four families) and “short” (sixteen families) basedon the reputed history of their participation in Venetian society and govern-ment; these terms were to take on great significance in the later period but donot appear in sources from before .¹⁹⁶ Nevertheless, they provide a usefulindex for identifying the most prestigious of Venetian families in the period ofthis study. In all, eighty-one individuals are known to been mintmasters up tothe year .¹⁹⁷ Neither of the two known from before the closing of the GreatCouncil in was from a long or short family. In the period from to ,

Within the Mint

¹⁹³CMM, c. . CMO, c. (probably of Nov. ), stating that no worker in the gold mintcould be a relative or bastard son of a master or weigher. June : ASV, GR, R. , f. , inwhich the noble emender Francesco Diedo got a pardon to work in the gold mint when hisbrother-in-law Francesco Vielmo was elected weigher there. There was probably a similar restric-tion for the silver mint.¹⁹⁴ July : DQ , :, #.¹⁹⁵ Nov. : ASV, GR, R. , f. .¹⁹⁶The most convenient listing of these families is that extracted from the late-fifteenth-centuryannals of Domenico Malipiero and published by Heinrich Kretschmayr, Geschichte von Venedig(; reprint, Aalen ), :‒ n. .¹⁹⁷See below, App. A, tables A. and A., for their names and terms. This group includes a fewmen who were elected but did not serve, usually because they could not find pledges. The infer-ence that this distinction had already emerged as a social and political force in the fourteenthcentury is supported by Stanley Chojnacki, “Marriage Legislation and Patrician Society inFifteenth-Century Venice,” in Bachrach and Nichols, Law, Custom, and the Social Fabric, ‒.

the eve of the arrival of the Black Death, members of short families accountedfor five of the nineteen known masters; there were no members of long families.Of the twenty-four masters known from to , three were from long fam-ilies and one from short. Fifteen masters are known for the period ‒;of these five were members of long families and three of short. For the firstquarter of the fifteenth century, there are twenty-one masters known, of whomsix were from long families and five from short. The percentage of masters fromthese prestigious families can be seen to have risen from less than one-third inthe early fourteenth century to more than half in the late fourteenth and earlyfifteenth centuries. No members of long families were known to serve as mint-masters before the Black Death; however, they account for more than a third ofthose serving in the later periods.

In recent years, Gerhard Rösch has devised a system for assigning a numer-ical rank to all the families that became part of the hereditary nobility at thetime of the Serrata of , based on their activity in the Great Council up tothis date.¹⁹⁸ In general, the long and short families fall into the first two cate-gories, respectively, and newer and smaller families are assigned numbers

through . For the purposes of this study, I have assigned a value of to thosefamilies not in the Great Council in who had members serve as mintmas-ter. Of the two known masters from before the Serrata, one was from a familythen in the Great Council. For the nineteen masters known from to ,the average index figure is ., below the middle of the groups of noble families.The figure is . for the twenty-seven masters between and . The indexdrops to . for the period ‒, indicating an increased representation ofthe more prestigious (lower index number) families. The index is . for the firstquarter of the fifteenth century, representing the continued presence of the olderfamilies.

A trend is evident, then, for members of the older, more prestigious Vene-tian families to take the position of mintmaster in the later medieval period, aposition they seem to have avoided earlier. This could be seen as representing ageneral trend of the upper nobility away from merchant ventures toward seek-ing positions within the state bureaucracy, or it could be a function of thegrowth of the size of these families and the need for some members to find newsources of income.

A valuable source for investigating the individual wealth of the known mint-

The Mintmasters

¹⁹⁸Gerhard Rösch, Der venezianische Adel bis zur Schliessung des Grossen Rats, Kieler Historische Stu-dien, (Sigmaringen, Germany, ), ‒.

masters is offered by the estimo, a document of about in which the patri-mony of immovable goods (chiefly real estate) of about , Venetian noblesand popolani is assessed.¹⁹⁹ Not all noble families are represented by even onemember in the estimo; the Coppo family had been in the Great Council sincethe Serrata, but none of its members appears to have had the requisite holdingsto be assessed in . At the other extreme, fifty-eight members of the Morosinifamily and sixty-eight Contarini are included on the list; most were apparentlymale heads of households. If one uses families with more than ten assessed mem-bers in the estimo of as the definition of large Venetian noble families, itcan be seen that mintmasters come from increasingly large families as the me-dieval period progressed. Only two out of nineteen (.%) mintmasters fromthe period ‒ were from such large families, while five out of twenty-four(%) were from large families in the period ‒; six out of seventeen (%)from ‒ and seven out of seventeen (%) from ‒ were fromlarge families.

The assessment of the , nobles included in the estimo can be groupedinto deciles, with the first decile including about the richest individuals, andso on down to the tenth decile, which includes the least wealthy assessednobles of ; there is an unknown number of individuals below the tenth decilein this calculation. The names of eight of the mintmasters who served at the sil-ver mint within fifteen years on either side of appear on the estimo; in mostcases the Christian name is rare enough to make the identification reasonablysecure. Of these, none were in the first two deciles, one was in the third, one inthe fourth, two in the fifth, two in the seventh, one in the eighth, and one in thetenth, with assessed patrimony ranging from Jacopo Duodo at £, down toDonato Quintavalle at £. In addition, there are five silver masters of the periodwhose names do not appear on the estimo; their assessed patrimony was appar-ently under the requisite £.

While eight of the thirteen masters for silver from to can be

Within the Mint

¹⁹⁹Published in Luzzatto, Prestiti, vol. , pt. (Padua, ), ‒. For a discussion of theestimo’s composition and limitations, see Gino Luzzatto, Il debito pubblico della Repubblica di Venezia(Milan, ), ‒, and Mueller, Venetian Money Market, ‒. For the use of the estimo forsocial history, see Stanley Chojnacki, “In Search of the Venetian Patriciate: Families and Fac-tions in the Fourteenth Century,” in Renaissance Venice, ed. J. R. Hale (London, ), ‒. Twothousand individuals (mainly male heads of household) are enumerated in the estimo of a totalpopulation estimated at between , and , inhabitants of the six sestiers making upthe islands of the Rialto: Julius Beloch, “Bevölkerungsgeschichte der Republik Venedig,” Jahr-bücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik, d ser., (): ‒.

matched up with a name on the estimo, the only master for gold from this periodwhose name is on the list is Cristoforo Zanchani, who also served as master forsilver; he was in the eighth decile. Another master for gold of the period, An-tonio Tiepolo, appears to have been jointly assessed with his brother; togethertheir worth places them in the fifth decile. Other names, such as Giovanni Gius-tiniani, appear in several places in the estimo and cannot be matched up conclu-sively with a single individual. On the whole, however, a sufficient number of thenames of masters for gold of the period are specific enough to lead one to inferthat as a class the masters for gold had less personal assets than the masters forsilver.

The home parishes of fifteen of the mintmasters are known (map ). Thegreatest concentration, six individuals, lived in the sestier of San Marco, con-centrated mainly in the parish of Sant’ Angelo and neighboring islands. Threelived in Cannaregio, three in San Polo, and three in Dorsoduro. None lived inSanta Croce, the home of two weighers and one silver official and, more signi-ficant, none lived in Castello, where six of the advisors who made mint policylived.

Many mintmasters of the medieval period are known only from a singlemention of their name in the fragmentary documents that record elections,reviews, pleas, and trials of Venetian officials. In some cases, the known chronol-ogy of officeholders makes it evident that they served single year-long terms, butin other cases, they may have had long, undocumented careers. There is no doubtthat many masters are entirely undocumented, especially in the decades when rel-evant records are particularly thin.

Four masters are known to have had backgrounds involving moneychang-ing and banking: Giovanni Stornado, Donato Bobizo, Giovanni Papaziza, andPietro Contarini. All three served at the mint before the mid-fourteenth century,after which time it appears that changers and bankers were generally not elected.²⁰⁰Rather, the main connection of bankers to the mint seems to have been as mem-bers of the panels of advisors which formulated mint policy (see above, Chap.). Nor do other professions related to bullion, such as goldsmith, show up in

The Mintmasters

²⁰⁰It is also possible that the mintmasters Donato Quintavalle and Cristoforo Zanchani werethe same individuals as the bankers of the same names.

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The Mintmasters

the background of known masters. A few of them served as gold estimators andsilver officials at the Rialto, and the movement of masters back and forth betweenthe silver and gold mints seems to have been relatively common.

One master whose career can be followed for a period is Costantino Nani.Born in , he was first elected as master for gold in the summer of , fillinga vacancy created by the Black Death. He served for six years until he was pros-ecuted for embezzlement. His pledges paid back the £, he had stolen, andhe was banned from the mint for life and from all other offices for one year.Within a couple of years he held office as an ambassador and was elected to sev-eral other posts within Venice and abroad; in he was elected to the Councilof Forty. The laws seem to have been applied literally in his case; though he neverwas elected to the mint again, his conviction does not seem to have affected hisgeneral position within the state.

Secondo Aventurado was elected master of the gold mint a week after Nani,also probably filling a vacancy occasioned by the plague. He served honorablyat both the gold and the silver mint for the next two decades, often being grantedpermission to travel to Istria when out of his quindena in order to see to com-plications arising from the holdings of his wife’s family there. His wife’s dowry(repromissa) had been , ducats, as had that of her sister (£,), above theaverage dowry of about ducats for patricians of the period.²⁰¹ After twentyyears at the mint, Aventurado moved on to be the captain of a Venetian fortress.

For other noblemen, service as mintmaster appears to have been a shortperiod in a career that included other administrative offices of the Venetian state.This pattern appears to be especially true for scions of prestigious old familiesin the second half of the fourteenth century. Nicolò Corner was elected masterfor silver just two months after being elected podesta of Loreto, a position hecould not have held concurrently. Within half a year he was elected superinten-dent of butcheries. Daniele Dandolo was elected Advocate for All Courts a yearafter serving a term as mintmaster; a year later he became Judge of Foreigners.Pietro Papaziza, of the “new” family that served so conspicuously at the mintand in related offices, served at least three years as mintmaster for gold in thelate fourteenth century. After that he went on to be vice-lord of the Germanfondaco and counselor of Coron and Modon in Greece. He was elected to theForty at least four times in this period.

A total of six mintmasters are known to have been elected to the Forty in

²⁰¹See Stanley Chojnacki, “Dowries and Kinsmen in Early Renaissance Venice,” Journal of Interdis-ciplinary History (): ‒. She also had ducats’ worth of orchards (caredis).

this period, but few appear to have held higher legislative or executive office.Giovanni Bollani appears to have served as one of the three heads of the Fortytwelve years before being mintmaster for gold, but this may be a homonymousmember of the same family. This Bollani was also one of the final forty-oneelectors of the doge Lorenzo Celsi in . No other mintmasters are known tohave become head of the Forty, doge’s counselor, Procurator of San Marco, ordoge. The scarce participation of mintmasters in the highest offices of the state,as well as their generally modest wealth, is in contrast to what was found forthose advisors who made mint policy, who represented the economic and polit-ical elite (see above, Chap. ).

Within the Mint

The �int Building and Staff

In the mint was closed because of a fire. The Forty instructed the mas-ters to continue payment of salaries to the weighers, the scribe, the smiths, theengraver, and their apprentices while the mint was being rebuilt.¹These individ-uals constituted the permanent staff of the mint, whose employment was notdirectly related to the amount of bullion being processed or coins being struck.²

In September , the Venetian state sold a parcel of land in the parish ofSan Bartolomeo, where “from antiquity until now coinage used to be minted.”³

There is no record of where the mint moved after this sale, but it is probablethat at this time it took the position on the Molo, the shore of the lagoon acrossthe Piazzetta from the doge’s palace, where it remained until the end of the re-public.⁴ The first explicit documentation of the mint at this location is in a res-olution of the Great Council of which required merchants to sell silver

¹CMM, c. .²See, in general, Giorgetta Bonfiglio Dosio, “Lavoro e lavoratori nella zecca veneziana attraversoil ‘Capitolar dalle Broche’ (XIV–XVI sec.),” in Viridarium Floridum: Studi di storia veneta offerti dagliallievi a Paolo Sambin, Medioevo e umanesimo, (Padua, ), ‒. The maximum perma-nent mint staff in Genoa in this period comprised two masters plus a scribe, a weigher, a dieengraver, an assayer, and a warden: Felloni, “Ricavi e costi” (Naples, ), :‒.³Sept. : PMV, , #. See above, Chap. .⁴A map of the San Marco region of shows the piazza surrounded by walls and ramparts;no mint is represented, but the only buildings specifically indicated are churches (the doge’spalace is also lacking): Franzoi, “Trasformazioni edilizie,” , and Juergen Schulz, “The PrintedPlans and Panoramic Views of Venice (‒),” Saggi e memorie di storia dell’arte (): and fig. . The siting of the medieval mint at the center of political power was also true in Flo-rence, where the mint was located until about at the site that was to become the Loggia de’

either at the Rialto market or in San Marco at the moneychangers’ booths andat the mint.⁵

Directly on the Piazzetta was the hostelry for lesser visitors to Venice, whichstretched to the campanile; around the corner of the campanile was the hospi-tal for the sick, which would have formed the northern limit to the mint.⁶ Alongthe west side of the mint a river, the Rio della Procuratoria, ran from the piazzaitself into the lagoon.⁷ A butcher shop alongside the south wall of the mint, onthe Molo facing the lagoon, was leased out by the Church of San Marco in .⁸By , this had developed into a series of stalls selling sausage and cheese.⁹When Sansovino drew up his plans to enlarge the zecca in , he incorporatedthese shops into the ground floor of the mint and built out the second storyover them.¹⁰ On the lagoon side of the Molo there was originally a fish market;this stretch was paved when the stone Ponte della Pescheria was erected acrossthe river in .¹¹

There are two bird’s-eye views of Venice of the late fifteenth century whichoffer depictions of the mint at that time: the engraving of E. Reuwich publishedby Breydenbach in (fig. ) and the famous woodcut by Jacopo de’ Barbaridated (fig. ).¹² These depictions are probably accurate for the later Mid-dle Ages, as well, as there is no evidence that the mint underwent major changesin the fifteenth century. Both illustrations show a major mint building of threestories stretching east from the river.¹³ Shops are depicted along the south wallof this building, and neither rendition indicates any entrance door to the build-ing on this south side. To the east of this main building on both drawings is a

Within the Mint

Signori: Howard Saalman, “Michelozzo Studies: The Florentine Mint,” in Festschrift Ulrich Middel-dorf, ed. A. Kosegarten and P. Tigler (Berlin, ), .⁵ Oct. , DMC, :‒; PMV, ‒, #; the version in the CMM leaves out the “et”between “ad incambium” and “ad monetam”: Papadopoli, :‒, c. .⁶Da Canal, Estoires, , CXXXI [].⁷ Mar. : ASV, MC Spiritus, f. .⁸ASV, PSM, Supra, Chiesa, B. , Processo , f. v.⁹Ibid., ff. , , .¹⁰Deborah Howard, Jacopo Sansovino: Architecture and Patronage in Renaissance Venice, d ed. (NewHaven, ), ‒.¹¹Crouzet-Pavan, “Sopra le acque salse,” :.¹²Schulz, “Printed Plans,” , #‒, for Reuwich and ‒, #‒, for de’ Barbari; GiocondoCassini, Piante e vedute prospettiche di Venezia (‒) (Venice, ), , #, for Reuwich, and‒, #, for de’ Barbari. Other early depictions appear to derive from these two.¹³There are what appear to be four levels of windows in the drawings, but the lowest ones areprobably those of the protruding shops and those just above them the windows of the groundfloor of the mint.

smaller building of a single story with a door to the Molo and one onto thePiazzetta. The hospice for visitors appears to the north of this building.

The plan of Sansovino of for the new zecca and the Marciana libraryappears to have followed the plan of the old mint building.¹⁴ It provided nodirect entrance to the major mint building from the Molo; rather, one enteredthe mint from the Piazzetta through the buildings of the library and down a

The Mint Building and Staff

¹⁴Howard, Jacopo Sansovino, , fig. , and , fig. .

Fig. . The medieval Zecca complex consists of two parts: a one-storied building withentrances toward the doge’s palace and the waterfront, and a three-story building with

no visible entrances.Source: Illustration by Erhard Reuwich for Bernhard von Breydenbach, Peregrinatio in Terram Sanctam

(Mainz, )


corridor that led into the space between the front offices of the mint and thecourtyard that housed the workshops. The perspective of the de’ Barbari viewconfirms a rear courtyard for the older mint structure. It is likely, then, that bythe fifteenth century the mint consisted of two buildings: the large three-storybuilding on the Molo and the small building opening out onto the Piazzettawhich served as the only entrance to the larger edifice. Such a limited and con-trolled access to the mint would have certainly been useful for deterring theftsby outsiders and providing a vestibule in which employees and other visitorscould be searched. The small entrance building may also have been the site ofthe office of the masters for silver, where merchants were dealt with. A resolu-tion of directed that each of the three masters have a key to this room tohelp expedite the transactions of merchants who otherwise would find a lockeddoor if the master of the quindena happened to be away.¹⁵

Within the Mint

¹⁵ Aug. : DQ , :, #.

Fig. . The Zecca. Here cheese and sausage shops are seen on the waterfront side ofthe building. The open courtyard of the structure is visible in this birds’-eye view.



The resolution that followed the fire at the mint authorized the mas-ters to have repaired the doors and balconies as well as the domus of the work-men which had been burned, probably the workplace rather than the residenceof the men. The mention of balconies indicates that by this time the main mintbuilding was multistoried. By this period the production of grossi would haveincluded as many as fourteen workshops, and the minting of gold ducats wasunder way, so the small, one-story building on the Piazzetta could hardly haveconstituted the entire mint.¹⁶ The small building may have been an earlier mint,to which had been added a two-story building to the west to accommodate in-creases in minting in the thirteenth century. From its inception in , the goldmint had been administratively separate, and there is no indication that the firedamage had included its quarters, so it may well have been physically separate,as well, though in all likelihood adjacent to the silver mint.

In , the Great Council decreed that the existing mint facilities were toosmall and authorized the construction and fortification of new mint buildingson the adjacent land currently used by the Procurators of San Marco to storewood; either part or all of this arsenatus of the Procurators could be taken overfor the mint as determined by the doge and his counselors.¹⁷ The mintmasterswere to pay for the renovations out of the income from the minting, deductingthe expenses from the profit they were required to turn over to the state; thereis no specification of which masters, so both the silver mint and the gold mintmust have been involved in the expansion. Apparently only part of the storageyard of the Procurators was removed then, for in the Great Council autho-rized the total clearing of this site up to the wall of the mint; the Procuratorswere compensated with a tract across the new bridge in the Terra Nuova (nowthe Giardinetti Reali).¹⁸ By this date, then, the main mint building would havestretched from the small entrance building on the Piazzetta to the Rio dellaProcuratoria. In a provision of the same period, the master and weigher for goldwere instructed to spend the night upstairs in the attic (“in lo soler de sovra”)when gold was being refined there overnight, confirming the existence of a sec-ond story this early.¹⁹

In , to deal with the flood of gold arriving by ship, the Forty decreedthat the mint for gold be doubled by the addition of a new team of masters


¹⁶CMM, c. .¹⁷ Jan. []: ASV, MC Fronsesis, f. v; Feb. []: ibid., f. v; PMV, , #.¹⁸Bartolomeo Cecchetti, La vita dei veneziani nel , vols. (‒; reprint, Venice, ), :nn. and .¹⁹CMO, c. .

and other staff working separately from the existing one.²⁰ Over the workshopsof the workers an equally large additional story was to be raised, with sufficientwindows and vents (nape).²¹ Four hearths for refining gold were to be addedto the existing four, as well as two new fusine for casting refined gold. A new vaultwith benches was also authorized for the new team of officials. The mint wouldnow have had at least three stories. In , the doubling of the gold mintwas eliminated.²² After this time the gold mint is referred to as being “upstairs”and the silver mint “downstairs” in numerous documents.²³ No more significantchanges are known for the mint buildings before the late-fifteenth-centuryviews.²⁴

To judge from the fifteenth-century views and the apparently conservativedesigns of Sansovino, the medieval mint probably contained three units. All accessto the mint was through the small building with its entrance on the Piazzetta;this may also have contained the office where the masters met with merchantsand others of the general public. The main, large mint building was divided intwo wings, with the storage vaults and the refining hearths in the south wing(toward the lagoon) and the workshops of the workers and minters in the rear,probably around a courtyard. This disposition was duplicated on two floors, withthe facilities for silver on the ground level and those for gold above. In the mid-fourteenth century an additional upper story was constructed for the doubledgold mint; its use afterwards is unknown.

Mint Weigher

The main responsibility of the weigher (L: ponderator; V: pexador) was to per-form an examination or assay (L: sazium (from exagium); V: sagio) of bullion andcoins at various stages of production. In addition to verifying that the metal and

Within the Mint

²⁰ June : DQ , :, #.²¹The word nape appears to derive from the Venetian word for nose: Boerio, Dizionario, s.v.“napa.”²² Mar. : CMO, c. .²³ Apr. : ASV, MC Novella, f. v; June : Cap. Broche, ‒; July : ASV, RasonNuove, R. , f. ; Nov. : Cap. Broche, ; Feb. []: ASV, Rason Nuove, R. , f. v.²⁴In the mint received a grant of fired limestone, but this was probably only for repairs:Aug. : Cecchetti, Vita, : n. ; the quantity of “mastellis” is far less than that granted toreconstruct a wall of the monastery of San Domenico: ibid., n. .

blanks were of the proper fineness and weight, he recorded the quantities thatentered and left the mint, so his records were a vital element of the accountskept and rendered by the masters and the scribe (fig. ).

The office of mint weigher appears to have been created in , when theheads of the Forty selected three men to revise the capitularies of the mintmas-ters and gold estimators and create a capitulary for mint weighers.²⁵The office ismentioned in no surviving documents or rubrics from before that date. A provi-sion of called for the gold estimators to come to the mint to perform sev-eral of the functions taken by the weighers in the capitulary of mintmas-ters.²⁶ The first archival mention of mint weighers is in , when their salarywas lowered.²⁷

Whenever the silver master of the quindena bought bullion, it had to beweighed by the weigher of the quindena, whose finding had to be accepted bythe master.²⁸ When this master and his associates gave bullion to the refiners tohave it melted, one of the weighers had to be present and record the weight ofthe bullion before and after refining and confirm that the resultant ingots werefine enough for coining grossi.²⁹ For coins of base alloy, the weigher was respon-sible for testing the ingots of alloyed metal; he was to take a sample of ounceper ingot for this assay.³⁰ In the gold mint, bullion was acquired as certifiedingots, either coming as capital from the state or tested by the gold estimatorswhen coming from foreigners.³¹ The weigher weighed the ingots when they ar-rived, and he and the two masters recorded their weight before and after theywere melted, refined, and cast.³² All three had to check the cast gold with atouchstone to determine if it was fine enough to coin; the positive vote of anytwo of the three was sufficient.

The weighers had to witness and record the bullion that the master gave tothe workers to form into blanks, the blanks that the workers gave to the emendersto adjust the weight of, and the adjusted flans that the emenders gave to the


²⁵CMM, c. . No capitularies of mint weighers of silver are known to have survived. Thecapitulary of the mintmasters for gold of includes the weigher in the oath section of thepreamble, so there was probably no separate capitulary for that office.²⁶Compare Dec. : DMC, :‒, with CMM, c. .²⁷ May : DMC, :.²⁸CMM, c. .²⁹CMM, cc. and .³⁰CMM, c. .³¹CMO, cc. and .³²CMO, cc. .

apprentices to blanch.³³ In the silver mint, the master and weigher then took asample of of the blanched flans and weighed them as a group with balancepans to make sure that as a group they had the right weight.³⁴They then weighedthese same coins individually with a trabuco, a balance that would quickly deter-mine whether each specimen was within the allowed range of weights, the “rem-edy.”Those that were too heavy were returned to the emenders to be cut down,but those that were too light had to be remelted. In case of a dispute, the twoweighers would judge the issue with the master of the quindena, and two voteswould carry, giving the weighers the final say at this stage. In the gold mint, theweigher had to check a sample of one-quarter of the blanks individually withthe trabuco.³⁵ Blanks for ducats which were too light were to be cut in half for

Within the Mint

³³CMO, c. .³⁴CMM, cc. ‒.³⁵CMO, c. .

Fig. . Various sixteenth-century coin balance scales.Source: Georgius Agricola, De Re Metallica (Basel, ), Book


remelting. If more than one blank in fifteen (four per mark) were found to beunderweight, the weigher would have to weigh all of them with the more accu-rate balance weights. After this he would mix the blanks together and weigh themas a group; if they were within the remedy, they could be minted; otherwise theywould have to be readjusted and rechecked.

The weighers kept ledgers that recorded all the determinations they made,but they do not appear to have sent accounts of their own directly to the Ac-counts Office or to the doge. Rather, they provided the masters with the datathat were needed for the masters to file their semiannual accounts.³⁶ If theweighers were dilatory with the supply of these data, the fine levied upon themasters for late accounts would be passed along to them. They were also to begiven a copy of the accounts of each master at the end of the quindena as wellas those rendered to the state twice a year and would no doubt have had to tes-tify in cases of discrepancy.³⁷

For the most part the responsibilities of the weighers remained unchangedfrom the time of the creation of the office through the fourteenth century. In, they were specifically charged with monitoring the mint for any problemsand reporting them to the masters.³⁸ If the masters did not rectify the situation,the weighers were to report the problem to the state advocates, who would finethe masters. They were also to report if the masters did not have their capitu-lary read aloud to them every two months. In this capacity, the weighers mayhave been filling the role of mint inquisitor, a figure prescribed in the capit-ulary of the silver masters and that of of the gold masters but never there-after documented.³⁹

In , the silver worked by artisan silversmiths in Venice was brought underthe jurisdiction of the gold estimators of the Rialto, who were to inspect it forproper fineness, that is, up to one-half ounce per mark less fine than grosso-grade silver.⁴⁰ If there was a dispute between the officials and the silversmith asto the quality of silver, the bullion in question was to be brought to the mintweighers, who were to perform an assay of it. The weighers do not appear tohave been given a fee for this service, nor did they share in fines imposed for infe-rior silver, which were to be divided between the gold estimators and the statetreasury.


³⁶CMM, c. ; CMO, c. .³⁷CMO, c. .³⁸ Feb. []: CMA, f. ‒v.³⁹CMM, c. ; CMO, c. .⁴⁰ Oct. : CMA, ff. v–v.

The procedures of the mint weigher are illustrated in the account of a badassay of silver recorded in the Capitolare dalle Broche.⁴¹ The weigher GiovanniSagredo assayed a batch of silver which the master had bought and given to thesmelter to have cast in ingots. He took mark of the marks of ingots andtook it to the refiner for cupellation. The assay failed, that is, there was less sil-ver left after the impurities had fluxed off than there should have been. Sagredotook another mark as a sample for an assay, which also failed, as did a third.Sagredo then summoned the master and his colleague weigher to examine thesituation. The remaining silver was then recast and tested by three separate refin-ers; the amount of runoff still indicated that the bullion was substandard. Afteran inquiry, the fault was found to have rested with the caster, who had intro-duced base scraps into the alloy. The weighers stated that in their capitulary therewas no provision for such an occurrence, but they thought that the guilty castershould pay for the lacking silver; the master present did not agree, and this finewas not imposed. The two weighers did agree with the master to ban the guiltyparties from the mint, and this was carried out despite the dissent of the sec-ond master, who had been absent up to that point.

The capitulary of mintmasters for silver of assumes two weighers inthat mint, and the capitulary of the gold mint assumes a single weigherthere.⁴² By about , however, there were a total of four weighers at the twomints, and the total was cut to three, to be apportioned as the masters deter-mined.⁴³There were certainly three weighers for silver on occasions between and , after which time there appear to have been only two until the end ofthe century (see below, App. A, table A.). In , one of the weighers, whohad been involved in the production of torneselli, was eliminated and his dutiesgiven to one of the scribes.⁴⁴ The number of weighers in the gold mint was twoby and was raised to three in as the supply of gold arriving by seaincreased.⁴⁵ The number was raised to four the next year, when the gold mintwas doubled.⁴⁶ As the flood of gold declined and the production of ducats wasscaled back, the number of weighers for gold was reduced to two in and toone in .⁴⁷

Within the Mint

⁴¹ July : Cap. Broche, ‒.⁴²CMM, c. ; CMO, c. .⁴³CMM, c. .⁴⁴ Sept. : Cap. Broche, ‒.⁴⁵ Dec. : ASV, GR, R. , f. . DQ , :, #.⁴⁶ June : DQ , :, #.⁴⁷: CMO, c. ; Mar. : CMO, c. .

The capitulary of mintmasters for gold implies that the weigher inthat mint served for a two-year term like the masters.⁴⁸ The earliest record ofthe election of mint weighers is part of the legislation of the Forty which ex-panded the staff for minting gold in ; the new master and two new weigherswere elected at that point in that council.⁴⁹ A few days later another weigher waselected in the Forty, probably also for gold.⁵⁰ In , when the procedures forelecting the mintmasters for silver were revised, the election of the mint weighersof that mint was set up along the same principles.⁵¹ Henceforth they were to beelected by scrutiny in the Forty for two years and be subject to a review in thatcouncil before possible reelection. Regulations that prohibited a weigher frombeing promoted to master were revoked. Two weeks later, the procedures for elec-tion of the officials of the gold mint were revised.⁵² Masters and weighers alikefor gold were to be elected in the Forty for only a year at a time and reviewedbefore reelection, and weighers for gold were eligible to be elected masters. In, when the number of weighers for gold was cut from two to one, the twomen who finished terms in the office were given a review in the Forty, and theone with the greater number of votes was retained.⁵³

By there were two weighers in the gold mint and only one for silver.⁵⁴In January , there was only one weigher serving at the gold mint, and, as partof a reform in the production of ducats, the Senate ordered that a new one bechosen by a special college of the doge, his counselors, the heads of the Forty,and the state advisors (savi del comun).⁵⁵ In April of that year the number ofweighers for silver was raised to two again in the hope of increasing the qualityof the coinage.⁵⁶ The reforms of the silver mint of the next year failed to spec-ify a role for the mint weigher, having given most of his responsibility to thescribe, but the office was confirmed by a special vote of the Senate two weekslater.⁵⁷ At this time, however, the positions of weigher and scribe at the goldmint seem to have been combined, as evidenced by the election of a single indi-


⁴⁸CMO, preamble.⁴⁹ June : DQ , :. #.⁵⁰ June : DQ , :, #.⁵¹ Oct. : DQ , :‒, #.⁵² Oct. : DQ , :, #.⁵³ Nov. : DQ , :, #.⁵⁴ Jan. []: ASV, SM, R. , f. .⁵⁵ Jan. []: ibid., R. , ff. v–r.⁵⁶ Apr. : Cap. Broche, n. .⁵⁷ Nov. : ibid., .

vidual to this office: Pietro Zanchani, who had served both as weigher at the goldmint and as scribe at the silver mint.⁵⁸

The earliest information on the salaries of the mint weighers for silver comesonly two years after the creation of the office: in their annual pay was low-ered from £ per year to £.⁵⁹ It was raised back up to £ seven years later,apparently because of the difficulty in finding worthy candidates for the lowersalary.⁶⁰ In the salary of the three weighers of the silver mint was raised to£ a year.⁶¹ At around this time they were also given a personal raise of £ ayear; when a newly appointed weigher petitioned for this salary in , he wastold that the raise was only for the men in office twelve years earlier and that thestatutory salary for the office had remained at £ a year.⁶²The personal natureof the raise of the salaries of the weighers at the silver mint persisted and fluc-tuated between £ and £ for the next half century. The salary of theweighers in the gold mint fluctuated between £ in and £ in butsettled down to £ for most of the next half century (see graph .).

In , as part of the cost cutting connected with the wars of the Terra-ferma, the responsibilities of the weigher of torneselli were given to one of thescribes.⁶³This scribe was to continue getting his salary of £ a year, rather thanthe £ that had been given to the weigher. The scribe was, however, entitled toget the “utilities” that the weigher collected “from outside,” which amounted toan additional £. a year. This extra income no doubt included the fees thatthe weigher charged for such services as assays for silversmiths and others out-side the mint. The “utilities” from outside the mint were enhanced in the latefourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, when the minting of silver coins beganto carry specific fees for the weigher as well as the master. The reform of thegrosso and soldino of called for pennies (£.) per mark to be dividedbetween the masters and weighers.⁶⁴ The new coinages for Verona and Vicenzaof carried a fee of pennies per mark to the weighers; that for Zara in

had a -penny-per-mark fee split between masters and weighers.⁶⁵ The minting

Within the Mint

⁵⁸ Nov. : ASV, CN, R. , f. v, #.⁵⁹ May : DMC, :.⁶⁰ Jan. []: DMC, :, #.⁶¹ Apr. : ASV, GR, R. , f. v.⁶² Aug. : ibid., R. , f. .⁶³ Sept. : Cap. Broche, ‒.⁶⁴ Aug. : ibid., ‒.⁶⁵ Sept. : ibid., ‒, corrected (“marcha” for “onza” in the section on piccoli) by ASV,Senato, Secreta, R. , f. v. Aug. : Cap. Broche, .

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of the new grosso and soldino issues of carried a fee of pennies per markfor the weighers.⁶⁶

There was no requirement that mint weighers be a member of the nobility.A provision of , after the Serrata, specified that the weighers of the goldmint could participate in the Great Council on holidays unless they were ineli-gible, that is, non-noble.⁶⁷ They, like the masters, were given the right to carryarms in .⁶⁸ Of the thirty-seven mint weighers known before the year ,only two, Francesco Spirito and Antonio da Pozzo, have family names that didnot belong to members of the nobility.⁶⁹ Pietro Zanchani appears to have beenof one of the cittadino families of that name, which also appears among nobles.Of the thirty-four noble members, three appear to have been from “long” fam-ilies and two from “short” families; none of these men are known to have servedas weigher for more than a year or two.

When the family backgrounds of the mint weighers are examined accord-ing to the status indices of Rösch for the beginning of the fourteenth century,the weighers appear to be from slightly less prestigious families than the mas-ters on the whole. The aggregate indices for all masters in the period to

is ., while that for the weighers is ., indicating a slightly lower social status.The index figure for the weighers at the gold mint is higher than that for thesilver, indicating lower social status, but the numbers are not enough for thisdifference to be taken as significant. As with the masters, the index for weighersdrops for the periods ‒ (to .) and ‒ (to .), indicating alarger presence of members of more prestigious families.

There are seven weighers for silver and only one for gold known within fif-teen years before or after the estimo of ; of these only two appear on therolls; most of the rest were probably below the level of wealth of the two thou-sand Venetians assessed at that time. One assessed was Romboldo Morosini, amember of one of Venice’s largest and most powerful families; he held the officein , apparently while pursuing a career of progress through state offices likethe members of high prestige families found among the masters in the sameperiod. Morosini’s assessment was £,, which places him in the fourth decileamong nobles assessed in the estimo. The other weigher who appears on theestimo is Donato Quintavalle, who was made mint weigher for silver in asa result of a plea of poverty; he may be the same individual as the moneychanger

Within the Mint

⁶⁶ Nov. : Cap. Broche, .⁶⁷ Sept. : ASV, MC Magnus, f. .⁶⁸ Mar. : ASV, MC Capricornus, f. v.⁶⁹See below, App. A, tables A. and A., for the names of all these men.

of that name who had gone bankrupt in . In he became mintmaster forgold, an office he maintained for thirty-two more years. In the estimo of hewas assessed at £, which put him in the lowest decile among nobles.

For some men, the position of mint weigher seems to have been a lifelongoccupation. Seven individuals are known to have held the office for periods offifteen years or more, and the documentation is so fragmentary that there maywell have been others with similarly long tenure. Five of the weighers are knownto have served as silver officials, usually shortly before their election to this office.Only two are known to have gone on the be mintmaster: Donato Quintavalleand Secondo Aventurado, both of whom went on to have long careers in thehigher office. The other offices held by mint weighers in their careers are mainlylow-level administrative posts. Those weighers whose home parish is knownappear to have lived away from the centers of power; the only two who lived onthe San Marco side of the Grand Canal served in the office on the way to posi-tions as master and silver official, respectively, rather than staying in it as a life-time post.

The most common background for mint weighers appears to have been asa moneychanger; five of them are documented in this trade.⁷⁰ The connectionbetween the two trades, and the concerns of the state in this regard, are illus-trated by the case of Francesco Vielmo. His election as weigher in the gold mintin required a special exemption from the regulation that the mint officialsnot be related to employees, as his brother-in-law was employed there as anemender.⁷¹Three years later Vielmo was fined for buying silver from a merchantin the Piazza San Marco without a valid permit from the silver officials.⁷² Hetestified that since he had been elected as mint weigher he could not operate amoney-changing table but that he had bought a share in Francesco Spirito’sbank and was buying the silver on Spirito’s behalf. Two years later Spirito be-came mint weigher, an office he kept for the next twenty-four years. In this sameperiod, Vielmo served as an advisor to the Forty on silver policy.

The case of Marino Magno illustrates that the position of mint weigher wassometimes considered a lifelong perk rather than a competitive elective office.⁷³


⁷⁰Marco Gritti, Francesco Spirito, Marco Stornado, and Francesco Vielmo, and possiblyDonato Quintavalle.⁷¹ June : ASV, GR, R. , f. : the brother-in-law, Francesco Diedo, is specifially referredto as “nobilis vir”; he had been working for twelve years in the low-status position of emender.⁷² Apr. : ASV, GR, R. , f. .⁷³See will and account book in ASV, PSM de Ultra, B. ; Dec. : ASV, GR, R. , f. ; Mar. , ASV, GR, R. , f. v.

Magno was a member of a small family that had been sporadically in the GreatCouncil before its closing and so was defined as noble; only one member was in-cluded in the estimo of . He had been a pledge for the election of the money-changer Donato “Gallina” Bobizo to the office of mintmaster in the s. In Bobizo and his colleague as master went bankrupt, a condition they blamedon their office at the mint, and fled Venice. Magno lost his pledge, and the statetook partial title to his house and other assets. These pledges were finally re-deemed after his death for a total of about £. By Magno was mint weigherfor gold, a position he may have held long before then. He was too old and weakto actually perform the job, so his son Giovanni exercised the office in his nameand with the knowledge and consent of the government until . GiovanniMagno was elected mintmaster for gold that year, and his father, Marino, diedthe following year.

For a period in and the elections of the mint weigher for gold weredelegated to the Signoria.⁷⁴These deliberations are recorded in more detail thanearlier elections and offer interesting information on the office. The situation iscomplicated by the fact that in this period the responsibilities of the weigherwere being conflated with those of the scribe, an office generally taken by menof non-noble status. In February , the council chose between Pietro Zan-chani, a cittadino who had been weigher fifteen years previously and may haveheld that office in the interim, and Antonio da Pozzo, who was then massarius, asecondary office, in the German fondaco.⁷⁵ The council selected da Pozzo, whoserved less than seven months. A new election was announced in October, andZanchani signed up again, along with six other men, some of noble and othersof non-noble status.⁷⁶The council seems to have made no selection at this time.A year later, the position of mint scribe for silver was announced, and once againZanchani applied, along with Jacopo Guidi, who had been a mint scribe for thirty-four years, two other mint employees (one with fifty-three years of service!), thescribe of the Armaments Office, and a few others.⁷⁷ This time Zanchani waschosen. Two weeks later Guidi died, and an election was held for the joint officeof weigher and scribe at the gold mint.⁷⁸ Eight men applied, among them twomoneychangers, and the job was given to Pietro Zanchani, who had just beenelected to the silver mint. In this transitional period, at least, the position of

Within the Mint

⁷⁴ Jan. : ASV, SM, R. , f. v.⁷⁵ Feb. []: ASV, CN, R. , f. v, #.⁷⁶ Oct. : ibid., f. , #.⁷⁷ Nov. : ibid., ff. v–, # and #.⁷⁸ Nov. : ibid., f. v., #.

mint weigher was one to which men from a wide variety of backgrounds aspiredbut which was awarded to those with the most intimate knowledge of the mint.

In general, the mint weighers appear to have been drawn from the lowestranks of the nobility. In the early fourteenth century they were often from smallfamilies of low prestige. In the later part of the fourteenth century and the earlyfifteenth, they included a few individuals from more important families, but ap-parently the poorest members of these. In general, they appear to have lookedupon the position of mint weigher as a lifelong source of steady income, whichsome supplemented with activity in money changing. There seems to have beenlittle movement from this office to that of master or to higher posts within theVenetian state.

The Mint Scribe

The job of the scribe (L: scriba, notarius; V: scrivano) seems to have been in-tended more as a control on the mintmasters than as a service to them. The

capitulary of the masters called for the scribe to keep a ledger parallel to that ofthe masters, recording all the transactions of each quindena.⁷⁹ In he wasrequired to keep two sets of records, one to be sent to the doge’s palace and theother to the state advocates, so that they would know if the masters were delin-quent in their accounts.⁸⁰ He kept a record of all silver minted into ingots aswell as that made into coin.⁸¹ He also kept track of the silver processed by therefiners and fines levied against them for illegal speculation in bullion. The scriberecorded all the assets turned over at the end of each quindena and read aloudthe capitulary to the masters every two months.⁸² He was given the authority tofine the masters and weighers if they used the apprentices for personal business.⁸³In the mint reform legislation of , the scribe of the gold mint was requiredto appear before the state provisioners every two months and report under oathwhether the masters were acting properly.⁸⁴

The scribe could not be removed or replaced by the master without theagreement of the Signoria.⁸⁵ Like all scribes working for Venetian officials and


⁷⁹CMM, cc. , a, .⁸⁰ Oct. : DQ , :, #.⁸¹ Feb. []: DQ , :, #.⁸² Oct. : ASV, MC Comune II, ff. v–r. Feb. []: CMA, f. ‒v.⁸³ Oct. : DQ , :, #.⁸⁴ July : ASV, Rason Nuove, R. , f. v, and CMO, c. .⁸⁵CMM, c. .

judges, the mint scribe was expected to undergo an annual review by the Coun-cil of Forty.⁸⁶ The capitulary of mintmasters stated that the scribe had to be alayman, but in a “brother Francesco, who had been at the mint office,” wasreinstated in office after having been removed for being abroad too long; he couldhardly have held any office at the mint other than scribe.⁸⁷ All known later scribes,however, do appear to have been laymen. In , the mint scribe was given per-mission to bear arms because of the late hours he often had to work at the mint.⁸⁸Later in the century, this permission was extended to the two additional scribesrecently added by the mint.⁸⁹ In , one of the mint scribes was specificallyassigned to the workshop for torneselli.⁹⁰

The earliest record of the salary of the mint scribe comes from , whenhe was given a raise from £ to £ a year.⁹¹ This must have been a personalboon, since three decades later, in , the scribe then in office petitioned tohave his salary raised from £ to £.⁹² Again in , the scribe for tornesellihad to get a personal grant to have his salary raised from £ to £.⁹³ At thebeginning of the fifteenth century, a special scribe was assigned to the mint refin-ery, to assure that the procedures there were being maintained rigorously.⁹⁴ In, because of a curtailment of the production of torneselli and an effort tocut state expenditures for the campaigns on the Terraferma, the office of scribeof torneselli was eliminated.⁹⁵ However, since the office of mint weigher hadbeen empty for several months, the scribe of torneselli was given the duties ofthis office, with his regular salary of £ a year but with the “utilities” of theweigher’s office, which were said to be as much as £. a year.⁹⁶ In , thisscribe received an additional £ salary.⁹⁷

In the reform of , the office of scribe at the refinery was defined in sucha way as to include the duties regularly performed by the weigher.⁹⁸ The salary

Within the Mint

⁸⁶ Aug. : ASV, MC Leona, ff. v–, citing an act of Oct. .⁸⁷ Mar. : CMM, c. .⁸⁸ Mar. : ASV, AC Philippicus, f. .⁸⁹ Aug. : ASV, MC Novella, f. . A chapter of the capitulary of masters for gold dated Aug. speaks of two scribes for silver already at that date: CMO, c. .⁹⁰ May : PMV, , #.⁹¹ Apr. : ASV, GR, R. , f. v.⁹²May : ibid., R. , f. .⁹³ Aug. : ibid., R. , f. .⁹⁴ Nov. : Cap. Broche, ‒.⁹⁵ June : ASV, SM, R. , f. .⁹⁶ Sept. : Cap. Broche, ‒.⁹⁷ Mar. : ibid., .⁹⁸ Nov. : ibid., ‒, .

was set at £, the traditional salary of the weigher, and for the first time a feeby mark was included for the scribe as well as other mint employees. The appli-cants for the new, high-paying scribal office included Jacobello Negro, scribeat the silver mint for fifty-three years, and Andrea Jacopo Guidi, scribe at thegold mint for thirty-four years; they lost out to Pietro Zanchani, former mintweigher.⁹⁹ In , as part of another round of cost cutting, this position ofweigher and scribe for the refinery was eliminated.¹⁰⁰

In a plea of , the mintmasters noted that when the scribe was hired hehad been informed that the office was worth as much “from outside as frominside” but that he had been able to get outside income of only £. a year.Such outside income may have included income from acting as a public notary.Simeone Savoreto drew up private wills (including one for the mint weigherGiovanni Bon) while scribe for the silver officials of the Rialto.¹⁰¹ Two scribesat the silver mint received permission to go to sea with galleys, presumably tokeep the accounts of the merchants.¹⁰² Like others at the mint, the scribe hadthe opportunity to profit illegally as well as legally from his station. In , FilipoBon, who had been characterized as having already served as scribe for torne-selli for a long time when he was given a raise in , was prosecuted for hav-ing used funds of merchants in the mint for speculation in the silver marketrealizing a profit of more than £.¹⁰³ He was removed from office and fined£.

Little is known about the individuals who held the office of mint scribe.Some are known only by their first name: Andrea in , Clarello in , Pietrofrom to , and Franceschino, son of Nicola, in .¹⁰⁴ Marco Bellenzero,son of Nicola, became a striker of grossi at the mint in and the next yearappeared as scribe in the butcheries of the Rialto.¹⁰⁵ As mint scribe he was givenpermission in to bear arms and in to travel to Rome “for the safety ofhis soul.”¹⁰⁶ In he was fined £ for public usury in Padua.¹⁰⁷ JacobelloNegro, who had been at the mint for fifty-three years in when he applied


⁹⁹ Nov. : ASV, CN, R. , ff. v–, #.¹⁰⁰ Feb. []: Cap. Broche, ‒.¹⁰¹ Oct. : ASV, NT, B. .¹⁰² Aug. : Cap. Broche, . Aug. : ibid., .¹⁰³ July : ASV, AC Raspe, R. /, fasc. , f. v.¹⁰⁴ Apr. : ASV, GR, R. , f. v. Oct. : ibid., R. , f. . May : ibid., R. , f. . Dec. : ibid., R. , f. .¹⁰⁵ Oct. : ibid., R. , f. v. Apr. : ibid., R. , f. v.¹⁰⁶ Mar. : ASV, AC Philippicus, f. . Feb. []: GR, R. , f. .¹⁰⁷ Sept. : ASV, GR, R. , f. .

to be scribe and weigher at the refinery, continued on until , when he retiredafter a total of sixty-eight years as a mint employee; he died two years later.¹⁰⁸

The Blacksmith

The principal duty of the mint blacksmith (L: faber; V: fabro) was to forgethe dies (L: ferramentum; V: ferro) used to strike coins. No medieval Venetian diesare known to have survived. By analogy with surviving dies of contemporaryEuropean mints, it is likely that Venetian dies were cylinders of forged iron withsteel caps welded onto the ends and then engraved.¹⁰⁹ One die, called the pile(L: pilla), had its bottom pointed to allow fixing in a block of wood or anvil. Theother, the trussel (L: torsellus), would have been left cylindrical or bowed outslightly to catch the blow of the hammer. In general, the iron for dies was sup-plied by the master.¹¹⁰ The blacksmith was responsible for making sixteen newpile dies and twenty-four trussel dies for grossi at the beginning of each mas-ter’s term.¹¹¹ He then had to keep a backlog of twelve pairs of dies ready as back-ups for broken or worn dies.

The salary of the smith, like that of other members of the mint staff, wasassigned on a personal basis and subject to raise through the grazia procedure. Itwas about £ at the beginning of the fourteenth century and rose to £ by, when the masters of the silver mint convinced the Forty to authorize thehiring of a second master smith at a salary of £ while the principal smithearned £.¹¹² This figure was brought down to £ after the War of Chiog-gia, and in the smith Antonio “da le Forfede” was able to get it raised backonly to £ despite sixteen years of service.¹¹³ In addition to this salary forworking on the dies for the silver mint, Antonio got a salary from the gold mas-ters, which was raised in from £. to £. a year.¹¹⁴ In Antonio

Within the Mint

¹⁰⁸ Apr. : Cap. Broche, ; Apr. : ibid., ‒.¹⁰⁹Janet R. S. Lang, “The Scientific Examination,” in Marion M. Archibald et al., “Four EarlyMedieval Coin Dies from the London Waterfront,” Numismatic Chronicle (): ‒.¹¹⁰CMM, c. .¹¹¹CMM, c. .¹¹² Oct. : Cap. Broche, . Although a couple of earlier documents speak about more thanone smith in the mint, they probably refer to the head smith, sometimes called the gastaldo faber,and the servant ( famulus), whom he paid himself: Feb. []: ASV, AC Neptunus, f. v; June : ASV, GR, R. , f. v.; June : GR, R. , f. v. See graph . for the salaries ofthe smith.¹¹³ Dec. : Cap. Broche, ‒ and n. .¹¹⁴ Aug. : ASV, GR, R. , f. .

entered a plea for a raise stating that, of the £ he had earned at the silvermint, he had paid out £ to his assistant rather than the usual £; he had hadto live off the remainder plus the £. he received from the gold mint.¹¹⁵ Hehad managed up until now by working part-time at the shop he and his son ranin the parish of San Luca, but his son had died, and he no longer had that in-come. With the approval of the mintmasters Antonio, who had worked at themint for thirty-four years, was given a raise to £.

Not all mint smiths had such long and positive careers. In , the smithNicola Travagla was convicted of theft and fraud.¹¹⁶ He was sentenced to berowed up and down the Grand Canal with the keys of his office around his neckand to be hanged on the Piazza San Marco opposite the door to the mint withthe keys still hanging; as a warning to others the body was to remain there untilthe next day. For the most part, however, the principal trouble that smiths gotinto seems to concern improper disposal of charcoal.¹¹⁷


¹¹⁵ May : Cap. Broche, ‒.¹¹⁶ Mar. : ASV, AC Raspe, R. /, f. .¹¹⁷ May : NMC, ; June : ASV, GR, R. , f. v.; July : GR, R. , f. .

Coin Design and Die Engraving

Although the standards of Venetian coins were a matter of public debateand have left a reasonably full documentation, there is little record of decisionsas to the appearance of the coins. Three extant authorizations for new coins dealwith the issue of the design. In one case it was noted that the appearance was tobe decided by the doge; in the other two it was left to the doge and the Signo-ria.¹ Since there is no surviving record of such deliberations or decisions, the sig-nificance of the inscriptions and images put on the coins can only be inferredfrom the objects themselves and by comparison with contemporary issues ofother minters. Despite the dearth of extant sources, the determination of thelegend, the iconography, and even the style of the coinage must have been a vitalconcern to the Venetian state, as the image conveyed by the coin had political aswell as economic significance.

For simple reasons of space, the smaller coins in the Venetian system hadthe simplest inscriptions. The earliest coins bore the name of the reigning Ger-man emperor and the name Venice; in the eleventh century the name of SaintMark was added.² The imperial name was replaced by that of the doge in thereign of Vitale Michiel II, in the second half of the twelfth century. After that,the minimum requirement for Venetian coin legends appears to have been thename of the doge in a recognizable, if abbreviated, form, followed by his title as

¹ July : PMV, ‒, #; DQ , :, #; Stahl, Tornesello, , #; Dec. : PMV, ‒,#; May : PMV, ‒, #.²Papadopoli, :‒.

and an identification of Venice, either by its own name or by that of itspatron saint, the evangelist Mark.

The lowest coin in the system, the quartarolo, or quarter denaro, bore thename of the doge and the name of Venice (always in the plural in medieval Latinas Venetiae or Venecie) abbreviated as .... on one face and a simple .

on the other. The half denaro, or bianco, had the doge’s name on one side and.... on the other, while the denaro, or piccolo, the smallest in diam-eter of all Venetian coins, had a much abbreviated version of the doge’s name onone side and only . on the other; the name of the minting authorityhad to be deduced from the identity of the saint.³

The diameter of the larger coins gave more room for legends, but this wasnot always exploited. The grosso as introduced at the beginning of the thir-teenth century had on the obverse only the doge’s name to the left of his repre-sentation, the word down the center, and .. to the right of SaintMark’s image. On the reverse, the depiction of the seated Christ was flanked bythe abbreviation of his name in Greek, . On the version of the grosso ini-tiated in , known as the Type grosso, the reverse legend was changed to. ., “praise and glory to thee.”

The ducat, introduced in , was the first Venetian coin to bear legendsthat were more than simple identification. The obverse legend was identical tothat on the grosso, but on the reverse was .... ..′.This can be expanded to “Sit tibi Christe datus Quem tu regis iste ducatus”[May this duchy which thou rulest be given to thee, O Christ], a rhyming Leo-nine hexameter. The origin of this phrase has not been discovered; it probablyderives from Venetian liturgy, that of either San Marco or ducal celebration.⁴The complexity of this legend contrasts with the simple identifications on thecoins that were the most immediate precursors to the ducat, the Florentineflorin and the Genoese genovino, both initiated in .⁵ It seems to have morein common with the religious mottoes on thirteenth-century coins of Franceand Sicily.⁶

The new denominations introduced in the s, the soldino and the mez-zanino, bore simple identifications of the doge on one side and ..

on the other. Those introduced in midcentury, under the creative doge AndreaDandolo, had innovations. The mezzanino had all the identification on the ob-


³See, e.g, Papadopoli, :‒ and pl. .⁴I thank Prof. Andrew Hughes of the University of Toronto for assistance on this question.⁵Philip Grierson, The Coins of Medieval Europe (London, ), , # and .⁶Ibid., , #, and , #.

verse and bore a resurrection scene on the reverse labeled , “Christis resurrected.”The tornesello identified the doge on the obverse and combinedthe identification of the lion and the city with [] (“stan-dard-bearer of Venice”). The only denominations introduced between the deathof Andrea Dandolo and that of Doge Tommaso Mocenigo in were the spe-cial mezzanino and piccolo minted for the Terraferma in the early fourteenthcentury; both of these took their legends from the earlier Venetian denomina-tions of the same name.

The earliest Venetian denari were Carolingian in format, with only equal-armed Greek crosses and schematized temples as types. In the eleventh centurya small facing bust appeared on the reverse as a representation of Saint Mark,similar to that on contemporary German coins.⁷

The Grosso

The grosso was initiated at the beginning of the thirteenth century with anobverse image that was to remain essentially unchanged for the next century anda quarter. The doge stands to the viewer’s left, facing front with his left handholding a cylindrical object and his right reaching across his body to the stan-dard of a banner that extends to the left, above his head. To the right is SaintMark, also holding the standard with his right hand and a book in his left. Thescene is almost identical to that of the doge on the ducal seal of Orio Malipiero,whose reign preceded that of Enrico Dandolo, in which the grosso was intro-duced.⁸ On the grosso Saint Mark stands, but on the seal he is seated.

The images on the Venetian seal and grosso clearly derived from Byzantineprototypes, but apparently not from a single coin (fig. ). The basic format oftwo standing individuals holding a vertical standard between them went back tocoins of the seventh century, on which the figures were coemperors.⁹ In twelfth-century coins of Byzantium, the figure paired with the emperor, and sometimescrowning him, was variously Christ, Mary, and Saints Michael and Theodore.¹⁰Coins of Manuel I (‒) appear to be the most immediate prototype of the

Within the Mint

⁷Papadopoli, : and pl. ; cf. Grierson, Coins of Medieval Europe, ‒, #‒.⁸Rosada, “‘Sigillum Sancti Marci,’” ‒.⁹Philip Grierson, Byzantine Coins (London, ), pl. , n. .¹⁰Hendy, Coinage, , , , .

grosso; they depict the emperor holding the anexikakia (a cylindrical cloth sym-bolizing his office) in his right hand and a patriarchal cross supported by theVirgin with his other.¹¹ In this depiction, however, the right hand of the em-peror is at his side, rather than reaching across his body like that of the doge onthe grosso. The most recent source for the pose on the grosso appears to be anissue of Alexius I from the period ‒ from the Thessalonica mint, on whichthe emperor reaches across his body to support a cross held by Saint Demetrius.¹²Similar paired figures were used in on the famous large ducale of Roger IIof Sicily; there is no direct link between this coin and the Venetian grosso.¹³

The doge on the grosso is clothed in robes decorated with large circles asworn by the emperors on contemporary Byzantine coins. Saint Mark displayshis book as an iconographic indication of his identity as an evangelist; such con-ventional attributes had distinguished Christ, Mary, Theodore, and Michael on


¹¹Ibid., .¹²Ibid., ‒. On Byzantine seals the gesture had appeared most recently under Basil II andConstantine VIII (‒): G. Zacos and A. Veglery, Byzantine Lead Seals, vol. , pt. (Basel,), .¹³Travaini, Monetazione, ‒.

Fig. . The prototype of the Venetian grosso.a. Byzantine electrum aspron trachy, Manuel I (‒). b. Venetian grosso,

Enrico Dandolo (‒).Sources: a. ANS .. b. ANS ..


the Byzantine coins. On the reverse of the grosso, Christ sits on a square-backedthrone with a book on his knee; neither hand is generally discernible; his feet arebare, and his left foot is forward, his right in profile. In iconography and style,this depiction corresponds almost exactly to that introduced on Byzantine coinsunder Romanus III (‒) and continued (among other depictions of theseated Christ) through the twelfth century; on the Byzantine coins Christ’s handscan be discerned, his right raised in blessing in the sling of the cloak and his leftholding the book.¹⁴

The iconography and style of the grosso underwent few changes between and . Tiny symbols identifying the mintmaster of the quindena wereadded around the feet of Christ during the reign of Jacopo Tiepolo (‒)(see above, Chap. ). Otherwise the appearance remained frozen (except for thename of the doge) until minting stopped under Giovanni Gradenigo (‒).

Within the Mint

¹⁴Hendy, Coinage, .

Fig. . A pattern grosso of advanced style.Late in the fourteenth century, an attempt was made to bring renaissance style to thegrosso, with new dies apparently made by the Sesto brothers. This appears to havebeen a failure, as the pattern is known in only two extant specimens. Later issues,

however, kept the tiny portrait of doge Antonio Venier.a. Venetian grosso type , Antonio Venier, ‒, early issue. b. Pattern grosso

with updated style. c. Grosso type , Antonio Venier, ‒, late issue withportrait head of doge.

Sources: a. ANs ... b. Porteous Collection, London. c. ANS ..


The denomination was restored with new standards in , with instructionsby the Senate that the new issue bear a star to distinguish it from the old, orwhatever other distinction prescribed by the doge and his council.¹⁵ The Type grosso minted in accordance with the decree replaced the symbols on the reversewith a star and the initial of the mintmaster of the quindena but made its largestdifference in turning the image of the doge from frontal to profile, facing intoward Saint Mark. Otherwise the style remained the same. Another change ofstandards, in , resulted in the Type grosso; once again, the distinguishingchanges in appearance were left to the doge and his council.¹⁶ This time twostars were put on the obverse, and the reverse legend was changed; the only alter-ation in image was the removal of the legs of Christ’s throne on the reverse. Atabout this time, dies were made in the Venetian mint bearing iconographicallyidentical images but with modeled draperies and twisted bodies, far closer to theRenaissance style of contemporary Venetian sculpture than to the essentiallyeleventh-century Byzantine style of the grossi being produced. The innovationswere apparently rejected, and the grosso continued to be made in the archaicstyle, though new head punches introduced on these “experimental” dies weregradually incorporated into the standard issues. Among these was the punch forthe Doge’s head, which appears to have been a portrait of Antonio Venier.¹⁷Therestored “archaic” grosso thus became the first circulating coin of medieval Eu-rope to bear a true portrait of a ruler (fig. ).

The Ducat

Whereas the grosso was based directly on Byzantine prototypes and in astyle that was probably archaic even in the early thirteenth century, the ducat in-troduced in was essentially a new creation and very contemporary in style.The obverse retained the two figures of Saint Mark and the doge from the grosso,but reversed in position. In place of the equality of their stance on the grosso,on the ducat the doge was made subservient to the saint by placing him on hisknees and in profile. The saint reaches across himself as the doge had done onthe grosso, but his body shows the full effects of the movement; even the face isangled and at a three-quarter view. His robes fall in loose curves, delineating theoutline of his body. The doge’s face is fully modeled and turned, up but his body


¹⁵ May : Papadopoli, :‒, #; PMV, , #.¹⁶ June : Papadopoli, :‒, #; PMV, ‒, #.¹⁷Stahl, “Portrait,” , # and #.

is compressed and squat; his arms and feet emerge from his trunk with little con-nection (fig. ).

On the reverse, Christ stands, his right hand raised in benediction. Althougha standing Christ had appeared occasionally on Byzantine coins, the image onthe ducat is much more modeled than on any of them; the draperies fall natu-rally, and the figure is more active.¹⁸The star-studded mandorla (almond-shapedframe) from which the figure emerges has no precedent in Byzantine or Euro-pean coinage. The closest parallel may be the twelfth-century mosaic represen-tation of Christ in the central dome of San Marco.¹⁹ The figure on the dome isseated on a dais and within a circular, star-studded border, but adaptation to thecoin space might explain the straightening of the figure on the ducat and thedistortion of the frame. The style of the ducat remained unchanged into thefifteenth century; the only noticeable change was the realignment of the starson the reverse to make them more evenly spaced. Even the doge’s barret, whichachieved its distinctive horn on other denominations in the course of the four-teenth century, remained unchanged on the ducat.

Later Denominations

The next new images to appear on Venetian coins were on the new denom-inations introduced in the s, the mezzanino and the soldino. The mezzaninowas meant to serve as a half of a grosso in the lira di grossi accounting system,and its imagery represented an abbreviation of the grosso. The obverse bore only

Within the Mint

¹⁸Cf. Hendy, Coinage, and pl. .¹⁹Otto Demus, The Mosaic Decoration of San Marco, Venice, ed. Herbert L. Kessler (Chicago, ),‒ and pl. .

Fig. . The ducat underwent no changes in standard or style from its introduction in through the end of the Middle Ages and well into the modern era.

a. Venetian ducat, Giovanni Dandolo (‒). b. Venetian ducat,Tomaso Mocenigo (‒).

Sources: a. ANS .. b. ANS ..


one standing figure, the doge, rather than two, while Saint Mark was moved tothe reverse, where he was shown half-length in a benediction pose usually asso-ciated more with Christ, whose position he took. The obverse figure of the dogewas quite simply depicted, but the Saint Mark of the reverse was given a certainamount of movement in his gesture as well as his draperies. This mezzanino wasquickly abandoned and the design never revived; the fault may have been foreconomic reasons, but the lack of obvious similarity to the grosso may also havehad some effect on its lack of acceptance.

The soldino was a great success as a denomination, replacing the denaropiccolo as the basis of the everyday lira di moneta system. The doge was depictedkneeling on the obverse, perhaps indicating a smaller denomination than themezzanino, on which he stood; the coin was known popularly as the cenoglello, or“little kneeler” from the pose (fig. ).²⁰ The soldino marked the first depictionof the lion as an image of Saint Mark on Venetian coinage. For this reason itappears also to have been known as the soldo da lione to contemporaries.²¹ Thelion is on the reverse, nimbate and rampant but not winged, holding a flag andidentified as ... Although the association of the lion with theevangelist Mark is an ancient aspect of Christian iconography, the purely heraldicupright lion without wings is rare in Venetian symbolism.²²

When the mezzanino was reintroduced in , under Andrea Dandolo, itwas given totally new types (fig. ). It is in this reign that the personal involve-ment of the doge in the appearance of medieval Venetian coins is most appar-ent.²³ The obverse was made to look like a small version of the grosso, appro-priate for a coin meant to serve as a half grosso. Both the doge and Saint Markwere rendered standing, but with their positions reversed from that on the grosso.Saint Mark is on the left, reaching across himself as on the ducat, but his bodyshows less movement and life than on the gold coin. The doge is standing inprofile on the right, facing center, as he was on the earlier version of the denom-ination. His barret is distinctively horn-shaped, unlike that on other denomina-tions of the period; this form of the hat also appeared in the depiction of Dan-


²⁰ Nov. : Verci, Storia della marca, vol. , pt. (Venice, ), ‒, #‒.²¹It appears as “soldi vecchi veneciani da lione” in the melt accounts of the mint of Padua forthe period ‒: Rizzoli and Perini, Monete di Padova, . #.²²Giovanni Morello, “L’immagine di Marco nei manoscritti,” in Omaggio a San Marco: Tesori dal-l’Europa, ed. Hermann Fillitz and Giovanni Morello (Milan, ), ‒; Nicolò Papadopoli, Illeone di San Marco (Venice, ), .²³For the artistic program of Dandolo in general, see Debra Pincus, “Andrea Dandolo (‒) and Visible History: The San Marco Projects,” in Art and Politics in Late Medieval and EarlyRenaissance Italy, ‒, ed. C. M. Rosenberg (Notre Dame, Ind., ), ‒.

Within the Mint

Fig. . Varieties of the soldino.The soldino underwent four changes in appearance in the course of the century

between its introduction and , all corresponding to reductions in its silver content.a. Soldino type , c. ‒. b. Soldino type , ‒, Mint master M.

c. Soldino type , ‒, Mint master F. d. Soldino type , ‒, Mint master F.e. Soldino type , ‒, Mint master ZB. A comparison of these coins shows

the gradual decline in the standards of the minting of the denomination over thecourse of a century.

Sources: a. ANS .. b. ANS .. c. ANS ... d. ANS ... e. ANS ..

Fig. . Introduced for Venice’s mainland colonies of Verona and Vicenza in the earlyfifteenth century, the new mezzanino reproduced the imagery of the original issue of

a half-century earlier.a. Venetian mezzanino, ‒. b. Mezzanino for Verona and Vicenza (‒).

Sources: a. ANS ... b. MCC, Papadopoli



dolo in the mosaics above the baptistry altar in San Marco and on his tombthere.²⁴ The great innovation of this obverse, however, was the substitution of acandle for the banner that had separated the two figures on both the grosso andthe ducat.²⁵The initial of the Christian name of the master of the quindena ap-pears under the candle, the first use in Venice of a letter rather than an incon-spicuous symbol as a mint mark.

It is on the reverse that the mezzanino displays its greatest innovations. Herethe resurrection is depicted as an actual scene, including movement and the de-lineation of three-dimensional space. This may have derived from the depic-tion of the resurrection on a lost thirteenth-century mosaic on the facade of SanMarco.²⁶ On the mezzanino, Christ is depicted in the act of stepping out of histomb, his right foot planted on the ground, his left still within the box shownin perspective from above. In his left hand he holds a cross on a spike, while hisright hand lifts a banner that waves to the left. It is this last feature that appearsto have captured the eye of contemporaries, for this coin was referred to as themezzanino da la bandiera.²⁷ This issue was minted only for a few years, but whenmezzanini were struck again in for the cities of the Terraferma, they copiedits imagery exactly.

In the mezzanino was replaced by a new issue of the soldino, of finersilver than the earlier one but much smaller in diameter. To stress the continu-ity of this denomination (which had lost a significant amount of silver in thetransition to the mezzanino and then to the new soldino), the types copied thoseof the original issue, only reduced in size. The only change was the addition ofthe master’s initial to the left of the heraldic lion. This coin appears to have beenlater referred to as the soldino da la bandiera, apparently to distinguish it from laterissues in which the lion had no banner.²⁸

That same year, a totally new denomination was issued with new types, thetornesello. This coin, worth piccoli, or a quarter of a soldino, was made ex-


²⁴Agostino Pertusi, “‘Quedam regalia insignia’: Richerche sulle insegne del potere ducale aVenezia durante il medioevo,” Studi veneziani (): .²⁵The iconographic significance of the candle is unclear; while Venice was not engaged in activewar in this year, it was certainly not a time of peace. A revolt had just been put down in Zarawhich brought Venice in conflict with the king of Hungary, and relations with Genoa wereclearly heading toward renewed conflict.²⁶Known from Bellini’s famous painting of a procession before the basilica: cf. Demus,Mosaic Decoration, ‒.²⁷Rizzoli and Perini, Monete di Padova, . The full phrase is “bolzuni viniciani mezanini da labandiera,” bolzuni being a dialect word for coins, especially those of low denomination.²⁸Ibid., .

pressly for the Greek colonies; its circulation was forbidden within Venice.²⁹ Itsobverse bore a Greek cross, similar to that on the Venetian piccolo, bianco, andquartarolo but here a specific reference to the obverse of the Frankish deniertournois, which the tornesello was intended to replace in Greece and from whichit took its name. The reverse, however, abandoned the schematic tower of Tours,the punning eponym of the denomination, and replaced it with the lion of SaintMark. The version of the lion on this denomination was not the standing her-aldic one that had appeared on the early mezzanino and was still on the soldino.Rather, it was facing and winged, climbing out of the water with a book in itspaws, the rendering that the Venetians referred to somewhat irreverently as inmoleca, the dialect word for a soft-shelled crab. This depiction had a long historyin Venetian art before it appeared on coins; it had been on the seals of variousVenetian officials at least since the beginning of the century.³⁰The legend of thereverse of the tornesello was .[], “standard-bearer of Ven-ice,” alluding indirectly to the role of the saint who had been identified by nameon all Venetian coins for the previous three centuries.

The reverse of the lion in moleca must have been popular among the commonVenetians, for whom the soldino was the most common coin, for when the nextdebasement of the soldino came, in , its reverse heraldic lion was changedto the facing, winged depiction, with the legend ... This reversewas maintained for the issues minted after the debasements of the denomina-tion in , , and . The similarity of design, though not legend, betweenthe reverse dies for the tornesello and soldino must have caused some confusionin the mint; torneselli are known which had been struck mistakenly with soldinoreverse dies for the reigns of Andrea Contarini, Antonio Venier, and MicheleSteno.³¹ No new designs were added to the Venetian coinage before the deathof Tommaso Mocenigo in . The few new denominations created for new pos-sessions in the Terraferma in the early fifteenth century followed the imagery ofthe Venetian coins whose names and values they bore, except for the piccolo forVerona and Vicenza, which bore a simple cross obverse and facing-head reverse.³²

Die Engraving

The die engraver (L: intaitor; V: intaidor) was the most highly skilled workerat the mint and in many respects the most important. The acceptability of the

Within the Mint

²⁹Stahl, Tornesello.³⁰Papadopoli, Leone, ‒.³¹Stahl, “Cephalonia Hoard,” , and Stahl, Tornesello, .³²Papadopoli, :‒, #.

coinage to its users rested in great part on their recognition of the images as theproduct of a continuous tradition of appearance; the first and in most casesonly test of the authenticity of a Venetian coin was whether it looked like one.Although fineness of alloy and appropriate weight were important in determin-ing the value of a coin, in the end it was the work of the die engraver whichmade a piece of metal a Venetian coin.

All dies used in the mint had to be worked by the mint engraver. He was aregular employee of the mint, required to come to the mint twice every work-ing day at the same hours as the masters.³³ He had his own capitulary and waspaid his salary four times a year, even when the mint was closed.³⁴ The engraverwas to make sure that there were always twelve pairs of engraved dies for grossiin the master’s vault as backup for those that were broken or worn.³⁵ The mas-ters were to inspect the dies in the hands of the stampers daily and take any badones way to have them fixed (raconzare).³⁶

In the gold mint, the engraver was to keep one backup pair of dies readyfor each striker.³⁷ To guard against theft, ducat dies were collected each evening,counted, and stored in a special vault.³⁸Those that were unusable were to be de-stroyed, and the others were to be effaced until no image or letter was visible andthen given to the engraver for reengraving. This procedure of reworking worndies may account for the file marks visible in the field of many well-preservedspecimens of Venetian coins from all denominations throughout the MiddleAges, a feature not commonly found on the products of other Italian mints.

Designs were engraved on the flat heads of each die in intaglio to producethe relief on the struck blank. The Roman tradition had been for each die to beengraved entirely by hand, but in medieval Europe the use of punches developedto make the engraving faster and more standard. The earliest coins of the mintof Venice, in the early ninth century with the name of Louis the Pious, werestruck from dies made with punches. These punches appear to have been sim-ple geometric forms: rectangles for the ascenders of most letters, crescents forcurves, and triangles for serifs. The letter O may have been a single punch. The


³³ Dec. : DMC, :, #.³⁴CMM, cc. , [].³⁵CMM, cc. , [].³⁶CMM, c. .³⁷CMO, c. .³⁸ Apr. : CMA, ff. v–.

circle separating the legend from the central cross and those defining the edgeof the designs of both sides appear to have been engraved by hand, as were theparallel striations around the circles that approximate beading or the leaves of awreath.

This same system of punches was used through the twelfth century. Whenthe coins began to bear the image of Saint Mark in the eleventh century, thiswas effected with a simple drawing, scratched directly into the die with a burinor similar tool. The striations along the circles were replaced with beads, prob-ably entered onto the die with a drill. In later issues, a drill was probably usedto engrave the dots for the saint’s hair, eyes, and robe decoration. When the pen-nies came to bear the names of doges rather than emperors, in the late twelfthcentury, this same system of a few basic geometric punches and small drills wasused.

With the introduction of the grosso at the turn of the thirteenth century,a new system was developed for the far more complex system of images.³⁹ Theletters continued to be engraved with small crescent- and wedge-shaped punches,but now individual punches were also used for the heads of the three peopledepicted: Saint Mark and the doge on the obverse, and Christ on the reverse. Inthe course of the issue of grossi in the name of Enrico Dandolo, two punchesappear to have been used successively for each of the heads, and the later oneswere carried into the issue of the next doge, Pietro Ziani.

During the reign of Rainieri Zeno (‒), punches representing entireletters were introduced into the engraving of dies for grossi. At the same time,the appearance of the individual letters evolved from rectangular Roman formsto those more like the Gothic font that would become typical of Venetian coinsof the fourteenth century. With the introduction of intermediate silver denom-inations in the s, another step was taken in the mechanization of the engrav-ing of images. The various parts of the bodies of the figures were each on a sep-arate punch, struck into the die and embellished with hand-engraved details,such as the tail of the lion.

Punches for images had been used to engrave dies in Bohemia in the twelfthcentury, but their use for the grosso issue of Venice was as radical a break fromcurrent Italian practices as the fine silver, the flat fabric, and the complex imageryof the denomination itself.⁴⁰ Not only did the use of punches make die engrav-ing faster, but it made the resulting coins more difficult to counterfeit, factors

Within the Mint

³⁹Alan M. Stahl, “The Grosso of Enrico Dandolo,” Revue belge de numismatique (): ‒.⁴⁰Ruth Mazo Karras, “Early Twelfth-Century Bohemian Coinage in Light of a Hoard ofVladislav I,” American Numismatic Society Museum Notes (): .

that Cellini cited in the sixteenth century as making “modern” coin engravingsuperior to that of the ancients.⁴¹

Most of the known die engravers of the medieval Venetian mint belongedto two families, the Albizo clan in the early fourteenth century and the Sestofamily a century later. The Sesto are known to have been important goldsmithsand medalists as well; nothing is known about the Albizo engravers other thantheir activity at the mint and Vettore’s skill as a naval excavator.

In , the mint engraver Giovanni Albizo was given a year’s advance on hissalary, to be paid back over two years.⁴² The next year he received another ad-vance, this for two years of his annual salary of £ as a dowry for his sister,with four years to pay it back.⁴³ In view of the great amount of silver beingprocessed, in he was allowed to hire on his son Leonardo, already trainedin the art of die engraving, at a salary of £ a year.⁴⁴ Two years later Giovannireceived another advance of two years of his salary; such advances were not com-mon in medieval Venice and show the favored status that the state accorded themint engraver.⁴⁵ In Leonardo Albizo’s salary was raised to £ a year, andin it was raised to £.⁴⁶ In , Leonardo became chief engraver, proba-bly at the death of his father, and was given a raise to £ a year.⁴⁷ Anotherengraver was Giovanni Quintavalle, who in was given a raise from £ to£ for the added work caused by the introduction of the new denominations;it was said that this was the salary enjoyed by his colleagues, implying that therewere at this time more than two engravers.⁴⁸ Leonardo Albizo died in , andthe masters sought a rebate of the part of his salary, paid in advance in three-month installments, which he had not earned; Leonardo’s surviving children re-ceived a pardon for this amount.⁴⁹

In , a flood of gold into Venice led to the doubling of the gold mint.


⁴¹Cellini, Trattati, ‒.⁴²Jan. []: E. Favaro, ed., Cassiere della Bolla Ducale: Grazie—Novus Liber, FSV, sec. (Venice,), , #.⁴³Ibid., , #.⁴⁴ Oct. : ASV, MC Comune II, f. .⁴⁵ May : ASV, MC Capricornus, f. .⁴⁶ June : ASV, MC Presbiter, f. . Jan. []: AC Brutus, f. v.⁴⁷ June : ASV, GR, R. , f. , #.⁴⁸ July : ibid., R. , f. .⁴⁹ June : ibid., R. , f. .

On this occasion, the Forty decreed that henceforth of the two engravers whocommonly made dies for ducats only the more skilled was to make them in thefuture; as this unnamed individual sometimes refused to do this, the state advo-cates were given the authority to fine him for such refusals.⁵⁰ This more compe-tent but truculent engraver may have been Giovanni Quintavalle, who was sub-sequently transferred from the silver mint to the gold mint.⁵¹The masters of thesilver mint were authorized to hire a new engraver at £ a year, the salary re-ceived by Quintavalle before and after his transfer. That same year, the doge tookthe services of one of the engravers, probably for a piece of gold work, and themintmaster for silver was given a two-day extension of his quindena to make upfor the delay.⁵² In February , the Forty granted a request of the ambassadorof the French king that the Venetian die engraver Vettore Albizo be permitted totravel to Aigues-Mortes to supervise the excavation of that port.⁵³ He was in-structed to return to his work at the mint as soon as this employment was com-pleted, but he is not known to have done so.⁵⁴ In , a certain Giovanni, a gold-smith from the parish of San Giovanni Chrisostomo, sought permission fromthe Forty to be hired as a die engraver.⁵⁵ He claimed to be well instructed in theart, having worked with Ser Ognebene, who is probably the same individual asthe “Omnibono” chosen by the mint staff six years earlier to be in charge of itscelebrations for the inauguration of the new doge.⁵⁶The masters recommendedthat this Giovanni be hired as an apprentice, as had Giovanni Quintavalle and acertain Nicolò, but without salary for the first year; this was approved.⁵⁷

The Black Death devastated the engraving staff at the mint as it did theother offices. By September apparently no engravers were alive, and the Forty

Within the Mint

⁵⁰ June : DQ , :, #.⁵¹ Dec. : DQ , :, #.⁵² Nov. : DQ , :, #.⁵³ Feb. []: DQ , :, #.⁵⁴Two other members of the Albizo family were engaged in canal excavation. Leonardo Albizoof Castello supervised work on canals in : Cecchetti, Vita, : n. . A Nicoletto Albizoreplaced his late brother Dardi as master of canal construction in : Apr. : ASV, GR,R. , f. ., and in was “proto-magister” of the engineers engaged in the expansion andmaintenance of the canal system: Crouzet-Pavan, “Sopra le acque salse,” ‒. Neither of thesemen appears to have been the same individual as the homonymous mint employees and officialsof the period.⁵⁵ Apr. : ASV, GR, R. , f. v.⁵⁶ Dec. : ibid., R. , f. .⁵⁷The usual period of apprenticeship for a non-Venetian seeking to become a master goldsmithin Venice was eight years: Richard Mackenney, Tradesmen and Traders: The World of the Guilds in Venice,c.–c. (London, ), .

authorized the Signoria to hire a master and subordinate engraver at whateversalary it thought necessary.⁵⁸ Two years later, these two engravers were in place,but one was considered unqualified, and together they were unable to keep upwith the supply of silver.⁵⁹ The Forty authorized the hiring of a third engraver,as in the past, at a salary to be set by the Signoria. In , an engraver namedGiovanni, who said he had been working for five years at the mint, was given araise from £ to £ a year because of the great work entailed by the mintingof torneselli, which kept him at the mint from dawn to dusk and precluded anyadditional income.⁶⁰ Two years later, the other engraver, Marco Albizo, had hissalary raised from £ to £ on the condition that he train an apprentice.⁶¹

Nothing is known of the die engravers for the next few decades. By the endof the fourteenth century, the position was in the hands of the Sesto family.⁶²The earliest known member of the family is Jacopo Sesto, who is known onlyfrom his grave epitaph, which recorded him as “intagliador alla moneda diVenexia.”⁶³ Bernardo Sesto was already working at the mint in when hisbrothers Lorenzo and Marco were given salaries of £ each as engravers thereand required to come at the same hours as the masters.⁶⁴ This date of ap-pears on the famous medal signed by Marco Sesto, which may have been the cre-ation that marked his advance from journeyman to engraver at the mint (fig. ).⁶⁵


⁵⁸ Sept. : DQ , :, #.⁵⁹ May : DQ , :, #.⁶⁰ May : ASV, GR, R. , f. v. At the end of this document, he is called “Jacobus,”probably an error for the mint warden Jacopo, whose plea follows his.⁶¹ Jan. []: ibid., f. v. It is not known what, if any, relation he was to Giovanni andLeonardo Albizo, engravers of the first half of the century. The family name appears in theestimo of for both nobles and popolani. A Nicoleto Albizo was appointed warden of theemenders in , having been warden of the strikers; he apparently died in on a trip tovisit his wife and children in Modon in Greece: Feb. []: ASV, SM, R. , f. v; Feb.[]: GR, R. , f. ; Aug. : GR, R. , f. v. Another individual, named NicolòAlbizo, was mintmaster from to , when he was named counsel of Modon: July DQ , :, #.⁶²See Alan M. Stahl and Louis Waldman, “The Earliest Known Medalists: The Sesto Brothersof Venice,” American Journal of Numismatics, d ser., ‒ (‒): ‒, for information on thefamily and its members’ activity within the mint and as medalists and goldsmiths.⁶³Recorded in two manuscript collections of epigraphy, cited by Nicolò Papadopoli, “Alcunenotizie sugli intagliatori della zecca di Venezia,” AV, n.s., (): n. (Palfer), and ErichSteingräber, “Studien zur venezianischen Goldschmiedekunst des . Jahrhunderts,” Mitteilungendes Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz , no. (): n. (Cicogna, Giunte).⁶⁴ Mar. : ASV, GR, R. , f. . The version in the Capitolare dalle Broche (Cap. Broche, )is evidently misdated to , as demonstrated by its indictional year of one.⁶⁵Stahl and Waldman, “Medalists,” ‒.

In June , a change in standards was ordered for the soldino and grosso.⁶⁶It was probably at that time that one of the Sesto brothers made new experi-mental dies for the new grosso, which sought to bring Renaissance style andportraiture to the coinage of Venice.⁶⁷ As the issue is extant in examples fromdifferent sets of dies, the experimental coinage may have actually gone into pro-duction and circulation before being stopped, probably by the Signoria. Theissue was apparently rejected in favor of a more familiar and conservative style,but the punch carrying the portrait of Doge Antonio Venier did eventually ap-pear on grossi later in the decade.⁶⁸ In view of the added work of the new issues,Marco and Lorenzo Sesto were each given a raise of £ a year.⁶⁹

By the fifteenth century, if not before, engravers were paid separate salariesby the silver and gold mints. When a new issue of coins was ordered for the newcities of the Terraferma in , Marco Sesto was given a raise by the silver mintfrom his current £ to a total of £ a year.⁷⁰ Since no mention is made inthis document, or any subsequent one, of his brother Lorenzo, it is likely thatLorenzo had died and that Marco took over both of their responsibilities. Eightyears later, at the time of general salary reductions, Bernardo Sesto was engraverof the dies for ducats and saw his salary from the gold mint lowered from £

Within the Mint

⁶⁶ June : PMV, ‒, #; Papadopoli, :‒, #; Cap. Broche, .⁶⁷Stahl, “Coin Pattern,” ‒ (Porteous specimen); Paolucci, Monete dei dogi, (Paris, B.N.,specimen). See fig. , above.⁶⁸Stahl, “Portrait,” ‒.⁶⁹ Sept. : ASV, GR, R. , f. .⁷⁰Cap. Broche, .

Fig. . Marco Sesto, engraver at the Venetian zecca, produced the first medal by aknown artist, perhaps in conjunction with his attaining status as master engraver in

. It was inspired by an ancient Roman sestertius of the emperor Galba.Source: ANS ..


to £ per year.⁷¹ Bernardo was also working with Marco at the silver mint, andeach of them had his salary there lowered from £ to £ a year.

In , Bernardo and Marco received special permission to keep a shop onthe Piazza San Marco, with their sons, because of their importance for the stateand the basilica.⁷² It was probably here that Bernardo and Marco made the mag-nificent Venzone processional cross, which bears their name and the date .⁷³The Sesto family continued to dominate the engraving at the Venetian mintuntil late in the fifteenth century. Bernardo’s will of listed a deceased sonAlessandro, whose sons were Luca and Giralomo.⁷⁴ It bore the drawing of a per-sonified sextant, which was probably the family’s punning hallmark. Alessandroapparently worked at the mint before his early death; a medal of is signed .⁷⁵ Giralomo and Luca Sesto, his sons,also worked in the mint, as did Luca’s son Bernardo, the fifth generation of thefamily documented as engravers at the zecca.⁷⁶

In general, the appearance of medieval Venetian coinage was kept within avery narrowly delineated range. Saint Mark appeared as a man or a lion on vir-tually all denominations except the tiniest. He was often paired with the imageof the doge, either on the same side of the coin or on opposing sides. Whenboth of these figures were on the same side, as they were on all denominationsabove the soldino (except for the failed first mezzanino), Christ appeared inprominence on the reverse.

The style of each denomination also remained fixed over time; artistic inno-vation was manifested only when a new denomination was introduced. This isbest illustrated in the failed attempt to “modernize” the grosso in the late four-teenth century; the new style was rejected, and the coin continued to be mintedin a style that had already been outmoded when it was initiated two centuriesearlier. Behind the conservatism in types and archaism of style lay the overridingeconomic importance attached to the recognition and acceptance of the mint’sproducts by Venice’s far-flung trading partners.


⁷¹ Jan. []: ASV, SM, R. , f. .⁷² Apr. : ASV, GR, R. , f. .⁷³Steingräber, “Studien,” ‒.⁷⁴ Aug. : ASV, NT, B. (Bartolomeo Thomasi), #.⁷⁵Stahl and Waldmon, “Medalists,” ‒.⁷⁶ Nov. : Cap. Broche, ‒; Oct. : ibid., ‒.

From Bullion to Coin

The actual work of the mint, the transformation of bullion into finishedcoins, was accomplished by teams of semiskilled laborers, employed as neededand paid for the most part according to the quantity of metal processed.¹ Thenumber of these individuals varied enormously with the activity of the mint. Inthe late thirteenth century the mandated maximum staffing was foremen, refiners, casters, masters, workmen, emenders, and moneyers in thesilver mint and refiners, casters, masters, workmen, emenders, and moneyers in the gold mint. With about workers at top capacity, the zeccawas probably second only to the arsenal as a productive enterprise in Venice andmust have been one of the largest factories under a single roof in all of medievalEurope.

The workers were employees of the state and do not appear to have hadguilds or other types of organization among themselves.²The only evidence forany sort of organization that joined them is the grazia voted by the Forty in to loan marks of grossi (about £,) to the die engraver Ognibene, “electedhead of the men of the craft of the mint,” for use in the celebration of the instal-lation of the new doge, Bartolomeo Gradenigo; the money would have to berepaid after the festivities.³ The banquet offered by each incoming moneyer tohis colleagues and superiors may also be the remnant of a fraternal sodality; itwas banned in (see below).

¹See, in general, Bonfiglio-Dosio, “Lavoro e lavoratori,” ‒. The distribution and nomencla-ture of staff and workers at the medieval Florentine mint were quite similar to those of Venice:Bernocchi, Monete, :‒.²In Florence, by contrast, the monetieri belonged to a formal guild: Bernocchi, Monete, :‒.³ Dec. : ASV, GR, R. , f. ; I thank Reinhold C. Mueller for calling my attention to theimportance of this document. Ognibene is mentioned in ( Apr.: ibid., R. , f. v) ashaving trained an apprentice in die engraving.

There was one worker whose responsibilities cut across the line of the var-ious departments, the foreman (L: gastaldio; V: gastaldo). The foreman was respon-sible for overseeing the general running of the silver mint; he was credited withdiscovering a theft from the mint in and given the right to bear arms, pre-sumably to protect himself from retaliation.⁴The salary of this office was raisedfrom £ to £ a year in and lowered to £ in the postwar reductions of.⁵ This made it equivalent to the scribes at the courts.

In , the position of foreman of the emenders was merged into that ofthe mint foreman; two men were to be elected by the Signoria with the samesalary and status.⁶ Each was responsible for the weight of the coins he controlled;a mark was to be made part of the soldino design which would allow the iden-tification of which of them was responsible for the issue.⁷ They were to divide pennies (£.) per mark of silver coined; in this amounted to £.⁸ Bythe turn of the century, the mint foreman was elected by the doge’s council; from to the position was held by the nobleman Perato Contarini, who wenton to supervise the Grain Office.⁹ In the Senate decided that there shouldbe two foremen with a salary of £ each in addition to the piecework rate; itspecified that they be popolani (“de puovolo”) rather than nobles.¹⁰ Nine menwere examined by the doge’s council a week later for the office; the two selectedhad twenty-four and thirty years experience at the mint, respectively, though oneof those rejected had more than thirty-six years seniority.¹¹Three years later theextra salary of these foremen was raised to £ a year, with admonitions thatthey supervise the emenders even more closely than ever before.¹²

The Diversity of Metal Acquired by the Mint

The first step in the processing of any metal was refining, that is, breakingit down into its component elements before recombining them into the desired


⁴ Apr. : ASV, AC Brutus, f. .⁵ May : ASV, GR, R. , f. v; Nov. : SM, R. , f. .⁶ May : Cap. Broche, ‒.⁷No such mark has been identified on surviving coins.⁸ Sept. : ASV, MC Leona, f. .⁹ June : ASV, CN, R. , f. ; May : ibid., R. , f. . May : GR, R. , f. .¹⁰ Nov. : Cap. Broche, ‒.¹¹ Nov. : ASV, CN, R. , f. , #.¹² Jan. []: Cap. Broche, ‒.

alloy. This basically involved separating out gold and silver from base elements,primarily copper, and then from each other.

The mint of Venice acquired bullion in the form of ingots and old mintedcoins. Some of the silver the mint purchased was in the form of Venetian ingotswith a stamp certifying their fineness, but foreign silver was often of unknownquality. Individuals could bring their gold and silver jewelry and belts to the mintfor liquidation into coinage; at times of crisis like the Dalmatian war of ,they were exempted from the usual exactions connected with this practice.¹³

In general, coins taken in were considered to be bullion; they were acceptedat their melt value with no special considerations. At certain times, however, themint was instructed to remint specific coins at set conditions. In the thirteenthcentury, clipped grossi and Serbian grossi were reminted for free, on a weight-for-weight basis.¹⁴To establish the ducat at the end of the century, a special ratewas given to people who brought other fine gold coins; the rate was even higherthan that given for ingots of fine gold.¹⁵ During the fourteenth century, carrariniof Padua were given free exchange at the mint for a brief period, and clippedcoins were taken on a weight-for-weight basis for limited periods.¹⁶ During theWar of Chioggia, the mint took all foreign coins as well as silver plate and jew-elry at the same rate as free silver.¹⁷ After the conquests of the Terraferma in theearly fifteenth century, the mint was under instructions to exchange old coins ofPadua, Verona, and Vicenza for Venetian coins for very limited periods.¹⁸

No accounts are known to survive from the Venetian mint which give anindication of the relative amounts of bullion and old coins taken in, but thoseof Padua from the late fourteenth century give an idea of what the compositionmight have been.¹⁹ In the calendar year of , the Padua mint took in a total

Within the Mint

¹³ June : ASV, SM, R. , f. —”maspillos, cingulas et ornamenta aurea et argentea.”¹⁴Clipped grossi— Sept. : PMV, , #; this provision was canceled by a team activearound : ASV, MC Fractus, f. , cf. DMC, :xiii. Serbian grossi— Oct : DMC, :,#.¹⁵ Mar. : PMV, , #. The rate given was £. per mark (as compared with the stan-dard £ per mark); the figure of £. given in DMC, :, #, is in error.¹⁶Padua: Jan. []: Cap. Broche, ‒; clipped: Feb. []: PMV, ‒, #, and May: Cap. Broche, .¹⁷ May : PMV, ‒, #.¹⁸Padua: Sept. : ASV, Senato Secreta, R. , ff. v–; Verona and Vicenza: Mar. :SM, R. , f. .¹⁹Based on a notarial document then in private hands, the accounts were published by Giambat-ista Verci, “Delle monete di Padova,” in Zanetti, Nuova raccolta, :‒, with omissions andobvious mistakes in transcription; the document was republished, apparently directly fromVerci, in Rizzoli and Perini, Monete di Padova, ‒, #, with further errors introduced.

of , marks (about , kg) of Paduan carrarini and other coins (includingVenetian soldini) of the fineness of . percent silver. In addition, it melted marks of old Venetian soldini (of the s and s) of percent fine-ness; marks of Venetian mezzanini from the middle of the century of .percent fineness; marks of Hungarian imitations of soldini of various fine-nesses; ½ marks of friesachers of Aquileia (% fine), and marks of mixedcoins. It also took in about , marks of silver in pieces ranging in finenessfrom percent to percent fine and a quantity of about , marks of alloyedsilver from which marks of gold and marks of copper were extracted. Themint of Venice probably had to deal with an even greater diversity of alloys in thebullion it took in.

The Refining Process

Before it could be minted, bullion acquired by the mint had to be refinedto a specified standard. For gold, this was to be as pure as technology allowed,sometimes even beyond the measures that indicated that the metal was

percent gold. Silver was purified to a standard fineness before being minted oralloyed. This was never intended to be of total purity; a specified amount ofcopper was always allowed in the basic alloy. This basic standard of Venetian sil-ver appears to have been gradually lowered in the course of the Middle Ages,apparently with no public acknowledgment.²⁰

The basic process for separating gold and silver from copper and other baseelements was through cupellation (fig. ). To separate out gold from silverthen required a sulfur treatment and a salt cementation process. These processesare all explained in the Pratica della Mercatura of Pegolotti, compiled in Florencearound the s.²¹ In most respects they follow those described by Pliny in thefirst century .. and by Theophilus in the twelfth, and they were repeated in thetreatise of Biringuccio, a Venetian writing in the sixteenth century.²²

Cupellation separated the noble elements from the base. The same processwas used for refining quantities of metal as for assaying a sample. In an assay,the metal was weighed before and after purification; the ratio of weights was


²⁰See below, Chap. , for the standards of Venetian coin alloys.²¹Pegolotti, Pratica, ‒.²²Pliny the Elder, Natural History, ed. H. Rackham, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass.,), :, bk. . c. ; Theophilus, On Diverse Arts, trans. John G. Hawthorne and Cyril StanleySmith (Chicago, ), ‒, bk. , cc. ‒; Biringuccio, Pirotechnia, ff. v-v, bk. , cc. and.

then used to calculate the fineness of the original sample. The assay process isillustrated by an inquest held in Aquileia on coins minted by the patriarch in.²³ Of marks of newly struck coins, a sample of mark by weight (.gr) was extracted and counted. It was found to have coins (expressed as ½marks by count plus coins; the mark of count was defined as coins), closeto the prescribed coins per mark.²⁴ A tiny amount was cut from each ofthese coins, totaling grains (about . gr). This was submitted to the cupel-lation process, and the remaining pure silver was found to weight ¾ grains,. percent of the weight of the grains assayed. This was deemed closeenough to the prescribed standard of ¾ ounce per mark of Venetian standardsilver (.% of that alloy), and the issue of coins was thus approved.

For the cupellation process, a special cup was made of ashes; Pegolotti rec-ommended a combination of burned vine tendrils and goat horn. A mixturecalled a color was then placed in the cupel; Pegolotti’s favorite recipe was twelveparts blanched stag horn, twelve parts twice-cooked roebuck bones, two partsAlexandrian emery, and one part cooked white borax. The cupel was then heatedin a forge. When the cupel was hot, lead was added, in a quantity of about four

Within the Mint

²³Liruti, “Dissertatio de monetis,” ‒.²⁴De Rubeis, “De nummis Patriarcharum Aquilijensium,” :.

Fig. . In the cupellation process, alloyed metal is heated with lead in a controlledhearth to separate the silver from the base metals. This process was used at the

Venetian mint for assays of small amounts of metal and to separate out the silver inlarge quantities of bullion.

Source: Vanuccio Biringuccio, De la pirotechnia (Venice, ), p.


times the estimated pure silver in the mixture. When the lead had liquified, themetal to be purified was added. As the alloy melted, air was then pumped in tomake the lead combine with the base elements to form oxides. The impuritiesthen fluxed away, leaving the precious metal in a bead held together by surfacetension. The amount lost was termed the flux (L: callum; V: callo); the term cameto be applied to all the expenses of refining.

The cupellation process was quite exacting in terms of control of temper-ature and circulation of air, and assays often failed. In the Venetian mint, thepractice was to try an assay three times; if it failed in all three, the metal thenhad to be recast and assayed again.²⁵ Even a carefully managed cupellation re-sulted in some loss of precious metal. Some was lost in smoke, but enough pre-cious metal went into the ashes to make their sale the topic of repeated regula-tion. In the thirteenth century, the mintmasters were instructed to set up a kilnto refine all the ashes of the state refineries; they were to include the recoveredsilver in their accounts.²⁶ In the income from this recovered metal was esti-mated at £ to £ a year.²⁷

The next step would be to separate the gold from the silver in the alloy leftin the crucible. This could be done several ways; Pegolotti suggested a hot sul-fur treatment.²⁸ In Venice, the use of sulfur in the refining process appears tohave been initiated around ; in that year it was added to the list of noxioussubstances that the mint could not use on the Rialto island.²⁹ The alloy washeated in a regular crucible, and sticks of sulfur were added. The silver amalga-mated to the sulfur and rose to the surface; the gold remained more solid andstayed in the bottom. The surface mixture could then be carefully poured off;after a series of controlled heatings in this manner the gold that remained in thecrucible would reach the fineness of to carats. The silver-sulfur mixture(“wild silver”) could then be purified by cupellation or by heating with iron.

The process that then brought gold up to the desired carat purity wascementation. In this process the metal was heated slowly in a mixture of clay andsalt so that the silver leached out into the cement, leaving purified gold behind.For the process to work, as many of the molecules of alloy as possible had tobe in direct contact with the salt of the cement. Usually the first step was to


²⁵ July : Cap. Broche, ‒.²⁶CMM, cc. and .²⁷ Apr. : Cap. Broche, ‒.²⁸Biringuccio called for sulfur or antimony: Pirotecnia, f. , bk. , c. .²⁹ Aug. : Nicolò Spada, “Leggi veneziane sulle industrie chimiche a tutela della SalutePubblica del secolo XIII al XVIII,” AV, th ser., (): .

granulate the gold and sprinkle it on layers of the cement, “like grated cheeseon a lasagna,” as Pegolotti described it.³⁰The layered mixture was left in the ovenfor up to twenty-four hours. The gold was then separated from the cement; if itwas not pure enough to hammer, the process was repeated. If the gold was fineenough, it was then hammered into sheets as thin as could be achieved, and thesewere again layered in a lasagna with new cement and heated for twenty-fourhours. A touchstone was then used to determine whether the gold had reached-carat fineness.

Finally, the cement needed to be purified to remove the copper and silverthat had flowed into it, as well as the minute quantities of gold that it also ab-sorbed. These materials were scraped from the cement and mashed with mer-cury in a wooden container. The mixture was then pressed though leather; mostof the mercury passed through, leaving the gold behind (the origin of the leg-endary “golden fleece”). The gold could then be heated, and whatever mercurywas left would vaporize. The rest of the cement was then ground up with litharge(V: cleta), a form of lead, and purified to extract the metals.

Regulations of a reform of the Venetian gold mint in specify detailsof the cementation process there.³¹ Base ingots were given to workmen who ham-mered them into lasagna of about two or three fingers in length and as thin andeven as possible; during this period the gold master of the quindena and theweigher had to sleep in the mint. The gold was then tested and the processrepeated until the gold was considered fine enough for minting into ducats. Thefiner the gold became, the less salt was needed in the cement; above carats thesalt was limited to one-quarter. The highest degree of fineness for which goldcould be tested by touchstone appears to have been carats and ½ grains, thatis, . percent pure. It then had to be refined by cementation until an additional carats (about .%) of silver was leached out; after the required flux wasincreased to carats, leaving the gold theoretically purer than carats.

Refining of Gold and Silver in Medieval Venice

Refining of precious metal in Venice was usually done at one of two places:the mint or the state refinery at the Rialto market, site of most bullion sales.

Within the Mint

³⁰“Come gittasi formaggio grattugiato sopra lasagne”; Biringuccio gives a more detailedaccount: Pirotecnia, f. ‒v, bk. , c. .³¹ Apr. : ASV, SM, R. , ff. ‒v; the rejected proposals of the advisor de Garzoniappear to refer to normal procedures at the zecca; cf. CMO, c. , undated decree of the Fortyfrom the first half of the fourteenth century, possibly .

The state refinery appears to have been established in ; before that there ismention of an apparently private silver refiner.³² From on, all silver had tobe refined at the state refinery under the direction of two nobles elected to super-vise it; they were called variously the officials over gold and silver and the goldleaf officials.³³The officials kept accounts of all bullion refined and who ownedit and bought it.³⁴ Beginning in , gold could be refined only at this stationor at the mint.³⁵ In , all silver that arrived in Venice from mid-May to mid-August, before the departure of the galleys, had to be refined at the refinery intoingots of sterling fineness or better.³⁶

Sometime early in the fourteenth century, the Rialto refinery was limited togold, and the refining of silver was moved to the mint.³⁷ In the refinery offi-

cials received a raise from £ to £ a year because of the increase in the amountof gold they processed.³⁸ In , to meet even greater supplies of bullion, theRialto gold refinery was expanded and improved.³⁹The workings and miswork-ings of this office can be seen in the transcript of a trial of one of the refinery’sworkers in .⁴⁰ A German merchant, Turfried of Rheinberg, had brought twopieces of gold totaling about marks (almost kg) to the refinery. In the refin-ing process the crucible broke, and molten gold was thrown onto the walls ofthe hearth. The furnace was cleaned out by the servant ( famulus) of the refiners,Alvise Cristaleri, son of the late crier (precone) of San Moise. When the gold wasfinally recast, it was discovered that about ounces (about gr) was missing;the official and master refiner had to pay the German about £ to make up thedeficit. Alvise was accused of having taken tiny scraps of gold that he foundwhile cleaning up the hearth and having sold them to Benvenuto Bincego of Ser-avalle, who sold it in small lots to various Venetian moneychangers for grossoper carat weight (. gr). Alvise confessed and was sentenced to be hanged.

To guard against this kind of problem, the Forty eventually decreed thatthose who had gold refined at the Rialto office would have the right to clean out


³² Oct. : ASV, Giudici dell’Esaminador, B. , charter of Maria, wife of Tibaldo “afinatorisargenti” of the parish of San Cassiano, abstracted in CMI.³³ Dec. : Monticolo and Besta, Capitolari, :‒, #, c. .³⁴ Oct. : CMM, c. a.³⁵ June : PMV, , #.³⁶ July : PMV, , #.³⁷By the supervisors were termed “gold leaf officials”: Dec. : Monticolo and Besta,Capitolari, :, #; in the refiner for the state is reported to have been working at themint: Aug. : ASV, AC Raspe, R. /, f. v.³⁸ Mar. : ASV, GR, R. , f. .³⁹ June : DQ , :, #.⁴⁰ May : ASV, SN, Sentenze, R. , ff. v–.

the furnaces themselves after the process and carry off all ashes and scraps.⁴¹ Oneof the officials was required to supervise personally each time gold was refined.As part of the reforms of the gold mint of , a new procedure was estab-lished for the gold refinery at the Rialto.⁴² Instead of taking their bullion firstto the gold estimators for testing and stamping and then to the refinery, mer-chants were to show the gold to the account officials for stamping and then haveit melted at the refinery. The refinery was to take a small sample of each ingotit made and combine these into one test ingot, which the gold estimators wouldthen compare with one of the other ingots chosen at random to make sure thatall were of suitable fineness.

Although the refining of copper and other impurities out of gold bullionwas effected in state facilities, private individuals could still separate out fine goldfrom silver and could refine small amounts of silver. In a Bolognese crafts-man who separated gold and silver was given a special grazia to have glass vialsmade for him in Murano, despite a temporary injunction on other glass pro-duction.⁴³ These private craftsmen were required to report to the appropriateauthorities the amount of gold and silver obtained from their work before thereclaimed metals could be sold.⁴⁴Those who refined silver could then cast theminto small ingots called summos, whose fineness needed to be attested by thegold estimators.⁴⁵

The Mint Refineries

All the silver processed in medieval Venice, and some of the gold, wasbrought to the zecca at San Marco, where it was worked on by the mint refiners(L: affinatores; V: afinadori). The silver refinery at the mint not only took on therefining of private silver for merchants but also became responsible for perform-ing assays (L: saggiare, laudare; V: sazar, lodar) on private silver. In the gold esti-mators were charged with checking the silver used by goldsmiths to make surethat it was of the proper fineness, but they had to bring suspect pieces to themint to have them assayed.⁴⁶ The fee of grossi (£.) for the assay of markof silver was to be paid by the state. Again, the workings of this procedure are

Within the Mint

⁴¹ July : ASV, Ufficiali alle Rason Nuove, R. , f. [incorrectly dated to ].⁴² Apr. : ASV, SM, R. , f. .⁴³ Sept. : ASV, AC Brutus, f. v.⁴⁴ Dec. : PMV, ‒, #; Nov. : Cap. Broche, .⁴⁵ June : CMA, ff. v–.⁴⁶ Oct. : CMA, ff. v–.

illustrated in the records of a court case.⁴⁷ One of the state refiners at the mint,Nicoleto Rizzo, tried to cover for a goldsmith of Conegliano by having theapprentice of one of his colleagues slip a little fine silver in with the suspectalloy at an assay ordered by the gold estimators. The plot was exposed, and bothRizzo and the apprentice were removed from their jobs and sentenced to half ayear in jail.

The importance of the office of mint refiner is illustrated by the first pieceof legislation in the registers of the Senate to be recorded in Venetian ratherthan Latin, promulgated in .⁴⁸ Each refiner was required by this legislationto stamp his own mark on his ingots, which would then be examined by the mas-ters and weighers before they were stamped with the validating die of SaintMark. All silver refined in the mint, even scraps, had to be accounted for andreported to the silver officials at the Rialto. Master refiners were required tocome to the mint every morning and afternoon on the threat of fines and evendismissal. It was noted in this legislation that the twelve master refiners of sil-ver then employed had no apprentices; they were ordered to hire four appren-tices and were granted four hundred bushels of charcoal a year, worth £, asrecompense for the keeping of these apprentices.

Once the pure metal was extracted from the incoming bullion, the questionremained of what to do with the by-products of the process. Legislation as earlyas demanded that any proceeds from the charcoal, copper, and lead that themint sold had to be included in the accounts of the master.⁴⁹The ashes remain-ing from the cupellation process (L: ceneracia; V: zenerazii), which contained errantsilver as well as copper and lead, were another matter. The masters were pro-hibited from selling these ashes and required to refine them themselves, carefullyaccounting for all recaptured metal. In addition, the mint was required to refinesimilar ashes produced at the Rialto refinery, at a price judged fair by the own-ers of the silver refined there.⁵⁰ If there was no room in the mint to handle thisprocess, the masters were authorized to rent a building to do this, either on theSan Marco island or elsewhere.⁵¹

The refining process itself produced fumes that were unpleasant and bymodern standards noxious; however, with adequate venting they were consideredbearable for the workmen and for those living nearby. In order to keep the fumes


⁴⁷ Aug. : ASV, AC Raspe, R. /, f. v.⁴⁸ Nov. : Cap. Broche, ‒.⁴⁹ Dec. : DMC, :‒.⁵⁰ July : DMC, :‒, #.⁵¹CMM, c. .

away from other workers and to permit shorter chimneys, the refining at the minttook place on the top floor, as is apparent from references to samples havingbeen “brought down” from the refinery to be examined by other workers.⁵²Theprocessing of the ashes from cupellation and, especially, the cement from goldrefining used significant amounts of lead, litharge, and sulfur and was eventuallyjudged too toxic and unpleasant to take place in the crowded San Marco area.By , ashes were being sold by the mint for refining elsewhere, and mint offi-

cials and employees were forbidden to buy them.⁵³ In , three years after glass-makers were forbidden to work on the Rialto island, regulations were passed thatthe processing of ashes and cement could take place only in the marshy fringesof the island.⁵⁴ This appears to have been accomplished by giving the mastersthe option of selling the ashes and cement by auction at the Rialto or takingthem somewhere appropriately situated to have them refined; in either case theproceeds would, of course, have to be fully accounted for.⁵⁵ Similarly, those whopurchased the ashes and extracted silver from them would have to declare thissilver to the appropriate officials and meet the requirements of the quinto.⁵⁶

By the end of the fourteenth century, the by-products of the mint were re-fined at a private installation in the parish of San Marciliano, in Cannareggio,suitably far from the administrative and tourist center of the Rialto.⁵⁷ To con-trol the refining of the cement, the master of the quindena had to accompanyan apprentice across town and supervise the process. It was decided that suchoversight was not sufficient for the cupellation ashes, as these were not beingfully purged of their silver by the refinery at San Marciliano. In the stateprovisioners were instructed to arrange with the monks of San Giovanni on theGiudecca (Le Zitelle, on the tip near San Giorgio Maggiore and right across thelagoon from the zecca) to build a small workshop in one of their gardens forrefining the ashes. In , in one of the reforms of the gold mint, it was decidedthat the sellers of gold could bring only -carat gold to the mint, eliminatingthe necessity to refine it at the mint and process the by-products on the Giu-

Within the Mint

⁵²E.g., June : Cap. Broche, ‒.⁵³CMM, c. []; before this time, the ashes had been processed at the mint not only for thewastes of its own refinery but also for those at the Rialto: July : DMC, :‒, #.⁵⁴Spada, “Leggi veneziane,” ; Franco Brunello, Arti e mestieri a Venezia nel medioevo e nel rinasci-mento, Studi e testi veneziani, (Vicenza, ), .⁵⁵CMO, cc. , , —undated regulations, probably of the Forty, promulgated in the first halfof the fourteenth century; Oct. : DQ , :, #, in which the refiners were prohibitedfrom buying the cements produced in the mint.⁵⁶ Oct. : PMV, ‒, #.⁵⁷ July : CMO, cc., , and ASV, Ufficiale alle Rason Nuove, R. , ff. v–.

decca.⁵⁸ By closing this installation, it was estimated that the mint would save£, a year on expenses but lose an estimated £, a year worth of recap-tured gold.

Little is known about the refiners, either at the mint or at the Rialto refin-ery, or their conditions of work. To meet the flood of gold in , the numberof refiners at the gold mint was doubled from four to eight; there were twelvemaster refiners for silver in .⁵⁹ The refiners were the only mint employeeswho did not have to be Venetian; they were prohibited from practicing their craftanywhere else in Venice or on the mainland.⁶⁰ The names of only a handful ofrefiners are recorded, and they are otherwise unknown.⁶¹ Nor is much knownabout their wages. Since the refining was done before the bullion was designatedfor a specific coin, the refining fees are not included in the breakdowns of mint-ing costs for individual issues. In it was decided that, instead of sharing theone-penny fee for refining silver, each refiner would be responsible for his ownsilver and receive the fee individually.⁶²

Eight laborers (L: famuli; V: fanti) working in the refinery of the silver mintin petitioned for a raise on the grounds that they were constantly havingto replace their burned garments.⁶³ They claimed that because they frequentlyworked nights they could earn only about £. a month outside the mint; theywere granted a raise from £ to £ a month.

The Casting of Gold and Silver in the Mint

Gold bullion was cast into ingots in its pure, refined form. Some silver coins(the grosso and later types of the mezzanino and soldino) were struck from sil-ver at the standard fineness to which the refinery had brought the bullion. Othersilver-based denominations (the first issues of the mezzanino and soldino, thetornesello, the piccolo, the bianco, and the quartarolo) were made from metal


⁵⁸ Jan. []: ASV, SM, R. , f. .⁵⁹ June : DQ , :, #; Nov. : Cap. Broche, .⁶⁰CMM, c. ; Oct. : DQ , :, #.⁶¹Those with a known family name are Nicoleto Rizzo and Pietro Zorla, involved in cheating: Aug. : ASV, AC Raspe, R. /, f. v; Bartolomeo del Merlo, whose son became astriker: July : GR, R. , f. v; and Paolo Scapazo, involved with colleagues known onlyas Checho and Andreolo in another cheating incident: July : Cap. Broche, ‒.⁶² June : Cap. Broche, ‒. This was probably grosso per mark. When in it becamethe responsibility of the seller of silver to pay for refining of his bullion, a fee of ¼ grossi permark was charged; a payment of grosso per mark to the refiner would leave the mint ampleprofit to cover other expenses and even a small profit: Nov. : ibid., .⁶³ June : ibid., and n. .

that was produced by alloying copper with the standard silver. It was the mint-master of the quindena himself who was responsible for creating the appropri-ate alloy for a given coin issue.⁶⁴This was probably done by overseeing the addi-tion of copper, in solid form in the correct proportion, to a cauldron of moltensilver.

The standards for coins that were not intended to be of fine silver werespecified in terms of proportions of grosso-grade silver and of copper. Thusthe piccolo of was to be made by combining ½ ounces plus carats ofgrosso-grade silver per mark with ½ ounces minus carats of copper, result-ing in an alloy of carats of grosso-grade silver in the mark of , carats,producing a coin of . fine silver.⁶⁵ After combining the metals, the alloy wastested by taking a sample of ounce (which should have ½ carats of grosso-grade silver) and assaying it by cupellation. If carats remained in the cupel,the alloy was judged good; the missing half carat was allowed for silver that va-porized in the melting or fluxed off with the lead and copper. When a new stan-dard for the piccolo was introduced in , the fineness was expressed as ozcar of argentum de bulla, by this time the standard of the mint.⁶⁶

When the molten metal had achieved the appropriate composition throughrefining and alloying, it was cast from the crucible into molds to cool and solid-ify. The worker employed for this process was the caster (L: infonditor, infusor;V: fondedor). In the number of casters in the silver mint was raised from oneto two; it appears that the salary of £ a year given to one was changed to £

apiece for the two.⁶⁷ In , the caster in charge of the minting of the alloyedsoldino and mezzanino coinages was given a raise to £ a year.⁶⁸ At the time ofthe flood of gold in the s, the casting facilities at the gold mint were dou-bled to create two forges (L: fusina; V: fondadura) for the preliminary casting ofgold for the refining process and two others for the casting of refined gold.⁶⁹The plague resulted in the death of one of the three casters and the promotionof an underqualified apprentice to the second position; the Forty urged a searchfor a qualified replacement.⁷⁰ Again in , when the enormous production oftorneselli increased their workload, the casters in the silver mint were given a raise

Within the Mint

⁶⁴CMM, cc. , .⁶⁵CMM, c. .⁶⁶ May : PMV, ‒, #.⁶⁷ June : ASV, GR, R. , f. v, #.⁶⁸ Apr. : ibid., R. , f. v.⁶⁹ June : DQ , :, #.⁷⁰ May : DQ , :, #.

to £ each.⁷¹ The casters were also given a food allowance probably becausethey had to work nights; they shared among themselves and their apprentices pennies per marks silver for food, wine, oil, and candles.⁷²

By the end of the fourteenth century, the wages of the casters were basedon a piecework rate; in this was raised from pennies per mark for the cast-ers of tornesello alloy to pennies, and from shilling (£.) to shillings(£.) per mark for the casters of gold.⁷³ The casters of silver for grossi andsoldini remained at pennies per mark until , when the rate was raised to pennies.⁷⁴The distinction between the pay for the casting of fine silver and thatfor the casting of alloy was maintained in , when those who worked on thefine-silver mezzanini for Verona received pennies per mark and those workingon the base quattrini and piccoli received pennies; casters for the projectedfriesachers for Zara in were to get pennies per mark.⁷⁵

The casters were personally responsible for the silver and gold in their careand were given an allowance of a certain amount for loss in the casting process.This allowance for loss, called the callo, appears to have been carats per markfor fine silver in the early fourteenth century, which works out to about . per-cent. By this was set at ¾ ounces per marks, or about one-third of apercent, and this was raised to ½ ounces per marks, or almost . percent,in .⁷⁶ The callo for other coin alloys was set at different levels: for the soldiniand mezzanini of the s it was . percent.⁷⁷ For torneselli a new process ofcasting introduced in allowed the expenses for the flan preparation to bereduced considerably; since the alloy had to be kept at the forge slightly longer,the allowance for loss was raised from . percent to . percent.⁷⁸

These allowances do not always seem to have been adequate to cover thelosses. Two casters who had been at the mint twenty-fives years each complainedin that the calculation of the callo was unfair, because for each , marksof grossi coined as many as , marks of metal had to be cast to allow for theexcess cut off to make the coins round; their callo was computed on the basis of


⁷¹ Mar. : ASV, GR, R. , f. .⁷²CMM, c. .⁷³ Jan. []: Cap. Broche, ‒.⁷⁴ June : ibid., ; Aug. : ibid., .⁷⁵ Sept. : ibid., ‒ (as Sept.); Aug. : ibid., .⁷⁶ Sept. : ASV, GR, R. , f. v; Aug. : Cap. Broche, ; Nov. : ASV, SM, R. ,f. .⁷⁷ Apr. : ASV, GR, R. , f. v.⁷⁸ Jan. []: Cap. Broche, ‒.

the weight of the finished coins, not the total amount cast.⁷⁹ In six years theyfigured that they had lost marks of silver from this discrepancy; the Senateraised their salary to cover their loss but left the allowance as it was.

Things were even worse for less experienced casters. In the two castersin the silver mint were held responsible for marks of shortfall.⁸⁰They claimedthat the mint had been in confusion because of the recurrence of the plague andthe fact that the mintmaster, Filipo Barbarigo, had stayed at home. They hadboth been recently hired for the office, having returned from the war againstGenoa; one had been in a Genoese prison. Their inexperience and the lack ofsupervision had led to the loss of much silver in smoke and the breaking of manycrucibles in the forge resulting in a loss of copper for torneselli. The mintmas-ters testified that the casters had large families to feed and it was difficult to findanyone more qualified for the position; the men were given permission to payoff this debt in five installments.

In general, the casters appear to have gotten into trouble more often thanother workers. Two cases are known of casters having stolen bullion from the mintand another of one altering the alloy with the substitution of base metal for fine.⁸¹They were singled out as needing a pledge of £ each at the time of hiring.⁸²In one case, two noble pledges, at least one of whom was mintmaster, had to makeup £ for marks of silver stolen by a caster whom they had supported, equiv-alent to about one and one-half times the value of the silver taken.⁸³

All bullion processed in the mint (with the exception of the alloy for tor-neselli after ) appears to have been cast into ingots before being processedinto coins.⁸⁴ These ingots could also leave the mint for sale within Venice andfor use in long-distance trade. None of the medieval ingots of the Venetian mintare known to have survived, nor are there many descriptions of these pieces. Sil-ver ingots (called virgae before the mid-fourteenth century and petiae after then)were stamped with the same dies as grossi, with Christ on one side and the doge

Within the Mint

⁷⁹ Aug. : ibid., .⁸⁰: ASV, GR, R. , f. v.⁸¹ Oct. : ASV, AC Raspe, R. /, f. ; Aug. : GR, R. , f. ; July : Cap.Broche, ‒.⁸²CMM, c. .⁸³ Oct. : ASV, AC Raspe, R. /, f. ; one of these men, Pietro Gomberto, is knownto have been mintmaster in that year; the other, Bartolomeo Falier, is otherwise unknown butmay also have been master.⁸⁴By , the Venetian mint cast silver was well as copper-based alloys into plates (piastre) ratherthan ingots, but there is no evidence that this practice was in effect for silver in the medievalperiod: Biringuccio, Pirotechnia, f. , bk. , c. .

and Saint Mark on the other, even in the period when those used in trade wereless fine than the grosso.⁸⁵ In the mint was forbidden to make silver ingotslarger than marks (about kg) each, but it is not known if there was any stan-dardization of weight before then.⁸⁶ Small ingots of gold and silver known assummi were made and stamped specially for use by goldsmiths and were limitedto a weight of saggi, which was ⅔ ounces, or about grams.⁸⁷ Gold ingots,which were made at the Rialto refinery during most of the Middle Ages, werestamped by the gold estimators with the dies of ducats; no weight standard isknown for these gold ingots.⁸⁸

After the metal was cast into ingots, they had to be assayed before theycould be made into coins or leave the mint as stamped ingots. The master of thequindena had primary responsibility for assaying the ingots before they wereused for coinage.⁸⁹ Then an assay was done by the mint weigher to confirm themaster’s decision.⁹⁰ For ingots that were to be taken outside the mint for use intrade, an additional assay was to be performed; in the thirteenth century this wasachieved by having the gold estimators come from their Rialto office weekly tothe mint to examine the ingots.⁹¹ Once the gold mint was opened at the end ofthe century, it was the practice of the masters for gold to assay the ingots pro-duced in the silver mint and vice versa.⁹² In the mid-fourteenth century it wasdecreed that the other masters for gold were to assay the ingots of the gold mas-ter of the quindena, who could not be in the room at the time of the assay.⁹³The reform of the silver mint in required that the ingots produced at themint bear the stamp of the master refiner who made their alloy and that he beheld responsible for their fineness.⁹⁴

This process of assaying the ingots, so important for ensuring that the coinsissued by Venice were of the proper fineness, is illustrated in the memorandumof an inquiry conducted at the mint in .⁹⁵The master of the quindena alloyed


⁸⁵ May : PMV, , #.⁸⁶ Feb. []: Cap. Broche, ‒.⁸⁷ June : CMA, ff. v–. These small pieces also appear to have been used in trade in theBlack Sea area: Lane and Mueller, Coins and Moneys of Account, n. .⁸⁸CMO, cc. , .⁸⁹CMM, cc. , .⁹⁰CMM, cc. , .⁹¹ June : DMC, :‒; June : PMV, ‒, #.⁹²CMM, cc. , [].⁹³ Mar. : DQ , :, #.⁹⁴ Nov. : Cap. Broche, ‒.⁹⁵ July : ibid., ‒.

marks of silver and passed it along to the caster, named Francesco, who added marks of stamped ingots and another marks of silver that he had found inthe foundry and cast all into ingots. The weigher, Giovanni Sagredo, took a sam-ple of mark from these ingots and brought it to one of the refiners for assay.The refiner assayed the sample and found it substandard and repeated the processfor two additional assays, all of which failed. The metal was then remelted andrecast, and each of the three refiners assayed a sample. It was then found that of ounces tested, fluxed away and hence were base, and only remained inthe cupel. This means that the alloy had actually been only . fine. The secondmaster, the notorious Filipo Barbarigo, was called in from home, and the casewas laid out to him. Each of the refiners testified that copper had been mixedinto the alloy. The two masters and two weighers deliberated and decided to holdthe caster responsible for the missing silver (a provision on which the master ofthe quindena dissented) and to ban him and his accomplices from working inthe mint again; this time Barbarigo dissented.

The Workshops

The transformation of the ingots of alloyed metal into coin blanks was ac-complished at a series of workshops (L: apotheca; V: botega) in each of the mints,usually called furnaces (L: fornax; V: fornace), possibly from their association withthe smelting process.⁹⁶These workshops constituted a separate area of the mintand perhaps even a separate building; the fire of is described as having demol-ished the domum operariorum.⁹⁷ When the mint was expanded in to meet thenew supplies of gold, it was decided that the new story of the mint would bebuilt above the workshops (fig. ).⁹⁸

In the design for the new zecca submitted in by Sansovino, which isthought to have adhered closely in plan to the old mint, the workshops wereindividual rooms arranged around an open courtyard, an arrangement consis-tent with the aerial view of the medieval mint by de’ Barbari in .⁹⁹ On the

Within the Mint

⁹⁶It is unlikely that the name implied a vaulted space, as the classical Latin term fornix with thatmeaning was universally associated with brothels in the Middle Ages: Du Cange, Glossarium, s.v.“fornicarius.”⁹⁷CMM, c. .⁹⁸ June : DQ , :, #.⁹⁹Howard, Jacopo Sansovino, and pl. .


Fig. . Processes depicted show an idealized fifteenth-century mint. The figure inthe center rear is the mint master, here speaking with his patron, the emperor

Maximilian. To the rear left are balances with weights in one pan and coins in theother, and far left is the hearth showing three cupels within and one on the door

frame. The central figure hammers an ingot of metal into a sheet, work done by thezecca’s workers. Front left, a man uses large shears to cut blanks to the prescribedweight and size, the work of the emenders in the zecca. To the right is a moneyer,

striking the blanks with a hammer. The apprentice to the far right takes the finishedcoin from between the fixed die and the hand-held die and replaces it with a blank.

Source: Hans Burgkmair, Der Weiss Kunig, sixteenth-century print of original plate, plate .Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, PML


Within the Mint

ground floor of this section of the rebuilt mint were twelve shops for makingthe blanks, four for striking the coins, two for the blanching process, and twofor casting dies and keys.¹⁰⁰ On the upper floor were seven workshops for gold,two rooms for weighing and striking, plus two rooms for assays and three offices.The medieval allotment of space was probably quite similar to that which re-placed it.

Each workshop was under the direction of a master (L: magister monete;V: maistro).¹⁰¹ In the Forty recognized the promotion to workshop masterof a worker who had apprenticed under his father; otherwise the designation ofworkshop masters was left to the mintmasters and weighers.¹⁰² In the gold mint,the mintmasters had a more direct supervisory role over the workshops than inthe silver mint, but there were still masters of each shop.

The skilled workers in these workshops were referred to by various termsfor a worker in general: in Latin, operarius and laborator; in the vernacular, ovrer andlavorante; they also were selected by the masters and weighers.¹⁰³ In some cases,the terms for workman and master appear to have been used interchangeably.¹⁰⁴In addition to the workmen there were unskilled laborers (L: famuli; V: fanti) inthe workshops who had more menial tasks. The emenders were in a separate jobcategory but assigned to specific workshops.

The mintmasters gave the ingots of alloyed metal to each workshop on abasis that they determined among themselves; workshops whose performancewas not considered good were given less.¹⁰⁵The ingots were then hammered outinto sheets and cut into squares (L: quadrellum; V: quarelo); the work of hammer-ing out the ingots is attributed in documents variously to the workmen and thefanti.These squares were then cut with shears into circles called flans (L: flavonus;V: flaone), which were probably slightly heavier than the standard of the finishedcoins. This process produced clippings (L: cesalia; V: cesagie), which were gatheredup by the mint laborers and given to the masters to be remelted and eventually

¹⁰⁰Deborah Howard, “Studies in Jacopo Sansovino’s Venetian Architecture” (Ph.D. diss., Cour-tauld Institute, University of London, ), .¹⁰¹The terms massarius and masser are those used in documents for the official we are calling herethe mintmaster; magister and maistro refer to the head “workman.”¹⁰²Sept. : ASV, GR, R. , f. ; CMM, c. .¹⁰³CMM, c. . The division of mint personnel between “workers” and “moneyers” was wide-spread in medieval Europe: Roberto Sabatino Lopez, “Continuità e adattamento nel medio evo:Un millennio di storia delle associazioni di monetieri nell’Europa meridionale,” in Studi in Onoredi Gino Luzzatto (Milan, ), :‒.¹⁰⁴E.g., CMO, c. , where the rubric speaks of lavoradori but the text calls them maistri.¹⁰⁵CMM, cc. , ; CMO, c. ; May : Cap. Broche, ‒; Nov. : Cap. Broche, ‒.

reminted. This process involved a considerable amount of waste; it was estimatedthat , marks of silver was need to make , marks of finished grossi, about to ., near the ratio of the area of a square to that of a circle inscribed in it.¹⁰⁶The management of these clippings was also a continuous threat to the securityof the mint. A workman who substituted copper clippings for silver in paidwith the loss of his right hand, while another who did the same thing fifty yearslater got off with just a fine.¹⁰⁷ A master of a workshop in the gold mint whosold clippings obtained the same way for £ was tortured and imprisoned forfour months and then released with a fine and banishment from the mint; oneof the workmen from his shop was also charged but was found innocent andreleased.¹⁰⁸

The flans were then passed to the emenders, who adjusted their weight (seebelow). According to a sixteenth-century account, the next step involved heat-ing the blanks over coals to soften the alloy, which had been hardened by thebeating, and then allowing them to cool slowly; that is, they were annealed.¹⁰⁹They were then dumped onto an anvil and flattened down with a hammer. Toremove accumulated oxides and discolorations, the flans of silver coins were thentaken by the fanti to be blanched (blanchizare).¹¹⁰ According to Biringuccio, thisconsisted of putting them in a liquid made of wine stone (tartaro pesto), rock alum(lume di rocha), salt, and sometimes urine. After this bath they were washed inclean water and dried. Copper-based coins that were intended to look white weresubmitted to this blanching; those intended to look black were tossed into asievelike pan with charcoal but not allowed to get red-hot. The metallographicanalysis of two Venetian grossi carried out by the Objects Conservation Depart-ment of the Metropolitan Museum of Art confirmed that the metal had beencast, hammered out, and then annealed without quenching before being struck.¹¹¹

The Workmen and Masters

There are only a few documents that allow an estimate of the number ofworkers in each workshop in the silver mint and the total number of workshopsthere. The capitulary of specified that there be only eight workmen for pic-


¹⁰⁶ Aug. : Cap. Broche, .¹⁰⁷ Feb. []: ASV, AC Raspe, R. /, f. v.; Dec. : ibid., R. /, fasc. , f. .¹⁰⁸ July : ibid., R. /, fasc. , ff. v–.¹⁰⁹Biringuccio, Pirotecnia, ff. ‒v, bk. , c. .¹¹⁰CMM, c. ; CMO, c. .¹¹¹Ann Heywood, assistant conservator, Metropolitan Museum of Art (hereafter cited as“MMA”), to author, Sept. .

Within the Mint

coli, and the same number was reiterated in ; they were to be given a total ofno more than marks of alloy a day in summer, that is, about piccolo coinsper man per day.¹¹²The ratio of four workmen and one master per workshop isspecified in an authorization for new piccoli in , to revive the denominationthat had not been minted for at least a decade, so it is possible that the eightworkmen earlier had been deployed in two workshops.¹¹³

The number of workmen in each grosso workshop is nowhere specified.According to the capitulary, each workshop for grossi was to be given amaximum of marks of silver a day in summer, or enough for about ,

grosso coins.¹¹⁴ Blanks for grossi were probably cut with greater care than thosefor piccoli, so a rate of blanks a day per man seems reasonable for the grossosection of the mint, implying a staff of four workmen per grosso workshop.

There were to be two special emenders to check on the work of each work-shop; their limit was set in at twenty-eight, implying a total of fourteenworkshops in the mint.¹¹⁵ This may have been for twelve workshops for grossi,with four workmen and a master in each, and two for piccoli, or it may havemeant fourteen workshops for grossi alone. In any case, it seems likely that therewere about seventy to eighty men working on cutting the flans for silver coinsat the end of the thirteenth century. By , when the flow of silver had less-ened, there were only eight workshops in the silver mint.¹¹⁶ When the mintingof torneselli was accelerating in the s, the number of workshops devoted tothat colonial coinage was expanded from two to three.¹¹⁷

The number of workmen for gold ducats must have been much smaller. Atthe time of the greatest flood of gold in , the Forty made provision for thepossibility that more than marks of gold might be at the mint during onequindena, in which event a second team of masters and workers would go intooperation.¹¹⁸This is in contrast to the reports of the silver mint earlier that cen-tury in which , marks of silver seems to have been normal.¹¹⁹ Although goldrequired much more labor than silver for the refining process, the cutting ofblanks for ducats was probably not much more time-consuming than for grossi.

¹¹²CMM, c. ; May : NMC, ‒, #.¹¹³ May : PMV, ‒, #.¹¹⁴CMM, c. .¹¹⁵CMM, c. .¹¹⁶ Mar. : Cap. Broche, ‒.¹¹⁷ Nov. : DQ , :, #.¹¹⁸ June : DQ , :‒, #.¹¹⁹ Sept. : ASV, AC Neptunus, f. .

Eight workers would probably have been sufficient for each team; at the crest ofthe flood of gold in late , the gold mint borrowed sixteen additional work-ers from the silver mint to meet its needs.¹²⁰

There was a great concern that the workshop masters not exploit their skillsoutside Venice. They could not be out of the city for more than four days with-out the express permission of the mintmasters; infraction of this rule resultedin loss of their position for the tenure of that team of masters.¹²¹ Two work-shop masters with ten years’ experience each were given a pardon to come backto the mint in after having worked abroad; two similar pardons were grantedin .¹²² In , the Forty rescinded a perpetual ban from the mint for any work-man who worked in another mint but instituted a fine of £ or six months injail for those who returned from such work.¹²³

In the s, after the Black Death had given a competitive advantage toskilled laborers throughout Italy, the Venetian mint was hit with a wave of defec-tions by workmen.¹²⁴ Several of them went south to Romagna, to Ravenna andFaenza, where they apparently worked in a counterfeit mint run by a local lord.¹²⁵In the conditions for return were changed so that those who came backwithin a month were subject only to a fine of £, but those who came back afterthen were subject to the £ fine and to six months in prison. Eight of the mintworkers who did not come back immediately claimed they had been held in Ro-magna against their will; after appeals lasting as long as four years, they weregiven pardons that allowed them to return to work after paying the £. One ofthese men, Cecco Longo, was still working in the mint thirty years later whencopper in the mint was impounded for use in the War of Chioggia.¹²⁶

By the end of the century the tide had turned, and foreign mint workerssought employment in Venice. A pardon of waived the requirement of Ve-netian citizenship for an employee of the Verona mint whom the mintmasters


¹²⁰ Nov. : DQ , :, #; the document says “magistri” but probably meant workmen.¹²¹CMM, c. .¹²² Feb. []: ASV, GR, R. , f. v; Apr. : ibid., R. , f. ; Oct. : ibid., R. ,f. v.¹²³ Dec. : DQ , :, #.¹²⁴ Dec. : ASV, GR, R. , f. v.; Mar. : ibid., f. ; Aug. ; ibid., f.v; Mar. :ibid., ff. v–; Mar. : ibid., R. , f. v.; Sept. : ibid., R. , f. v.¹²⁵Earlier that year a noble Venetian and a mint striker were convicted of working in a mint inRomagna which made false friesachers: Jan. []: ASV, AC Raspe, R. /, fasc. , f. .This may have been the same forger’s mint in the Castello Tuderani near Ravenna where a Vene-tian moneyer had worked in : May : R. /, f. v.¹²⁶ Jan. []: ASV, GR, R. , f. .

sought to hire as a worker on torneselli, and in a similar grant was given toa mint worker from Bologna.¹²⁷

The pay for workers was calculated on the basis of the weight of the ingotsof alloy they processed, but since for small coins many more blanks had to becut per mark than for larger ones, the rates varied by denomination. Thus work-ers on grossi were paid £. per mark before and £. after then, and work-ers on soldini went from £. per mark before to about £. in that year,up to £. per mark in , £. in , and £. in .¹²⁸ It should beremembered that as the weight of soldini was lowered through this period notonly did the amount of work on each mark increase, but wages paid out in thecoins declined in terms of silver. No figures have been found for the wages ofthe workers who made blanks for gold ducats.

The remuneration of the workmen was strictly on a piecework rate, and theywere given employment only when the amount of metal in the mint warrantedit. The rest of the time they were expected to support themselves with outsidework; pleas for raises were sometimes accompanied by the complaint that theworkers were so busy at the mint that they could not earn any outside money.Workers on torneselli were paid £. per mark of alloy from to ; inthat year they complained that they could only earn £. a day each.¹²⁹ The marks a day which each man worked (about half a kilogram) would have beenabout coins, since the tornesello appears to have been cut at about to themark in that period and waste seems to have been less than one-quarter.¹³⁰ The£. a day which a mint worker cutting blanks for torneselli could earn in

was at the top of the range of income of apprentice stone masons of the periodbut well below the £ to £. a day of skilled stone cutters or silk weavers.¹³¹

The Control of Weight: The Emenders

After the flans had been cut and cleaned by the workers, they passed intothe hands of the emenders (L: mendator; V: mendador).¹³² These were specialized

Within the Mint

¹²⁷CMM, c. ; Apr. : ASV, GR, R. , f. v; : GR, R. , f. v.¹²⁸Grosso: Mar. : Cap. Broche, ‒; June : ibid., ; Nov. : ibid., . Soldino: Mar. : ASV, GR, R. , f. v; Apr. : DQ , :, #; Nov. : Cap. Broche, ; Dec. : Cap. Broche, .¹²⁹ May : Cap. Broche, ; Nov. : ibid., ‒.¹³⁰Stahl, Tornesello, . By this period the tornesello was more square than the well-roundedgrosso, so waste would have been somewhat less.¹³¹Richard J. Goy, The House of Gold: Building a Palace in Medieval Venice (Cambridge, ), ‒;Lane and Mueller, Coins and Moneys of Account, .¹³²CMM, cc. , , ; CMO, c. .

workers whose job it was to ensure that the coins fell within the prescribed weighttolerances, or remedies. Like the other mint workers, their pay depended on thenumber of pieces they processed, and their number varied with the activity ofthe mint. They were assigned to the same workshops as the workmen; two ineach workshop were designated to check the work of their peers, and a foremanwas responsible for the work of the emenders as a whole. The main work of theemenders was probably the trimming of the circular flans, though they may alsohave hammered out the pieces if they were too thick. The two designated check-ers returned bad blanks to the emenders; overweight ones could be clipped downto weight, but underweight ones had to be cut in half to be remelted and ham-mered out from scratch.

There are no figures for the number of emenders at work in the silver mint.For the gold mint, at the beginning of the flood of gold in , the number ofemenders was raised from five to seven, and the number of moneyers was raisedfrom three to five.¹³³ This ratio of emenders to moneyers must be seen in thelight of the extremely tight tolerances allowed for the gold ducat compared withthose for silver coins; there would not have been such a high ratio in the silvermint. As each workshop in the silver mint had two emenders to check the workof the others, there must have been at least four emenders per workshop, andprobably more like six.¹³⁴ With fourteen workshops maximum at the beginningof the thirteenth century, the number of emenders for silver would appear tohave been about seventy, with five for gold.

The emenders were paid at a piecework rate that varied with the denomi-nation. Emenders of grossi, which had few blanks per mark but were held totight specifications, were paid at the rate of about £. per mark before ,about £. after that; £. per mark before and £. after that; £.

per mark after ; and £. per mark after .¹³⁵ For soldini their wageswere £. per mark in , raised to £., as we have seen, in , to £. in, and to £. in .¹³⁶ Even though the number of soldini to the markincreased in this period about percent and the value of wages paid in themfell by a bit more than this, the emenders experienced a rise in real wages by morethan doubling their piecework rate between and .


¹³³ Dec. : DQ , :, #.¹³⁴CMM, c. .¹³⁵ Mar. : ASV, GR, R. , f. ; the document does not indicate whether this raise wasapproved—the figures are given as pennies and pennies ad grossos, respectively. Mar. :Cap. Broche, ‒. June : Cap. Broche, . Nov. : Cap. Broche, . Dec. : Cap.Broche, .¹³⁶ Apr. : DQ , :, #.

Little is known about the men who worked as emenders, but they appearnot to have been from the lowest ranks of the workers. One, in fact, is identi-fied as a noble: Franceschino Diedho was given a special pardon to remain as anemender when his relative Francesco Vielmo became a mint weigher.¹³⁷ On theother hand, Giovanni de Leonardo, a goldsmith, petitioned to move from theposition of emender to that of moneyer in , and the son of an emender wasmade a moneyer a few years later.¹³⁸

The office of foreman of the emenders (gastaldio mendatorum) was certainlyan elite position. In the Forty debated the qualifications of three candidatesfor the office, each of whom had the support of mintmasters and weighers, andselected Nicoleto Albizo, a longtime emender of silver and gold coins, over theforeman of the strikers and another, adding the requirement that the foremanof the emenders work the same hours as the mint officials.¹³⁹ In , the posi-tion carried a wage of pennies per mark of silver processed; it went up to ½

pennies by , when it was lowered back to pennies.¹⁴⁰ In , the office ofthe foreman of the emenders was merged with that of the mint foreman.

:

The only mint workers who were called moneyers (L: monetarius; V: moneda-dor) were those who actually struck the coins; they were also called strikers (L: stam-pator; V: stampador). They seem to have been special in terms of group identity,as well. It was the custom that whenever a new man became a moneyer he gavea dinner for his new colleagues and for the mint officials.¹⁴¹This occasion couldcost as much as £, a hefty sum for a poor worker. Shortly after the Black Death,the Forty banned such initiation dinners, citing the rowdiness of the inebriatedminters as well as the appearance of bribery in these festivities; a more subduedsocial climate in the face of the plague may also have been a factor.¹⁴² An annualbanquet was a feature of Venetian guild life; the elimination of the moneyers’

Within the Mint

¹³⁷ June : ASV, GR, R. , f. .¹³⁸ Nov. : ibid., R. , f. v. Oct. : ibid., R. , f. .¹³⁹ Feb. []: ibid., R. , f. . He appears not to have been the same individual as theNicolò Albizo who became mintmaster in , as in Marino de Lambertis was hired asforeman of the emenders to replace a “Nicoleto” who had gone to Modon and died there: Aug. : ibid., R. , f. v.¹⁴⁰ Aug. : ibid., R. , f. v. Nov. : SM, R. , f. .¹⁴¹Such a banquet was also an initiation rite among French mint workers: Lopez, “Continuità eadattamento,” .¹⁴² May : DQ , :, #.

banquets may have been intended to keep such fraternal activities out of themint.¹⁴³

The work of the moneyers was to stamp the prepared flans with the dies(figs. and ). This they must have done with a heavy hammer, though thereis no documentation for the method of striking or the number of individualsinvolved in the striking of a single coin. There is a hint that the moneyers workedin pairs; when they went to lunch, at least two had to wait for the master to comeby and get their coins, and if one was given a small allocation, he could not sup-plement it with that given to his partner (socius).¹⁴⁴There is evidence that not allstrikers wielded the heavy hammer: an official from the slaughterhouse was hired


¹⁴³Mackenney, Tradesmen and Traders, ‒.¹⁴⁴CMM, cc. , .

Fig. . The image was engraved on the lower face of this late-fourteenth-centuryPaduan iron die, by means of punches and free-hand engraving. The moneyer held theshank in his hand, struck the top with a hammer, imprinting the image onto a blank

placed beneath it. This well-worked example shows the effects of the hammer’s impact on the top of the die.

Source: Museo Bottacin, inv. no.


as a moneyer after his arm was broken by a goat.¹⁴⁵ If the strikers worked inpairs, one would probably have placed the flan on the lower die, held fast in ablock of wood, while the second would have actually struck it with the hammer.

Among the equipment found in the home of a counterfeiter in Venice werea hammer and tongs (tenacle), which may have been used for holding the blankin place during the striking.¹⁴⁶ In one case, at least, the blank was not well secured:the moneyer, Giovanni Culredar, was so badly wounded in the knee by a soldinoblank that flew out while being struck that he needed to walk with a cane there-after.¹⁴⁷There is no indication in documents that the flans were heated for strik-ing, nor is hot striking apparent in the results of the tests done by the Metro-politan Museum. It is likely, then, that all medieval Venetian coins were struckfrom cold blanks.

The strikers exerted varying care on different denominations. Through themid-fourteenth century, the die axes of grossi and ducats were rigorously con-trolled at a six-o’clock orientation; that is, the reverse was upside down if the

Within the Mint

¹⁴⁵ Nov. : ASV, GR, R. , f. .¹⁴⁶ May : ASV, AC Raspe, R. /, f. v.¹⁴⁷ June : ASV, GR, R. , f. .

Fig. . The pointed end of this fifteenth-century Cologne lower die allowed it to besunk into a wooden table so that the blank could be placed on its upper surface.

Source: ANS ..


coin was held with the obverse right side up. Other denominations were not socarefully controlled, and the alignment on grossi and even ducats was allowed tovary beginning about .¹⁴⁸ In a similar way, grossi before the mid-fourteenthcentury and ducats of all periods were struck fully and evenly, whereas the lesserdenominations show signs of having been struck hurriedly: only part of theimage is fully struck into the flans. By , all the silver coins were poorly struckin comparison with earlier pieces or with the ducat.

The moneyers had a foreman, or gastaldio, whose responsibilities includedguarding the unstruck flans. In , the foreman Nicolò da le Pele received

grosso blanks, which he locked away in his strongbox.¹⁴⁹ A thief broke into thesafe and stole the blanks. In his accounts, the master of the quindena debitedthe loss to the state, but the account officials insisted that Nicolò be held re-sponsible for it. A year and a half later, the Great Council granted him a plea topay off the value of the stolen blanks in eight annual installments.

Unlike with the workmen and the emenders, the work of the moneyers wasnot organized into workshops. Each man received an allotment of blanks directlyfrom the master and was paid for that batch. The master checked that the coinswere beautiful (pulcros), well centered (bene tractos in medio et bene tractos extra), andnot visibly double-struck (non referitos).¹⁵⁰ Rejected coins would be cut and sentfor recoining, and the moneyer would be given half or less than the usual pay atthe discretion of the master. If his performance did not improve, the mastercould ban him from the mint. The workday of the moneyers varied with the sea-sons, as it did throughout the mint; only the refining process continued after theloss of sufficient natural light.

A maximum number of coins per man was set by law, but it was up to themaster to apportion the work—hence the stern, and no doubt ineffectual, warn-ing that the masters could take no bribes or favors from the moneyers in exchangefor special consideration.¹⁵¹The maximum daily allotment in the thirteenth cen-tury for each moneyer of grossi was , coins (almost marks) in summer,, in fall and winter, and , in spring.¹⁵² If a moneyer worked a twelve-hour day in summer, he would be striking coins at the rate of per minute. For


¹⁴⁸Philip Grierson: “Pegged Venetian Coin Dies: Their Place in the History of Die Adjust-ment,” Numismatic Chronicle, th ser., (): ; the “pegged dies” referred to in the title are ofthe eighteenth century. Stahl, “Three Parcels,” ‒ (grossi). Stahl, “Cephalonia Hoard,” ‒ (soldini). Stahl, Tornesello, . Ives and Grierson, Venetian Gold Ducat, .¹⁴⁹Cap. Broche, n. .¹⁵⁰CMM, cc. , , .¹⁵¹CMM, c. .¹⁵²CMM, c. .

piccoli, the pace was faster; in summer the maximum given a worker was marks,or , coins a day. Several factors allowed the strikers of piccoli to work morethan twice as fast as those of grossi, including the smaller dies they used andpossibly the cuplike shape of the coins.¹⁵³ Surviving specimens demonstrate thatthe faster pace of striking this denomination resulted in a coin that was, on thewhole, less well struck. In the strikers of soldini and mezzanini were strik-ing marks a day per man.¹⁵⁴ This was about half the weight of metal struckby the moneyers of grossi, but as more than twice as many soldini or mezzaniniwould have been struck from a mark of alloy, the rate of striking of these coinswas considerably faster than for the grosso.

Moneyers had to give a pledge of £ to the masters when they werehired.¹⁵⁵ This security, not extracted from workmen or emenders, was probablynecessary because the moneyers were the only workers who had access to finishedcoins. Such temptation is illustrated in the prosecution of three moneyers whostole mezzanini in , in the period of confusion and hardship following theBlack Death.¹⁵⁶ Bartolomeo, a refiner by trade but a moneyer at the mint, tookthe greatest amount: about , coins over an unspecified period. He was madeto restore the amount taken and spent a year in jail rather than paying a fine equalto the amount stolen; he was banned forever from the mint. Giovanni Baro stoleonly coins and was given the choice of a fine or two months in jail after resti-tution; he was banned from the mint for a year. Nicoleto Blanco took coinsand fled before his trial; his sentence, should he return, was the same as Baro’s.In the meantime, his pledge of £ would have more than covered the loss.

Moneyers could not leave Venice without the mintmaster’s permission, whichcould not be granted for more than a three-month period.¹⁵⁷ Eight moneyerswho left Venice soon after the plague to work in other mints were given theopportunity to return to work with a payment of only £, rather than the usualpenalty of £ or six months’ imprisonment.¹⁵⁸ The concentration of these

Within the Mint

¹⁵³The cupped shape of Venetian piccoli was typical of medieval pennies of northern Italy andwas part of a tradition that went back to Carolingian and Lombard issues. This fabric precededthe issue by the Byzantine mint of similar scyphate coinages. The evenness of the curve on theVenetian piccoli suggests that the dies themselves were curved, but there are no surviving dies ordocumentary evidence to support this.¹⁵⁴ Apr. : ASV, GR, R. , f. v. July : ibid., R. , f. v.¹⁵⁵CMM, c. .¹⁵⁶ Nov. : ASV, AC Raspe, R. /, fasc. , f. ; Nov. : ibid, f. .¹⁵⁷CMM, c. .¹⁵⁸ Dec. : ASV, GR, R. , f. v; Mar. : ibid., R. , f. v.; May , ibid., f. v.

cases at this time may reflect either the extreme conditions that caused these mento leave Venice or the eagerness of the mint to get them back because of a short-age of workers.

In this same period, the moneyers sought to get their wage raised for thestriking of piccoli, from £. per mark to £.; this appears to have been deniedin and again in .¹⁵⁹ At the rate in effect, a moneyer striking the maximumprescribed marks a day would have earned £. a day in summer or about £

per year for a work year of about days of varying length.¹⁶⁰ Finally, in

the rate for moneyers working on piccoli was raised from £. to £. permark.¹⁶¹ Moneyers of soldini received £. per mark from to , whenit was raised to £..¹⁶² Minters of grossi received £. per mark in andwere still paid at that rate after the reforms of .¹⁶³ In view of the fact thenumber of pieces in a mark increased steadily for the progressively lightened sil-ver coinage and the value of a wage paid in such coins decreased proportion-ately, it is not surprising that the grossi and soldini of the early fifteenth cen-tury show a marked decline in the care given in their striking.

The number of moneyers who could be employed at a time was set by law,and the position seems to have been coveted. At times, the moneyers were ableto sell their office to others, but this was banned by the end of the thirteenthcentury.¹⁶⁴ The maximum number was set at twenty moneyers for grossi andeight for piccoli by the end of the thirteenth century.¹⁶⁵ The number of strik-ers for grossi rose to twenty-five by .¹⁶⁶ In the gold mint there were onlythree moneyers before the boom of the mid-fourteenth century; this was raisedto five in and increased again the next year.¹⁶⁷

The moneyers were permitted to work outside the mint when there was notenough to keep them busy, and at times the masters found the shop under-


¹⁵⁹ Mar. : ibid., R. , f. ; May : ibid., R. , f. . The margin is blank for bothappeals, indicating they were not approved by the Great Council and the Forty.¹⁶⁰The cost of feeding a family has been estimated as about £. per year: Gino Luzzatto, “Ilcosto della vita a Venezia nel trecento,” Ateneo veneto (); reprinted in his Studi di storia eco-nomica (Padua, ), ‒.¹⁶¹ Sept. : ASV, SM, R. , f. .¹⁶² Apr. : DQ , :, #. Nov. : Cap. Broche, .¹⁶³ June : Cap. Broche, . Nov. : ibid., .¹⁶⁴CMM, c. .¹⁶⁵CMM, cc. , .¹⁶⁶ Oct. : ASV, GR, R. , f. , #.¹⁶⁷ Dec. : DQ , :, #. June : DQ , :, #.

staffed.¹⁶⁸ In they noted that the legal maximum had been set at twenty-fivebut that only eighteen men showed up for work.¹⁶⁹ The way the masters dealtwith the situation was by petitioning for special approval to hire more money-ers than allowed by law in the form of a grazia by the governing councils. By

a total of fifty men had been granted the status of moneyers as a result of suchpetitions, twice the number authorized. With the production of soldini andmezzanini in the following years, the need for moneyers grew, and the petitionscontinued. By between twenty and twenty-two moneyers were coming towork regularly, and by the number was up to twenty-six men.¹⁷⁰ By the endof the year, the legal limit had been raised to forty, sixty men had been admittedinto the position of moneyer, and twenty-seven men came regularly.¹⁷¹The mas-ters then protested that the mint had reached its capacity; there were only enoughwork benches for twenty-seven men, and there was no room to add others. Nev-ertheless, the Forty and the Great Council added five new men to the rolls ofthe moneyers.

Regulations required that no one over the age of twenty-five could be hiredas a moneyer and that the moneyers be Venetian.¹⁷²The citizenship rule appearsto have been followed; no one who was not a Venetian is known to have been aminter or is even documented as having petitioned to become one. On the otherhand, there were many appeals for exceptions to the age regulation. In fact,twenty-five years old may indeed have been an advanced age for the kind of laborinvolved in striking; Nicolò de Lambertis was promoted from striker on piccolito grossi at age eighteen.¹⁷³ It appears to have been necessary for masters to getpermission to move moneyers from working on piccoli to grossi, though a lawspecifically gave them discretion to allow men to work both denominations inthe same day.¹⁷⁴

The need to staff the mint above statutory limits and the desire to find lucra-tive manual labor for men over twenty-five resulted in a series of pleas for graziefrom the thirteenth through the early fifteenth centuries which give far more dataon the individual moneyers than for any other group of workers at the mint.¹⁷⁵

Within the Mint

¹⁶⁸ Dec. : CMM, c. .¹⁶⁹ Oct. : ASV, GR, R. , f. , #.¹⁷⁰ Apr. : ibid., f. v. July : ibid., R. , f. v.¹⁷¹ Dec. : ibid., R. , f. .¹⁷²CMM, cc. , .¹⁷³ May : ASV, GR, R. , f. v.¹⁷⁴CMM, c. a, dated Dec. in the capitulary but actually Dec. : DMC, :.¹⁷⁵These are almost all contained in the series ASV, Grazie, Registers ‒ (‒); two ear-lier pleas are in the capitulary of mintmasters, c. [] (), and MC Magnus, f. ().

A total of three hundred individuals are known from such pleas, but these donot constitute all who worked as moneyers: the three moneyers convicted of theftin are not known from grazie for their hiring.¹⁷⁶ All of the three hundredminters known from hiring pleas were Venetian; in one case of an individualidentified as the son of a man from outside the island, it is specified that he wasborn in Venice. The home parishes of forty-six of these moneyers are mentionedin the pleas; they are indicated on map . These are spread around Venice but,as might be expected, tend to avoid those on the Grand Canal, the favorite homeparishes of noble mint officials. There are two clusters of parishes that housedsignificant numbers of moneyers: twelve of them lived in the adjacent parishesof Santa Marina, Santa Maria Formosa, and San Giovanni Nuovo in the sestierof Castello, and seven lived in the parishes of San Polo, San Aponal, and SanSilvestro in the sestier of San Polo (map ).¹⁷⁷

Forty-two of the moneyers are identified in the documents with a Christ-ian name only, often with the addition of an occupational background, a father’sname, or a nickname. The remaining moneyers are identified with their fam-ily names. Two of them are identified as illegitimate sons of nobles (Nicoleto,son of Gabriele Dandolo, and Franceschino, son of Pietro Memmo), and fivemore have family names usually associated with the nobility and not appearingwith any non-noble households in the estimo of .¹⁷⁸ The rest appear to benon-noble, but no explicit mention of their status is made except for the wordcivis, which appears in several of the pleas from the early fifteenth century. Thetwo most frequent family names among moneyers are Bon (nine documented)and Rosso (five), but these were very common names in medieval Venice andappear in the estimo for many noble and non-noble households. Six familiesappear three times each; if the Calegari and the Coregari were the same family,their total is six.¹⁷⁹ An additional sixteen families are represented by two moneyers.

Two of the moneyers are specified as replacing a deceased father in the office,and one was hired while his father was still a moneyer. One moneyer had a late


The chronological distribution of these pleas is analyzed in the discussion of the volume ofminting, in Chap. , below. For the grazia procedure in general, see Carlo Guido Mor, “Il pro-cedimento per ‘gratiam’ del diritto amministrativo veneziano del sec. XIII,” in Favaro, Cassieredella Bolla Ducale, vii–xlviii.¹⁷⁶See above, n. .¹⁷⁷The parishes with more than one moneyer documented are San Giovanni Nuovo ( money-ers), Santa Maria Formosa (), Sant’ Apollinare (), Sant’ Angelo (), Santa Marina (), SanMarcuola (), Santa Giustina (), San Marziale (), and San Polo ().¹⁷⁸Caravello, Marcello, Venier, Zorzi, Zusto.¹⁷⁹The others are Cristaler, della Fontana, Maragona, and Merzario.

Map

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father as an emender, and two others are identified as sons of a mint refiner andcaster, respectively. One is known to have had a brother in the office, and theappearance of the same family name a year or two apart in a couple of othercases suggests other pairs of brothers. Of those with fathers specified as work-ing outside the mint, three were the sons of criers (precones), and one was the son-in-law of one. One was the son of a parish “corrector,” and another was the sonof a scribe. Nicoleto Tanolico was made a striker at the age of seventeen in ,just after the death of his father, Luca, an active silver merchant.

For nineteen of the moneyers an occupation is specified in the plea; mostof these are individuals otherwise identified only by their Christian names. Ofthese nine were refiners and four goldsmiths, that is, men with experience in theprivate working of precious metals; it is likely that they continued to practicetheir craft outside the mint when not working as moneyers. Three others wereblacksmiths, one was a silver broker, one a spice merchant, and one a painter.Fifteen of the pleas record the promotion of an individual from a striker of pic-coli to work on grossi. Only two mention other previous work in the mint, oneemender and one famulus, or laborer, and the only one referring to a state posi-tion outside the mint (at the post of Lugnano) is the sole plea extant from thethirteenth century.

In general, it appears that most of the moneyers were hired as youths undertwenty-five and had little work experience before the position. The exceptionswere those who were given the office of moneyer as compensation for some lossthey had suffered, usually in service to Venice. This could hardly have been asinecure, however, as moneyers were paid only on a piecework basis and wouldhave derived no income from holding the office itself (unless they managed tosell it surreptitiously). The largest number of these special hirings, usually witha specification that the individual was over twenty-five but still able, occurredfollowing the war with Genoa in the mid-fourteenth century. Eleven individu-als were hired, mostly in , as a result of service in this war; of them five werereturning from imprisonment in Genoa. Eight others were recognized for theirmilitary service, ranging from the war with the Scaligieri in the s to the cam-paigns of the Terraferma in the first decade of the fifteenth century.


The Standards of �edieval �enetian Coins

The stamping of blanks with the dies of the zecca certified them as officialcoins of Venice. This guaranteed that they were made of bullion of an estab-lished quality and had been minted within a certain weight range. Only onedenomination of gold coin was issued by medieval Venice, the ducat, and it wasalways supposed to be of pure gold. Silver-based coins were issued at variousalloys, and even those that were considered to be fine were of a basic alloy thatwas less than percent pure. No medieval coin issue could be of perfectly con-sistent weight; as tighter weight control added to minting expenses, the degreeof variation to be allowed was a significant factor in setting the standards for agiven issue. No documentation is extant for the standards of the coins follow-ing the great monetary mutation of , the first soldino and first and secondmezzanino, so these must be reconstructed on the basis of indirect evidence.

For the minting of ducats, gold was expected to be refined so that it was aspure as possible and to be coined unalloyed. The original authorization for thecoin called for it to be made of gold as fine as or finer than the Florentineflorin.¹ The florin was always reputed to be of -carat gold; extensive tests onthose produced before have shown them all to have been finer than carats grains (. fine) and most above carats grains (. fine).² By the earlyfifteenth century the standard for the ducat was set even higher than this; goldrefined to carats ½ grains had to be further purified before coining, even

¹ Oct. : PMV, ‒, #; Papadopoli, :.²Bernocchi, Monete, :‒.

beyond the theoretical carats.³ All merchant manuals of the Middle Ages arein agreement in considering the ducat to be carats pure.⁴ A small ingot toserve as a standard for this fineness was in the keeping of the Procurators ofSan Marco.⁵ Modern tests of Venetian ducats confirm their purity as above .percent.⁶

The fineness of Venetian silver coins, even those considered “pure,” changedover time (graph .). In their capitulary of , the mintmasters for silver sworeto make the grosso of such good silver that it would have not more than one-half of a quarter of dross per mark.⁷ As there were quarter ounces in a mark,the minimum fineness thus prescribed was ⁶³⁄⁶⁴, or .. This standard is referredto in thirteenth-century documents as grosso-grade silver.⁸ A half of a quarterounce could also be expressed as denari of fineness or carats, so the grossosilver prescribed in could be described as having a peggio, or worsening(L: peggior; V: pezo), of carats; this would become the usual way for describingthe amount of copper in the standard alloy of silver.⁹

In addition to the silver used in the grosso, other standards were used inVenice in the thirteenth century and early fourteenth. Ingots prepared at the mintfor use in trade were allowed to be denari per mark less fine than the grosso;this was known as the Venetian “sterling” standard.¹⁰ With the grosso at a peg-gio of carats, denari more copper per mark would give the “sterling” ingotsa peggio of ( + [ × ]) carats, or . fineness. Though less fine than thegrosso, these ingots were stamped with grosso dies and became known as argen-tum de bulla, or stamped silver. In the early-fourteenth-century list of silver alloys

The Standards of Medieval Venetian Coins

³ Apr. : ASV, SM, R. , f. v.⁴E.g., Pegolotti, Pratica, ; Uzzano, Pratica della mercatura, .⁵ Aug. : LCR, :, #. Less pure gold was used in Venice for other purposes, especiallybefore the minting of the florin. In , the standard for the goldsmith’s work within Venicewas set at ½ carats (.), and this was soon raised to ¾ carats (.): Dec. : DMC,:‒; the version of this in the capitulary of the supervisors of gold and silver, redactedbetween and , has the fineness as carats minus one-quarter: Monticolo and Besta,Capitolari, :‒.⁶Grierson, “Fineness of the Venetian Ducat,” ‒.⁷CMM, c. .⁸E.g., CMM, c. : “argenti tam boni sicut est grossus.” It was analogous to the “preliminaryalloys” of other contemporary mints, such as the argent-Montpellier, also of . in the mid-thirteenth century, or the argent-le-roy of other French mints: Etienne Fournial, Histoire monétairede l’occident médiéval (Paris, ), ‒.⁹See Lane and Mueller, Coins and Moneys of Account, , for the relationship of the units involvedhere. They follow Papadopoli in considering the thirteenth-century fineness of the grosso as., following Pegolotti’s fourteenth-century coin list: ibid., ‒.¹⁰ May : PMV, , #; June : PMV, ‒, #; CMM, c. .

Gra

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included in Pegolotti’s merchant manual, Venetian grossi are given as having afineness of oz d (in the Tuscan system of ounces to the libra and denarito the ounce), or . fine, while verghe della bolla di Vinegia are given at oz d, or..¹¹ Although these figures are lower than that prescribed in Venetian regula-tions of the previous century, the relative difference in fineness between coin sil-ver and de bulla ingots is confirmed. In an additional fineness was recognized,a lower one to be used by silversmiths in making their wares. This was definedas one-half ounce ( carats) per mark less than the grosso (.), which wouldbe a peggio of if the grosso was still at a peggio of .¹²

This three-tiered system of silver fineness did not last long. In , theForty prohibited the mintmasters from buying silver at denari less than “direct”and ordered them to buy only “direct” silver with no lack.¹³ This probably sig-naled the end of the distinction between the silver of the grosso and that oftrade ingots and of silversmiths’ silver; henceforth only the term argentum de bullaappears in discussions of fine silver, and it was apparently a single standard. In this was specified as being at a peggio of (.).¹⁴ In , when mint sil-ver was found to have been produced below the appropriate fineness, the sub-standard ingots were ordered to be remelted and refined to a peggio of as pre-scribed by law.¹⁵ In the standards were relaxed to allow a peggio of carats,or silver of . fineness.¹⁶The finenesses of . in , . in , and .

in are represented by the symbol for Venetian documents in graph ., whichplots the chronology of indications of the fineness of Venetian silver.

Venetian sources do not document the stages by which coin silver fell froma peggio of to that of . The mezzanino of was specified as being madefrom the same silver as the grosso; the soldino that succeeded them in wasto be of the same silver.¹⁷ A proposal in for a new soldino specifying that


¹¹Pegolotti, Pratica, , . There is also a listing for “argento della bolla di Venegia,” which isgiven as the same fineness as Venetian grossi.¹² Oct. : CMA, ff. ‒v; this text, an eighteenth-century copy of a lost regulation, saysthat this would make the silversmith’s standards half of a quarter less than the sterling ingot,while it would actually have been a quarter less than the sterling if this was denari or caratsbelow the grosso; another late version in vernacular in ASV, PZ, R. , ff. ‒, conflates the sen-tence concerning the relation to the sterling ingots with the following sentence.¹³ Oct. : DQ , :, #.¹⁴ Nov. : Cap. Broche, ‒.¹⁵ Mar. : ASV, AC Raspe, R. /, fasc. , ff. v–. This standard was recognizedin a Florentine coin list compiled in : Borlandi, Manuale di mercatura, , c. : “la marche de’soldini” of Venice at oz ½q fine (.).¹⁶ Feb. : Cap. Broche, ‒.¹⁷ Feb. []: ASV, XL, R. bis (Sanudo transcription), f. ; Apr. : DQ , :, #.

it be of argentum de bulla was defeated; the version that passed later that year didnot specify the fineness of the silver.¹⁸The legislation that reinstated the grossoin specified that it be of the same silver alloy as the soldino, but it did notspecify what that was; other regulations passed the same day limited all sales andworking of silver within Venice to stamped silver ingots.¹⁹ Nor did subsequentproclamations of standards for grossi or soldini specify their fineness, despiteoften overly stringent specifications for weight tolerance and limitations on thefineness of silver that would be accepted by the mint for coining.²⁰ It appearsthat, at least in public pronouncements, the Venetian Senate was being carefulnot to specify the fineness at which the mint was to work.

Several non-Venetian sources give figures for the fineness of Venetian coinsin the fourteenth century, labeled in graph . as “other documents.” In Pego-lotti’s chapter on the mint of Famagusta in Cyprus, composed around , henoted that silver was bought there according to fineness; the price quoted forVenetian grossi was . that of pure silver, while Venetian stamped silver ingots(Verghe della bolla) and plates (piatte) paid . that of pure silver.²¹ In , Ragusalowered the fineness of the “sterling” silver used for its coins to . fine, equiv-alent to a peggio of .²² Ragusa’s mint in this period was operated by Venetiannobles, delegated by the government of Venice. If the “sterling” standard therewas, like that in Venice, denari below the de bulla standard, this would have been.; this could well have been the same as the contemporary standard in Venice.Assays in and in Aquileia imply that results of and . and . puresilver were approved as consistent with an Aquileian standard of ¾ ounces Vene-tian silver; if this was the case, Venetian silver would then have been between .

and . fine at the time. The melt accounts of the Padua mint from listmezzanini from the period ‒ and the soldini minted immediately after thatat oz ½car fine (.).²³ Later Venetian soldini are referred to as bolzuni, adialect word for small coinage, and like contemporary Paduan carrarini arerecorded as being oz car fine (.).²⁴These external references would imply

Within the Mint

¹⁸ Oct. : PMV, ‒, # (as Oct.); Dec. : PMV, ‒, #.¹⁹ May : PMV, ‒, #.²⁰ July : Cap. Broche, ‒; June : PMV, ‒, #; Oct. : Cap. Broche, ; May : Cap. Broche, ‒; Nov. : Cap. Broche, ‒; Feb. []: Cap. Broche, ‒.²¹Pegolotti, Pratica, .²²Resetar, Zecca della Repubblica di Ragusa, .²³Rizzoli and Perini, Monete di Padova, ‒.²⁴According to Boerio, Dizionario, s.v. “bolzòn” and “polsòn,” the word is cognate to “Punzone”and means either punch or die.

figures for Venetian silver of about . in , . in , . in ‒, .

in ‒, and . by .A number of Tuscan coin lists of the fourteenth century give fineness figures

for the Venetian grosso; five manuscripts give six different figures, ranging fromoz d (.) to ¾ ounces (.).²⁵ These figures are all between the docu-mented Venetian standards for the thirteenth century (.) and the fifteenth(.), but there is no chronological tendency in the coin lists as dated by themanuscripts in which they appear. The variety in figures may reflect a changingstandard through the century, imperfectly represented in these compilations, ora confusion about the standards, perhaps encouraged by the Venetian authori-ties to cover an unpublicized decline in fineness.

Analytical tests were done in the nineteenth century on Venetian silver coinsto discern the percentage of silver in them. Nicolò Papadopoli had destructivewet chemical analysis done on specific Venetian coins whose fineness he wishedto determine. An analysis done in Venice on a grosso of Pietro Ziani (‒)gave a reading of ., which induced Papadopoli to project Pegolotti’s figureof oz d (.) back a century from its redaction in the early fourteenth cen-tury.²⁶ A mezzanino and a new soldino of Andrea Dandolo (c. ‒) and (‒) gave readings of . and ., respectively.²⁷ A test done in Paris gave a read-ing of . for a grosso of Andrea Contarini of Type , minted between and.²⁸ The classical chemical analysis as practiced by experienced technicians inthe late nineteenth century could produce results that were very accurate. Suchtests, if performed on a single specimen, however, could not take into accountvariations from coin to coin within an issue or the results of postmintingchanges from erosion while buried or subsequent cleaning. These figures arelabeled as “analysis” in graph ..

More modern methods of analysis permit coins to be tested nondestruc-


²⁵Other than those of Lippo and Pegolotti, these coin lists are unpublished. They were com-piled and dated by Allan Evans in the first half of the twentieth century for his projectednumismatic supplement to Pegolotti and are recorded in his papers on deposit at the AmericanNumismatic Society in New York. When possible, they have been checked against microfilms orphotos. C. : de la Roncière, Un changeur, : oz ½d (.); c. : Pegolotti, Pratica, ,: oz d (.); c. : Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana, MS , f. : ¾oz (.); c.: Florence, Biblioteca Laurenziana, MS XXX, , f. : oz d (.); c. : Prato,Archivio Datini, MS , f. v: oz d (.), and f. : oz d (.).²⁶Papadopoli, :‒; .²⁷Ibid., ‒.²⁸Ibid., .

tively, but all have limitations and uncertainties.²⁹ In , the Conservation De-partment of the Metropolitan Museum of Art performed energy dispersiveX-ray spectroscopy analysis on two Venetian grossi in the collection of the Amer-ican Numismatic Society.³⁰ These coins were cut in half so that readings couldbe done of their interior as well as their surface. A grosso of Jacopo Contarini(‒) was found to have an interior composition of . silver, and a Type grosso of Antonio Venier (‒) had an interior composition of ..³¹It is of interest that the surfaces of these coins were about percent finer thantheir interiors, . and ., respectively, owing to either chemical blanching atthe time of manufacture or copper depletion caused by burial and cleaning. Thusthe surfaces appear to be about percent finer than the alloy from which the coinwas actually minted. The results for the interiors of these coins are plotted ingraph . as XRS.

In the same year, nine grossi, two mezzanini, and four soldini were testedat Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, by X-ray fluorescence analysis, a mea-sure of surface fineness.³² An analysis of a soldino of Michele Morosini ()

Within the Mint

²⁹For a critical survey of such methods, see W. A. Oddy et al., “Scientific Techniques inNumismatics,” in A Survey of Numismatic Research, ‒, ed. M. Price et al. (London, ),:‒.³⁰American Numismatic Society (hereafter cited as “ANS”) .. (Jacopo Contarini) andANS .. (Antonio Venier); results were conveyed in a report of July by Mark T.Wypyski, MMA, and a letter of Sept. from Ann Heywood, MMA, to Alan M. Stahl,ANS.³¹The variation in silver content for these readings is given as .. For the interior measure-ments, the remainder of the alloy was found to be copper; for the surface measurements about. of iron was detected on each coin.³²The results were reported in a letter of May from Professor Giles Carter, EasternMichigan University, to Alan M. Stahl, ANS. The coins tested and their results were: ..,grosso of Pietro Ziani (‒), .; .., grosso of Ranieri Zeno (‒), .;.., grosso of Giovanni Dandolo (‒), .; .., grosso of Giovanni Soranzo(‒), .; .., grosso of Francesco Dandolo (‒), .; .., grosso ofAndrea Dandolo (‒), .; .., mezzanino of Andrea Dandolo, .; ..,mezzanino of Andrea Dandolo, .; .., Type grosso of Antonio Venier (‒),.; .., soldino of Antonio Venier (‒), .; .., soldino of Antonio Venier(‒), .; .., Type grosso of Antonio Venier (‒), .; .., grossoof Michele Steno (‒), .; .., soldino of Michele Steno, .; ..,grosso of Tomaso Mocenigo (‒), .; .., soldino of Michele Steno, .. It mustbe noted that an earlier report, of Apr. , had consistently lower readings than these; whenthe findings were questioned, Professor Carter readjusted all the instrumentation and retestedthe coins. Carter is one of the most experienced and careful practitioners of this type of analy-sis, and the discrepancy in readings is a caution as to the expectable problems of this type ofanalysis and is in no way a reflection of Professor Carter’s level of skill or care.

found at Torcello was given a figure of . silver.³³ In line with the results fromthe MMA tests, the results of surface analysis done at EMU and from Torcelloshould be lowered by percent to compensate for surface enrichment and are socorrected in graph ., where they are labeled XRF.

The figures for the fineness of Venetian coin silver from all sources from to are compared in graph .. It is apparent that there is no evidencefor either a single standard through the period or a clear progression of stan-dards. By themselves, the three officially documented Venetian standards of .

in , . in , and . in form a line of decline, which might reflectan unpublicized gradual debasement in mint fineness. Most of the other docu-ments and modern tests fall below this line. The Tuscan coin lists, which mayhave had old information at the time of their compilation, give generally higherfigures than the results from modern analysis. The chemical analyses show gen-erally higher silver contents than do the more modern techniques. Taken together,the data do indicate an overall decline in the fineness of Venetian coin silver inthe course of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. They also allow the pos-sibility that at least some of the coins were actually made less fine than officialstandards.³⁴

The tolerance permitted for weight variation was set by legislative bodiesand was different for the various coins. For the gold ducat, standards were verycarefully controlled. The weight was set at ducats per mark, and the coinscould not leave the mint unless of them weighed between a mark and a markplus carats, that is, between . grams and . grams.³⁵ Thus each ducatcould vary between . and . grams, a maximum variance of less than .percent per coin. Similarly, the grosso of the thirteenth century could range from


³³Stanis¿aw Tabaczynski, “Monete e scambi,” in L. Leciejewicz et al., Torcello, scavi ‒

(Rome, ), . The other components were measured as . CU, . PB, . BI, .AU, and . SN.³⁴Although it is possible that the coins as studied today are different in content than when theywere issued, most chemical processes would have depleted the copper in the alloy before the sil-ver, leaving them finer today than at the time of manufacture. It is not impossible that one ortwo of the coins tested were substandard counterfeits, but they have all been carefully examinedby the author (except for those tested in the nineteenth century) and appear to be genuineproducts of the Venetian mint.³⁵CMO, c. .

½ coins per mark to ⅓ (. to . gr per coin, a tolerance of about.%).³⁶ Such close control took time and exacted high labor costs; although itwas deemed worthwhile for the ducat and grosso, trade coins of immense impor-tance symbolically as well as for the intrinsic value of their metal, this tight con-trol was not practical for all denominations.

Considerations involved in the control of the weight are illustrated in aseries of proposals brought before the Senate in for the mutation that ledto the Type soldino. On May it was noted by the mint advisors that the sol-dini leaving the mint were so uneven in weight that users were weighing the newcoins and culling the heavy ones while spending the light ones.³⁷ This resultedin an effective lightening of the circulating coinage, which was seen as an insultto the reputation of the state. Attention was called to the special problems thatthis situation brought to bankers.

New regulations were adopted which required the emenders to keep theblanks between and coins per ounce, or . to . grams per coin. Nopiece could be issued above . grams.³⁸ A special foreman was to be designatedfor enforcing this weight range. He was to take one-quarter of the emendedblanks and check each one to make sure none was above the maximum weight;this checking of individual pieces was known as the examination al pezzo. If thesample of blanks passed this first test, the foreman would then weigh out a markof these blanks and count them, thus testing them al marco. If there were between and blanks in a mark (an average of between . and . grams perblank), he could pass the whole batch on to the workmen for finishing. If, how-ever, while checking them he found a single overweight blank or found fewerthan blanks per mark, he would return the whole batch to the emenders,who would have to fix them at their own expense. A privy mark was to be placedon the dies to indicate the identity of the foreman, so that if an overweight coinwas found in circulation, he could be held to a fine of one penny per coin sofound.³⁹ When the coins had been blanched and neatened by the workers, theywere to be checked by the mintmasters, who were to ensure that each mark hadbetween and soldini. The allowance of . grams variance on a coinideally weighing . grams works out to a tolerance, or remedy, of . percent,

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³⁶CMM, c. .³⁷Cap. Broche, ‒.³⁸The text in the Capitolare dalle Broche gives only coins per ounce at this point; that in theMisti of the Senate has “in LXIII pro oncia” added in the column; this is confirmed by therevision of this act on July, again somewhat garbled in the Broche but clear in the Misti, SM,R. , f. ‒v.³⁹No such mark has been identified on soldini of this issue.

a rather close allowance by premodern standards. To reward the emenders forthis close work, their wage was raised from £. to £. per mark.

The tolerance was, in reality, too close. The emenders, who are said to haveagreed to the new regulation in view of the raised wages, appear to have refusedto worked on soldini. Three Senate advisors went to the mint to investigate, andthen each proposed his own solution. Marino Bon advocated simply opening upthe tolerance to a range of to coins per ounce (from . to . gr percoin), a remedy of . percent and probably a lower overall weight.⁴⁰ Giovannide Garzoni suggested setting the maximum and minimum weight of each indi-vidual blank at and to the ounce, respectively (.–. gr) but requir-ing them as a group to fall between and per ounce; this would have keptthe coinage at the same average range as before while allowing more variance onindividual pieces. The third proposal, by Bernardo da Mola, was similar but atlower weights all around: a maximum and minimum set at and , respec-tively, and an aggregate range from to coins per ounce. This last proposal,in effect a debasement, carried by a large margin. All three advisors included aprovision that the emenders who refused to work on soldini could not hence-forth work on torneselli; apparently the baser tornesello had a more relaxed tol-erance or a higher piecework wage than the soldino.

Again, the tolerance was too tight for the emenders to enforce, at least forthe compensation they were being offered. Less than two weeks later, the Sen-ate once more had to revise the standards. This time Marino Bon proposed avery wide individual allowance, from to coins per ounce (.‒. gr,a remedy of almost %), but with the aggregate average held at to coinsper ounce.⁴¹ The Senate, however, adopted the proposal of the other two ad-visors for a weight range of individual soldini from to coins per ounce (.‒

. gr, a .% tolerance) but a tightened aggregate average between ¼ and¾.⁴² Emenders who refused these conditions could be banned from workingon any coins at all for the next two months.

All this concern appears to have had at least a bit of success. In the Cephalo-nia hoard, buried early in the fifteenth century, there are soldini in the nameof Antonio Venier minted before this legislation (Type ) and minted afterit (Type ).⁴³ The standard deviation of those minted after the tolerance set inJuly is . grams around a mean weight of . grams (%). This means


⁴⁰ July : ASV, SM, R. , f. .⁴¹ July : ibid., f..⁴²Cap. Broche, ‒.⁴³Stahl, “Cephalonia Hoard,” ‒. Eight thousand torneselli in the hoard of Venier’s reign

that about two-thirds of the specimens fall between . and . grams, com-pared with the range of . to . allowed in the legislation and the prescribedmean of .. The weights of the extant coins are somewhat lower overall thanthe prescribed ones, perhaps as a result of loss in circulation or in the ground,but their range is reasonably tight, tighter than that of the issue preceding ,whose standard deviation in the hoard is . grams (% of the mean). Themean weight of the Type soldini is also closer to the modal weight (that of themost common coin: . gr) than for the earlier group (. mean and .

mode), suggesting less culling or clipping of heavy coins, either at the mint orin circulation. These hoard statistics suggest a tighter control of issue weight, butthe number of coins is not great enough to be definitive.

Around , the coinage system of Venice underwent a major change (seeabove, Chap. ). Instead of operating on a system whereby the mint bought sil-ver at market rates and minted the fine-silver grosso for a small added value,there was now a forced minting of imported silver into coins with a high per-centage of added value, resulting in significant profit (see above, Chap. ). As nolegislation connected with the adoption of the new soldino or mezzanino isextant, it is necessary to reconstruct their standards from indirect references andthe analysis of surviving specimens.

In , the friesacher of Aquileia went to a standard of ⅞ ounces silverper mark and coins to the mark, creating a coin of . percent silver weigh-ing . grams.⁴⁴ There is, however, no evidence that these standards were takenby Venice for its new soldino, though they may have lain behind the idea to minta coin of weight and fineness intermediate to the piccolo and grosso.

The debate surrounding the standards for a new soldino twenty years afterthe initiation of the original issue gives information that might be taken as defin-ing the fineness of the early soldini. In one of the proposals before the Fortyfor the new soldino proposed that it be made “in the alloy prescribed below andof the appearance of the other soldini, that is, that it be of ounces silver debulla and ounces copper per mark.”⁴⁵ This does not explicitly say that the old

Within the Mint

had a standard deviation of . grams (%) around a mean of . and a mode of ., indi-cating a wider original tolerance than for the soldino.⁴⁴ May : de Rubeis, “De nummis Patriarcharum Aquilejensium,” :‒.⁴⁵ Mar. : DQ , :‒, #.

soldini were five eighths grosso-quality silver but could be taken to suggest it.Five-eighths of . silver would be an alloy . percent fine.⁴⁶

Another figure for the fineness of this issue comes from later documenta-tion. In the mintmaster of Padua rendered his accounts to that government.⁴⁷He described the coins he took in as bullion and their fineness. One entry is for“soldi vecchi veneciani da lione,” which he accounts at a fineness of oz carper mark, that is, ⁹⁶⁄¹⁴⁴ divided by , or . percent silver.⁴⁸ There can be littledoubt that the reference is to the original issue of Venetian soldini, as later oneshad a much higher fineness. This implies that the original alloy for soldini wasa ratio of about three parts silver to two parts copper.

A nineteenth-century assay found a soldino of the first issue to have a sil-ver content of percent.⁴⁹ Examples in the Caparelli hoard were assayed around; a group characterized as feeling “resistant” were found to have . per-cent silver, and those described as “soapy” tested at . percent silver; Coxsuspected the latter class to be forgeries.⁵⁰ A recent X-ray fluorescence analysisof two soldini of the issue found them to be . percent and . percent sil-ver, respectively.⁵¹ Differential corrosion of silver and copper can cause coins togain in the percentage of silver through centuries of burial; this is especially sig-nificant for very thin coins such as these soldini. The results would show thespecimens today to be finer than when the coins were minted. The figures fromthe Padua document of three-fifths fineness (%) are then reasonably con-sistent with the analyses that test modern specimens at a bit above two-thirdsfineness.

The only Venetian mezzanini in the Padua accounts are mezzanini da labandiera with . percent silver; these must be the mezzanino issue of the s,not the one of the s. The nineteenth-century assay found a mezzanino of


⁴⁶See above for a discussion of the fineness of the basic Venetian silver. It had been . in thethirteenth century and was to be . in ; the figure of . is that given by Pegolotti in theearly fourteenth century: see Philip Grierson, “The Coin List of Pegolotti,” Studi in onore diArmando Sapori (Milan, ), ‒; reprinted in his Later Medieval Numismatics (London, ).⁴⁷Published in Verci, “Monete di Padova,” :‒; reprinted in Rizzoli and Perini, Monete diPadova, ‒, #.⁴⁸This appears to have been a value in terms of pure silver, rather than the standard Venetianbasic alloy, as Venetian “fine” silver coins of the mid-fourteenth century are listed in this docu-ment as being . fine, and later ones as ..⁴⁹Papadopoli, :.⁵⁰Cox, Caparelli Hoard, .⁵¹Performed by Giles Carter, Eastern Michigan University, May ; see above for commentson the methodology.

the s to have percent silver. No mezzanini of this issue were in the Capar-elli hoard or have been tested recently.⁵² In any case, it is certain that these coinswere not made of silver as fine as that for grossi and were probably finer thanthe soldini issued at the same time.

The issue weight of the two new coins is likewise not documented. Papa-dopoli gives the weight of the soldino as ½ Venetian grains, or . grams,even though the examples in his own collection weighed less.⁵³The mean weightof the twenty-seven examples listed in the Corpus Nummorum Italicorum is .

grams, and they are too spread out from . to . grams to see any concen-tration or modal weight.⁵⁴The supposedly genuine soldini in the Caparelli hoardare said to have had an average weight of . grams for those in the name ofFrancesco Dandolo, . for those of Bartolomeo Gradenigo, and . for theunclipped coins of Andrea Dandolo, with two weighing . and . grams,respectively.⁵⁵

A hoard deposited in the first years of the fifteenth century had soldiniof Francesco Dandolo from the s.⁵⁶These coins have a mean weight of .

grams but have a clear modal distribution in the .‒. range ( specimens,or %), with only specimens above that. Of course these coins may have lostweight from wear in the seven decades between their minting and burial, but

soldini in the same hoard of Giovanni Dolfin (‒) have a modal weight inthe .‒. range ( specimens, or %), just below the . prescribed weightdocumented for them.⁵⁷ It appears, then. that wear is not much of a factor inthis hoard and that the mint weight of these coins was about . grams. This

Within the Mint

⁵²The two mezzanini of Francesco Dandolo belonging to the American Numismatic Societywere stolen from the mails in an armed robbery while on their way to be tested; no replace-ments could be procured for examination.⁵³Papadopoli, :; Giuseppe Castellani, ed., Catalogo della raccolta numismatica Papadopoli-Aldobrandini(Venice, ), :‒: # (Francesco Dandolo), . gram; # (Bartolomeo Grade-nigo), . gram; #‒ (Andrea Dandolo), ., ., . gram.⁵⁴CNI, :‒, ‒, .⁵⁵Cox, Caparelli Hoard, ‒; the figure for Francesco Dandolo, however, is uncertain, as Coxgives only one figure and speaks about the difference in weights as though she has given figuresfor both genuine and forgeries; it is unclear which the . is intended to be.⁵⁶Of the , soldini in the hoard, the latest were of Antonio Venier, just before . Of, torneselli, , were of Michele Steno, just after : Stahl, “Cephalonia Hoard,”‒.⁵⁷There is a secondary grouping of weights in the .‒. range, corresponding to the issueweight of the soldino at the time of the burial of this hoard. It appears that many of thesegood-silver soldini were clipped down to the new standard; the same does not appear to be thecase for the alloyed soldini of the s in this hoard.

is close to the . given by Papadopoli and works out to about coins permark.

Again for the mezzanino, there are fewer bases for estimation of issue weight.Papadopoli gives . grams (Venetian grains), again with no justification.⁵⁸The first issue of the mezzanino was minted only in the name of Francesco Dan-dolo, so it must have been abandoned by . No hoards have been publishedwhich contain these coins. Weights are available on a total of only twelve spec-imens of the coin, ranging from . to . grams, with a mean of . grams;three of the specimens weigh . grams, but four are above this (one at ., twoat ., and one at .).⁵⁹ The data are slim, but they point to an issue weightaround ., not the . inferred by Papadopoli.

We can then use the figures of three-fifths grosso-grade silver and coinsto the mark as the approximate standards for the soldino issue of to .Figures for the fineness and the weight of the mezzanino are more problemati-cal. Rather than trying to calculate independent figures for the standards of themezzanino, we can assume that if both it and the soldino were intended to cir-culate within Venice at values of pennies and pennies, respectively, theymust have had relatively that ratio of silver in them or the operation of Gre-sham’s law would have resulted in the relatively finer one being removed fromcirculation through hoarding.⁶⁰ In actuality, the mezzanino appears to have dis-appeared from circulation rather quickly; since none were minted in the nameof the successors of Francesco Dandolo, it cannot have lasted until . How-ever, the Venetian councils appear to have been sophisticated enough in the con-trol of coinage by this time not to have put the issues too far out of line witheach other.

The first issue of the soldino served as the basis for the Venetian monetasystem until it was replaced in with a new type of mezzanino. The delib-erations of the Forty are not extant for this year, and the only records we haveconcerning the adoption of the new coin are from transcriptions of selectedentries made in the sixteenth century by the diarist and historian Marin Sanudo.In January , the Forty elected a team of advisors to deliberate about a “muta-tion” of coinage, a term that generally means a change in standards, usually a


⁵⁸Papadopoli, :.⁵⁹CNI, :‒; Castellani, Raccolta numismatica, :; three unpublished specimens in the Corrercollection, and two formerly in the ANS but stolen from the post.⁶⁰See Lane and Mueller, Coins and Moneys of Account, ‒, for a discussion of the workings ofthis principle.

debasement.⁶¹ Two weeks later these advisors came back to the Forty for a voteon whether the new coin should be of pure grosso-grade silver or of an alloycontaining copper; the Forty chose pure silver by a large margin.⁶²The new coinwas initiated within the year; in January a proclamation in Crete prescribedthe circulation there of the “mezzanini newly ordered by the doge” at a value of piccoli.⁶³The implication of this decree as well as of the term mutation is thatthe new mezzanino was intended to replace the soldino as the base of the liradi piccoli system rather than circulate alongside it.

The documentation indicates that the new coins were to be of grosso-gradesilver, and this is borne out by tests on modern examples.⁶⁴The Padua doc-ument lists “veneziani mezanini da la bandiera” at ounces ½ carats, that is,. fine. The weight is not documented. Papadopoli estimated it at ½ grains,that is, to the mark, or about . grams. Unlike the rare first mezzaninoissue, this second one with the name of doge Andrea Dandolo is not uncom-mon in modern collections. Of fifty-six specimens in published and public col-lections (including that of Papadopoli), not one weighs as much as ..⁶⁵ Themean weight for this group is . grams, and coins (%) are of this weightor above it, with a clear modal distribution in the .‒. range. An originalissue weight of around . grams, or about to the mark, seems, then, morelikely than that estimated by Papadopoli.

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⁶¹ Jan. []: ASV, XL, R. bis (Sanudo), f. .⁶² Feb. []: ibid.⁶³ Jan. []: ASV, ADC, Proclami, B. , f. , #.⁶⁴A nineteenth-century assay gave a figure of . fine: Papadopoli, :; X-ray fluorescenceanalysis on two specimens in the ANS collection gave readings of . percent and . percent,respectively.⁶⁵CNI, :‒; Castellani, Raccolta numismatica, :; collections of Museo Civico Correr, Venice;Museo Civico e Sforzesco, Milan; American Numismatic Society, New York.

The �olume of Production at the �enetian �ecca

:

There are no extant series of records for the quantities of coins producedby the Venetian mint in the Middle Ages. From the size of the building and thenumber of staff, we know that the maximum capacity was large, and from theimportance of Venetian issues in finds and hoards we can be sure that they wereone of the major coinages of their day, but it is difficult to go far beyond thesegeneralizations.

One thing we can be certain of is that the production varied considerablyover time. There must have been variation within the week, with Sunday mint-ing only in periods of the greatest rush. In , the Signoria obtained the con-sent of the patriarch in order for the zecca to operate on Sunday to meet theneeds of departing galleys.¹

The next highest level of this variation was seasonal. The winds and weatherof the Mediterranean and the snows of the Alps produced annual cycles of com-mercial activity in Venice and hence great fluctuations in the amount of bullionbrought by northern merchants and the demand for coinage by those departingin the galleys. A detailed picture of this seasonal cycle is offered by a Florentinemerchant in his description of the Venetian money market in the early fifteenthcentury.² From the middle of February through April there was little money and

¹ Sept. : Cap. Broche, . In Bayonne, France, Sunday minting occurred only twice in ,but finished coins were delivered or issued on Sundays much more often: Marc Bompaire, “Lescadences de production (XIVe–XVIe S.), en France principalement,” in Rythmes de la productionmonétaire, de l’antiquité à nos jours, ed. G. Depeyrot et al., Publications d’histoire de l’art etd’archéologie de l’Université Catholique de Louvain (Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, ),‒.²Published as an annex to Reinhold Mueller, “‘Chome l’uciello di passagio’: La demande

little economic activity. Things began to pick up in May, when the demand formoney for the fleets began to be felt. From July to July were the termini, orig-inally the period for the loading of the first galleys for Romania (the Aegean)but also the due date of many financial obligations. During this period demandfor coins and precious metals would be at its highest, and a great amount of bul-lion would have passed through the mint.³ At the end of July three more galleysfor Romania would depart, and from August to August the Beirut galleyswere readied, followed by those for Alexandria the first two days of September.The galleys returned in November, and Germans brought in some bullion topay for purchases; all was then quiet until the departure of the cotton galleys inJanuary, which also carried significant coinage.

A Genoese merchant manual of the period notes that the coinage of Venicerose in value in March and continued to rise through the departure of the lastgalleys in early September.⁴ It warns merchants to redeem Venetian coins theyhold before this point, since their value will drop significantly immediately there-after. A later Florentine manual notes a major demand for coinage in Venice fromJuly to September for the Levantine galleys, with smaller peaks in January forthe Syrian cotton galleys and in April for the Flanders galley.⁵

The relationship of minting activity to the movement of commerce wasmediated by the use of bank money to settle transactions, the use of old coinsby merchants alongside newly minted ones, and the possibility of using ingotsrather than coins in foreign transactions.⁶ In general, however, it is likely that themint saw its greatest activity in spring and early summer, when foreigners broughtbullion to the city and Venetians sought to transform various forms of wealthinto the physical specie that would be needed for trade in the East. This was, ofcourse, also the period of the longest daylight, when workers could produce themost coins in their unlighted workshops. Conversely, the fall and winter wouldbe periods of less supply of bullion, lessened demand, and slower production.

The seasonal nature of minting can be seen in the example of the Floren-tine mint, for which medieval mint records do exist, though in an incompleteseries. The Florentine mint reports are divided into semesters, with the first se-mester of the year going from early May to early November and the second

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saisonnière des espèces et le marché des changes à Venise au Moyen Age,” in Etudes d’histoire moné-taire, ed. John Day (Lille, France: Presses Universitaires de Lille, ), ‒.³Mueller, “L’uciello”, ‒.⁴Borlandi, Manuale di mercatura,‒, c. .⁵Borlandi, Libro di mercatantie, , c. .⁶See Mueller, Venetian Money Market, ‒.

semester covering winter and spring. The production of gold florins in the sec-ond semesters of , , and was respectively pounds of bullion,

pounds, and pounds; the production in the other semester of each year wasrespectively , , and pounds.⁷ Thus in Florence the minting of gold in thehalf of the year ending in May could be up to eight times heavier than that inthe other half. Even within these three years, however, the relationship changedsignificantly. The seasonal variation in the production of silver in Florence ap-pears to have been even more dramatic; whereas the second semester of sawthe minting of , pounds of silver, the semesters immediately preceding andfollowing saw the minting of only and pounds, respectively.⁸The divisionof the year into two semesters makes it difficult to see the impact of specific sea-sonal forces, and those in Florence were no doubt significantly different fromthose in Venice, but it is evident that seasonal variations of great proportionswere likely at the Venetian zecca.

There must also have been significant changes from year to year. War, plague,competition, and the opening and closing of trade routes and foreign marketsmust have had their effect on the amount of bullion which came through Venice.The policies of the state regulating the use of Venetian coinage in trade emanat-ing from its port, the price set for bullion by the mint and the standards of thecoins, and the imposition of the quinto and decimo would have had immediateconsequences in the volume of production from year to year. Again, the recordof Florence is instructive for comparison purposes. In the s, the productionof gold rose from about pounds a year in the beginning of the decade toabout pounds a year by its end.⁹ Silver production saw a drop from an annualproduction of , pounds of grossi in ‒ to , pounds two years later.¹⁰

Above the level of yearly variations in production are those of longue durée,the results of long-term movements in bullion supply. The most important suchtrend for the Venetian mint in the later Middle Ages was the apparent bullionfamine in Europe which reached its height at the beginning of the fifteenth cen-tury.¹¹ This is evidenced in a decline in the quantity of bullion minted in vari-

The Volume of Production at the Zecca

⁷Bernocchi, Monete, :. Bullion in Florence was weighed in terms of a pound of ounces,which was equal to about . marks of Venice, or about . modern kilograms: cf. Pegolotti,Pratica, .⁸Bernocchi, Monete, :.⁹Ibid., ‒.¹⁰Ibid., ‒.¹¹The general evidence for this phenomenon is laid out in several studies of John Day gatheredtogether in his Medieval Market Economy, particularly “The Great Bullion Famine of the FifteenthCentury,” ‒, originally published in Past and Present (): ‒.

ous European mints, beginning in England in the s and spreading to mostdocumented mints by the end of the century. The worst of the famine appearsto have been in relation to silver rather than gold and to have been most severein the period to .

The bullion famine can be seen as resulting from a constant drain of pre-cious metals from Europe to the East due to an uneven balance of trade, whichwas not offset by sufficient imports of metal or mining of new ore. A contraryhypothesis would be that the lack of activity at European mints was the resultof a depressed economy, caused by such factors as population decline and pro-longed warfare, or long-term “secular” cycles.¹² The effect of such a Europeandepression on Venice could have been to lower the demand for imported goodsand hence decrease the commerce through its port and the metal that flowedthrough it to fund the commerce. Another hypothesis holds that the demo-graphic crisis following the Black Death and plague recurrences favored a con-centration of wealth which increased demand for the luxury goods that featuredprominently in Venetian trade.¹³ Records of galley auctions and private businessletters suggest that the level of trade between Venice and the Levant in fact re-mained high in the early fifteenth century; whatever shortage there may havebeen of coinage and bullion was compensated for by the diversification of tradethrough the export to the East of European commodities.¹⁴

Although the volume of production at the Venetian mint is inextricably tiedin to long-term changes in other European coinages, it cannot be inferred by asimple extrapolation from conditions at other mints. It will be necessary to piecetogether the fragmentary evidence for mint production in late medieval Venicefrom whatever sources, documentary or numismatic, can be validly brought tobear on the issue.

Although no series of archival records exist of the production of the Vene-tian mint, there are scattered references in the documentary sources which canbe analyzed to extract some quantitative data. In some cases, the numbers are

Within the Mint

¹²See the discussions of these questions in Bartolomé Yun, “Economic Cycles and StructuralChanges,” in Handbook of European History, ‒, ed. Thomas A. Brady Jr. et al. (Leiden,), :‒, and John H. Munro, “Patterns of Trade, Money, and Credit,” in Brady, Handbook,‒.¹³Miskimin, Economy of Early Renaissance Europe, ‒.¹⁴Stahl, “Venetian Commerce.”

prescribed amounts, even prescribed minimum or maximum quantities, and mustbe considered more in terms of the goals of the state and the potential of themint than actual production. Many of the data are derived from the testimonyfrom officials seeking a grazia or other special favor. Such pleas tend to be self-serving and may exaggerate when specifying quantities; even the fact that such aboon was granted does not validate the statistics cited in the complaint, as it isunlikely that the councils involved verified such numbers before recording or ac-cepting such a plea. Most data in these documents are expressed in terms of theamount of bullion in a mint at a given time. It is likely, though not certain, thatthis would be the total amount minted in a quindena, the period of activity ofa mintmaster, who usually took in bullion at the beginning of the quindena andpaid out coins at the end of it. The exact length of the quindena is by no meanscertain, but it appears to have been two months under regular circumstances inboth the gold and silver mints in the fourteenth century and early fifteenth (seeabove, Chap. ).

The figures for the production of gold ducats are particularly exiguous. Atthe time of the flood of gold in , the Forty established a second team forthe minting of ducats, which would function whenever more than marksof gold was in the mint.¹⁵ As it was to be decided by lot which masters andweighers would work the quindena if the sum was less than marks, it is likelythat this figure was the amount of bullion to be processed in two months. Sevenhundred marks of gold would be kilograms of bullion and would haveproduced , ducats in the two-month period, or , kilograms and ,

ducats per year. As the two-team system was put into effect when productionsurpassed this figure, we can infer that production must have been between, and , kilograms a year at the height of the ducat minting in the mid-fourteenth century.

In , the sole weigher in the gold mint, Francesco Spirito, sought a raisein his salary after twenty-two years of loyal service.¹⁶ The mintmasters testifiedthat Spirito did indeed deserve the raise because the amount of gold had risenfrom an earlier level of marks per quindena to a present level of , marks.Thus, the rate of production in the gold mint had risen from about ,

ducats a year sometime in the past to , ducats per year that year, or fromabout kilograms a year to more than , kilograms. In , the mint’sblacksmith, who had been in the position for more than twenty-eight years, was


¹⁵ June : DQ , :‒, #.¹⁶ Apr. : ASV, GR, R. , f. ; though the MS is damaged, the relevant part of the text isclear, as is the fact that the grazia was granted by both the Forty and the Great Council.

granted a raise because of the great amount added to his labor by the “greatquantity of gold which [was] brought to Venice.”¹⁷ This was the time when therest of Europe’s mints were experiencing their greatest famine.

In , the Venetian Senate debated a reform of the gold mint, one of sev-eral attempted in the period. One of the proposals, which did not pass, beganwith a preamble that decried the ever growing absence of gold from the mint.¹⁸The preamble of the proposal that did pass spoke only of the necessity of main-taining the age-old vigilance for the reputation of the city, which rested on therecognition of the ducat as the finest of all coins.¹⁹ One provision of the acceptedlegislation noted that the quantity of gold in the mint sometimes exceeded thevalue of , ducats and hence it was advisable to share the responsibility byelecting two additional masters to supplement (and keep an eye on) the existingmasters, serving the same quindena as each of these.²⁰ As the gold mint oftenpaid off suppliers of bullion with previously minted coins, it is not certain thatthe amount of gold in the mint at a given time would have represented the totalprocessed in one quindena, as might be inferred for the silver mint. If it doesrepresent the minting of the quindena, , ducats would imply the proc-essing of kilograms of gold in a two-month period.

In his sixteenth-century history, Marin Sanudo records that on ChristmasEve of , a fire threatened the mint, which at that time had , ducats’worth of coins in it.²¹ If these were all gold and represented the amount proc-essed in the current quindena, this would work out to a production of ,

ducats a year if production was constant, a bit more than , kilograms a year.Although the figures given above are divergent and exceptional, the general con-clusion is that more than , kilograms of gold a year was a level that wouldhave been considered high for the zecca in the Middle Ages.

For the silver mint there are somewhat more references that can be used tocalculate quantities of minting. There was always concern on the part of thegovernment that the mint issue sufficient piccoli, which were small and base andoffered the mint much work for relatively little profit. In the Forty ordered

Within the Mint

¹⁷ Aug. : ibid., R. , f. .¹⁸ Apr. : ASV, SM, R. , f. : “Per li mancamenti di hori che ogni anno se truova in lanostra cecha de l’oro . . .”¹⁹ Apr. : ibid., ff. ‒v: “Quia totis spiritibus et sensibus est vigilandum prout nostriprecessori fecerunt quod fama que est nostre civitati ad magnum honorem et utile videlicetquod moneta nostra auri fiat fina magis quam cetere monete mundi omnino conservetur vera etiustum est.”²⁰ Apr. : ibid., f. ‒v; CMO, c. , f. v.²¹Sanudo, Vite dei dogi, c. .

that the masters produce at least marks of piccoli per quindena; they wouldget a bonus in personal income if they exceeded this amount.²² With pic-coli struck from the mark, this would mean almost , coins per quindena,or almost . million per year (of six quindene), worth £,. As the coins wereabout one-fifth silver, the total silver used for the coinage would have been onlyabout kilograms a year, a negligible amount. An order in that the mintproduce at least £, of piccoli a month would have resulted in ,, pic-coli a year, which would have used less than kilograms of silver.²³

The minting quantities of silver coins are implied in a few documents. In a mintmaster was fined the shortfall on profits from the minting of twoquindene of grossi, in which , marks of silver and , marks were coined,respectively.²⁴ The , marks average per quindena would have been ,

grossi per quindena, or, assuming this was two months and typical of the year,about . million grosso coins a year (worth almost £,) from almost ,

kilograms of silver.In a grazia request of , the mintmasters testified that the twenty-six mon-

eyers who came to the mint daily stamped marks of soldini a day.²⁵The sol-dino of this period appears to have been between two-thirds and three-fifths sil-ver and to have been minted at about coins per mark (see above, Chap. ).This would have been about kilograms of pure silver and , soldino coinsper day. If this rate was consistent throughout the year and if the men worked days a year (excluding Sundays and major feasts), the production would havebeen , kilograms of pure silver per year and . million soldino coins ayear, worth £,.

In , the two weighers at the silver mint, who had served there fourteenand eighteen years, respectively, sought raises on the argument that although thenumber of weighers had gone down from three to two, the amount of silver theyworked had gone up from , marks to , marks and the number of tor-neselli had gone from , ducats’worth to , ducats’worth; the time framefor these figures is not specified, nor is the period over which these changes aresupposed to have occurred.²⁶ It is possible that these figures are for a quindena,but the figures from later years for tornesello production, which are discussed


²² May : CMM, c. a.²³ May : NMC, ‒, #.²⁴ Sept. : ASV, AC Neptunus, f. .²⁵ Aug. : ASV, GR, R. , f. v; a similar petition of July of the same year also gives arate of marks a day, though it does not specify soldini.²⁶ July : Cap. Broche, n. .

below, make it likely that the figures in the document are annual, as well.The statistics for silver would then work out to an increase from , kilogramsper year to , kilograms per year. Since the only silver coin minted in thisperiod was the soldino, at the rate of to the mark, there would have been arise in production from . million soldino coins a year (£, of value) some-time before to ,, soldini in that year (£,).

The last quarter of the fourteenth century is a period in which the pro-duction of tornesello was a major activity of the mint, with new workshops be-ing devoted to it and workers hired to produce it. The document speaks ofa rise in production from , ducats’ worth to , ducats’ worth. With theducat of account defined as £., the production implied here would have risenfrom , torneselli per year in the unspecified past to ,, torneselli in.²⁷ In , the Senate allocated the profit from the minting of torneselli tothe state provisioners; the value of the minted coins was said to be , ducatsa year, implying an annual production of ,, torneselli.²⁸ In , the mas-ter for torneselli came up with a new process for refining which allowed the an-nual production to go from , to , ducats’ worth a year, an increase inannual minting from ,, to ,, torneselli.²⁹ As the torneselloappears to have been issued at a weight of about . grams with percent sil-ver (the rest being copper), the total amount of silver used in the heaviest pro-duction of this issue would have been about kilograms a year.³⁰

While the production of torneselli was soaring, the manufacture of silvercoins themselves seems to have occasioned less activity at the silver mint. In ,one of the masters of silver, Marco Baffo, was accused of turning in insufficientminting profits to the state.³¹ He appears to have been the only master actuallyworking on silver coins in this period; the other master of the silver mint hadbeen assigned to work full-time on torneselli. Baffo been elected to the office inAugust , so the report that he had worked for twenty-four quindene con-firms the inference that each quindena was two months long in the silver mint

Within the Mint

²⁷It is not explicit in the document that the value of torneselli in ducats is quoted in ducats ofaccount rather than actual coins; if it were the latter case and cited for the current commercialrate of shillings of torneselli to the ducat, the plea would indicate a rise from , torne-selli a year to ,,, as I calculated in Stahl, Tornesello, .²⁸ Jan. []: Stahl, Tornesello, , #.²⁹ Jan. []: Cap. Broche, ‒.³⁰Stahl, Tornesello, ‒.³¹ Mar. : ASV, AC Raspe, R. /, fasc. , f. ‒v. According to the trial account,charges were first brought on April of .

in this period. During these twenty-four quindene, or four years of minting, heis reported to have processed , marks of silver, or about , kilograms ayear, consistent with the figures from but well under those from earlier inthe century. If all the silver worked by Baffo between and had been usedfor grossi, minted at coins to the mark, the average production of the denom-ination between and would have been about ,, grossi a year,worth £,. If all were soldini, which weighed a quarter as much, it wouldhave amounted to ,, coins with the same total value; the actual numberwas probably somewhere between these figures.³²

Three documents from the first years of the fifteenth century allow us tocalculate very rough figures for the minting of silver. In the casters of thesilver mint appealed to the Senate for relief from a shortfall of marks of sil-ver over the past six years.³³ Their explanation was that their allowance for lossin smelting (callo) of free silver had been on the basis of ¾ ounces of silver lostfor every marks of grossi produced (about one-third of a percent). The prob-lem was that they had had to cast , marks of silver to produce , marksof grossi (the rest presumably having been trimmings that needed to be re-melted). If the difference between their allowance and the actual loss from smelt-ing was marks over six years, the total loss would have been . marks. Atthe rate of about one-third of a percent loss, the total silver refined in six yearscan be calculated at about , marks, or about , marks (, kg) peryear. Using the casters’ figure that only ¹⁰⁄¹⁴ of the total silver refined resulted ingrosso coins, we can calculate a production of about , grossi a year (at acut of to the mark), valued at about £, per year. These figures relate tothe production of grossi only from free silver and do not include the productsof the quinto silver.

The same year, in September , legislation of the Great Council ad-dressed the lack of applicants for the position of mint warden.³⁴ It noted thatthe annual “utilities” of the office amounted to only £ total for the two menin the position and sought to entice a new warden with an addition of £ per


³²The ratio of the production of silver coins made from silver of the quinto was decided by thedoge and confirmed by the Senate; it ranged from all soldini (before and in ), totwenty-five parts soldini to one part piccoli (), to half soldini and half grossi (). Freesilver would have been used for whatever the consigners wished, probably mainly grossi. Mar.: PMV, ‒, #; June : PMV, ‒, #; June : Cap. Broche, ; Aug. :Cap. Broche, .³³ Aug. : Cap. Broche, .³⁴ Sept. : ASV, MC Leona, f. .

year to the current income of the office.³⁵ The “utilities” of the wardens of thesilver mint had been set forth in and confirmed in and again in .³⁶They shared pennies per mark of silver coins whose weight they controlledand pennies per mark of copper coins. If all the coins they had controlled hadbeen silver, their “utility” of £ would imply the minting of , marks (,

kg) of silver a year around , worth about £,. If the “utility” was de-rived half from silver coins (grossi and soldini) and half from torneselli, thiswould have amounted to , marks ( kg) of silver per year ( million sol-dini or , grossi worth £,) and , marks of torneselli (about mil-lion coins) containing about kilograms of silver.

In , the Senate noted that the silver mint had become reduced to almostnothing, with the result that little silver was being brought to Venice.³⁷ It pro-ceeded with a reform that included the abolition of the quinto and the require-ment that all silver brought to Venice be refined at the mint and at least one-quarter of it be made into coins at a relatively modest fee. Two years later, oneof the doge’s counselors lamented that as a result of this reform, the amount ofsilver brought to Venice had actually declined from a level of , marks peryear to a current level of , marks a year.³⁸ If these figures are accurate, itwould mean that the total silver imported into the city had been about ,

kilograms a year sometime before . Since one-fifth of this had to be put inthe mint for the quinto, the minimum annual mint production before the re-form would have been , marks (, kg) of silver, about million soldinior million grossi worth £,. According to this document, the total silverimported silver in was only , marks (, kg), of which at least one-fourth (about kg) would have been coined into about ,, soldini or, grossi worth £,.

From all these figures, the overall picture is of a production of gold of ,

kilograms a year being documented as unusually high in , , and anda level of silver production at the mint on the order of about , kilogramsin the early fourteenth century but falling to about , kilograms by the endof the century and to as little as , kilograms a year in the first decades of

Within the Mint

³⁵The document actually says that the “utilities” amounted to gold ducats (“ducatos inauro”) per year. If it is expressing the value in real ducats (worth £. at that time) rather thanducats of account worth £., the production figures would be percent above those calcu-lated here.³⁶ May : Cap. Broche, ‒; June : PMV, ‒, #; Sept. : Cap. Broche, ‒.³⁷ Nov. : Cap. Broche, ‒.³⁸ Dec. : ASV, SM, R. , f. .

the fourteenth century. It must be remembered that these figures are all basedon documents with particular biases and represent amounts of bullion coinedby the mint, not the totals that passed through Venice.

The Deathbed Statistics of Doge Mocenigo

In April , Doge Tomaso Mocenigo died after a reign of a bit more thannine years. He was succeeded by Francesco Foscari, who reigned for nearly twenty-five years until being deposed in , one of the few Venetian doges to be drivenfrom office. A document that purports to be the text of a speech given by Mo-cenigo contains statistics on the output of the Venetian mint, as well as otheraspects of the Venetian economy, which have often been adduced as accurateestimates of production.³⁹

Before we consider the figures quoted in this text, we should examine itscontext. No contemporary manuscript of it is known to exist; the version thathas been twice published and on which most discussions rely was copied aroundthe year into a miscellany of Venetian history. It usually appears as one ofthree texts attributed to Mocenigo which have as their main theme an attack onFoscari and his politics of involvement in the affairs of the Terraferma. In thecenter of the review of Venetian economics in this supposed deathbed speech(arenga, i.e., harangue, as it is usually called) comes a plea to the electors to chooseone of a number of candidates for the new doge, anyone except Foscari, whosepolicies are predicted to be destined to lead to a fully catalogued series of woesfor the republic.

Aside from the patent implausibility of a doge producing a string of pre-cise statistics about the finances of the republic on his deathbed and these beingrecorded verbatim, the overall impression of the text is that of a tract by polit-ical opponents of Foscari, of which there were many, put in the mouth of hispredecessor. In this case, it may well be from a later period, and the statisticsmay be manipulated to imply a contrast with the sorrier state of contemporarylife. Even if the text is the verbatim statement of the dying doge, its polemicaltone suggests that the statistics could well have been altered for rhetorical andpolitical effect. Some of the figures, such as the number of galleys in the Vene-tian fleet, would have been common knowledge, and inaccuracy in their report-ing would have discredited the document. The output of the mint, on the other


³⁹See Stahl, “Deathbed Oration,” ‒, for an edition of the text and an extensive discussionof this passage.

hand, was probably not a widely known figure, so we cannot accept the report-ing of it on the grounds that incorrect data would have been rejected.

I offer here a translation of the section of the text which deals with coinage:

You have seen our mint strike every year one million two hundred thousand goldducats and in silver coins, among grossetti, mezzanini and soldini , [ducats’worth] a year. Of these , [ducats’ worth] of grossetti go each year in Syriaand Egypt, and they go to our lands as well; to the lands of Terra Ferma there go, ducats’ worth of mezzanini and soldini, and to our lands over seas therego each year , ducats’ worth of grossetti and soldini. Each year , duc-ats’ worth of soldini go to England. The rest remains in Venice.

There are at least four coins mentioned in the text. For ducats there is noproblem, except to note that the term is used both for the physical coin and asa unit of value in which silver coins are reckoned, which is perfectly in accordwith contemporary usage. Among the silver coins, there is no problem with soldi:these are clearly soldini. The term grossetti (“little grossi”) does present a prob-lem; the diminutive is not known in archival documents of the period. It sug-gests a contrast with a larger coin, which could only be appropriate from after, when a double grosso of soldi was authorized for the first time, specifi-

cally for distribution in the Terraferma.⁴⁰ In this text, however, there is no clearcontrast made between the large coin, which came to be known as a grossone, andthe traditional grosso of soldi; all references appear to be to the old grossocoin. The term mezzanini causes even more doubts about the contemporaneity ofthe text. Mezzanini were coined in the early part of the fourteenth century, butthe issue was ended by . The denomination was revived in during thereign of Mocenigo’s predecessor as a coin for the Terraferma colonies of Veronaand Vicenza, but the issue appears to have been discontinued before Mocenigo’sdogate; no specimens are known in his name.⁴¹ However, the mezzanino wasamong those coins included in the new denominations for the Terraferma initi-ated in . From these considerations, it is difficult to see how the text as wehave it could have been composed before , that is, six years after Mocenigo’sdeath. It is also worthy of note that no mention is made of the tornesello, adenomination that was minted and sent to overseas colonies in significant num-bers in the reign of Mocenigo but was virtually unknown in that of Foscari.⁴²

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⁴⁰ July : Papadopoli, :‒, #, and Cap. Broche, ‒.⁴¹ Feb. []: Papadopoli, :‒, #, and pp. and .⁴²The Chalkis hoard, buried during the reign of Foscari’s successor, contained torneselli inthe name of Mocenigo but only in the name of Foscari: Stahl, Tornesello, ‒.

Let us now examine the specifics of the mint statistics in the document tosee if they correspond in general terms to what appears to have been coinageoutput in any time during the early to mid-fifteenth century. The first statisticis that the annual production of gold ducats was . million coins. We have seenthat in , to meet the rush of gold, the capacity of the mint was doubled; thefigure given as that which would activate the second team was an annual pro-duction of , ducats. So even with a double mint in full operation, the ca-pacity was probably under , ducats a year. Six hundred thousand ducatsis also about the amount that triggered a complaint of the mint weigher in

of his being overworked. This is also about the same amount inferred for

from the statement that there was sometimes as much as , ducats’ worthof gold at the mint at one time and that hence the teams of masters should bedoubled. The doubling did not occur, and there is no indication that the activ-ity of the gold mint increased dramatically in the years immediately after thistime. Thus, the figure of . million ducats a year in the Mocenigo arenga seemsto be about twice the rate of what was considered a heavy production of goldin the period.

The figure for silver in the arenga is , ducats’ worth per year, dividedamong “grossetti,” “mezzanini,” and soldini. With the ducat of account definedas £. and the cut of soldini per mark prescribed in , the figures wouldimply the minting of . million grossi and million soldini a year, contain-ing , marks of silver (, kg).⁴³ These figures are considerably aboveany of the others adduced for silver production in Venice. In the early four-teenth century, figures of around , kilograms a year seem typical; by theend of the century and in the early s, , kilograms of silver a year wouldseem more likely. The figures of the arenga are again significantly above what theother statistics would suggest was reasonable.

The number of coins sent to England also appears highly unlikely. The fig-ure given is , ducats’ worth of soldini a year, equivalent to about . mil-lion coins, weighing more than , kilograms of silver. In the eighteen monthsfrom September to March , England coined £, worth of sil-ver, a rate that was not remarkably low for that period.⁴⁴ With shillings cutfrom the Tower pound of grams, this amounts to a total minting of silverin England of kilograms a year.⁴⁵ Although Venetian soldini are documented


⁴³Cap. Broche, ‒. If the figures in the arenga are meant to evaluate the issues in real gold ducats(worth about £. in ) rather than ducats of account, the production figures expressedthere would be . percent higher, as calculated in Stahl, “Deathbed Oration.”⁴⁴Challis, New History of the Royal Mint, .⁴⁵Ibid., ; Spufford, Money and Its uses, n. .

as being a nuisance and even a threat to English circulation in the early fifteenthcentury, it is most unlikely that their importation was five times the volume ofthe silver minted within England.⁴⁶

In general, it appears that the coinage statistics in the arenga are considerablyexaggerated over what the production of the Venetian mint is likely to have beenat the time of the death of Tomaso Mocenigo. This is consistent with the infer-ence that the text dates from after his death and was intended to demonstrate adecline from a supposedly more prosperous earlier age. These data, then, are bestignored in a discussion of the volume of the production of the zecca.

The Staffing and Capacity of the Zecca

If the actual statistics on the production of the Venetian mint are scatteredand often ambiguous, there are documentary sources that allow us to discernchanges in activity and even estimate the maximum productive capacity of themint at certain periods.

By the end of the thirteenth century, the mint was a two-story building. In the Great Council deemed the mint too small and authorized its expansioninto land then used by the Procurators of San Marco; the expansion was renewedin , again at the expense of the Procurators. The production of gold ducatswas located on the second story of the mint building by the early decades of thefourteenth century. A flood of gold in led to the doubling of the staff andthe construction of an additional story to the mint with four new hearths forrefining gold and two new hearths for casting it. The doubling of the staff forgold was eliminated in , and there is no indication of any change in the phys-ical plant until Sansovino’s rebuilding in . From this general outline of thegrowth of the mint building, one can see pressures for the expansion of facili-ties in the first half of the fourteenth century; after then the buildings wereapparently adequate for all production.

When the minting of ducats commenced in , the gold mint had twomasters; by there were three masters for gold and, with the flood of bullionin , four masters. Within a few years the number was back to two, where itremained except for an experiment from to when the number was raisedto four in the hope of attracting more bullion by supervising production moreclosely. The silver mint had five masters (three for grossi and two for piccoli) in, but after the introduction of the ducat the number was cut to three, where

Within the Mint

⁴⁶Spufford, “Continental Coins,” ‒.

it remained for most of the fourteenth century. By , one of the masters ofthe silver mint was assigned solely to the production of torneselli, and the num-ber of additional masters fluctuated between one and two until , when thesilver mint had two masters with shared responsibilities. The number of weighersin the gold mint rose from two to four in the s and was cut back to one by; weighers in the silver mint went from a total of four at the beginning ofthe fourteenth century to one by . Again, the general impression is one ofgrowth through about the mid-fourteenth century, with decline and stability inthe later decades.

Although trends in production appear to have been connected in at least ageneral way with the number of elected mint officials, they must have had a muchmore immediate effect on the numbers of wage workers, who were used at themint only on days on which their labor was required.

The workmen who cut the blanks for the coinage were organized into work-shops, and bullion was allotted to them on the basis of the workshops. In thelate thirteenth century, the workshop for piccoli was to be given a maximum of marks of alloy a day in summer, marks a day in spring and fall, and marksa day in winter.⁴⁷ At an average rate of marks of alloy a day and a reasonableproduction year of working days, the capacity of the mint for piccoli in thisperiod would have been , marks per year, or about kilograms of alloy ofwhich kilograms would have been silver.⁴⁸ At coins to the mark, the mintwould have had the capacity to produce ,, piccolo coins worth about£, per year.

There appear to have been fourteen workshops for silver in ; the max-imum allotment for each was set at marks of silver in summer, marks inwinter, and marks in spring.⁴⁹ At an average of marks a day per workshop,the annual capacity of the silver mint in this period would have been ,

marks, or about , kilograms of fine silver, yielding . million grosso coinsworth about £,. This is consistent with the figures adduced above for theearly fourteenth century.

The strikers of the blanks, the moneyers, worked individually (see above,


⁴⁷CMM, c. .⁴⁸The craftsmen who built the Ca d’Oro in worked about days a year: Goy, The Houseof Gold, . Since the workers in the zecca were protected from the weather, they might haveworked more than this. For the working days for Venetian state employees, see Novissimum Statu-torum ac Venetiarum Legum Volumen, f. ‒v; according to this document from a later date, stateoffices were closed on all Sundays, on fixed holidays, and about days related to Easter andChristmas (which could fall on a Sunday or other holiday).⁴⁹CMM, c. .

Chap. ). There were to have been a maximum of twenty moneyers at the mintin , to whom the maximum allotment was , grosso blanks each per dayin summer, , in winter, and , in spring. This works out to a maximumcapacity of the moneyers at about , marks, or about , kilograms peryear using spring rates as an average. The maximum capacity of the moneyershence appears to have been significantly above that of the workers; the mostlikely explanation is that the moneyers worked less regularly than the workmen.This is supported by documents such as a complaint by the masters in thatof the legal maximum of twenty-five moneyers, only eighteen men showed upregularly for work.⁵⁰

The maximum number of moneyers was set by statute; it never seems tohave be set above the twenty-five noted in the complaint. However, like mostVenetian statutes, this limit could be exceeded by special permission from theForty and the Great Council, that is, by a grazia.This appears to have been a stan-dard practice in the fourteenth century; about three hundred grazie for money-ers are recorded in extant documents (see above, Chap. ). To some extent thesecan be used to gauge the production of the silver mint; only if the amount ofwork significantly strained the resources allotted to the mint could the appro-priate councils be expected to approve the admission of new moneyers. It should,however, be noted that in many of these documents the masters are recorded ashaving testified that there were indeed sufficient moneyers; the councils may havegranted the boon of work to favorites of important members rather than on thebasis of the needs of the mint. On the other hand, the statement of the mastersappears to be formulaic and may involve a legal fiction to get around the provi-sions of the unknown regulation that fixed the number of allowable moneyers.

Even if the number of grazie does indeed correspond to variations in theneeds of the mint, the supply of moneyers was as important as the demand fortheir services in influencing the number of admissions. This is best illustratedby the observation that by far the year with the most grazie for new moneyers(thirty-one) is , the year following the Black Death, when the death anddesertion of many of the existing moneyers was surely much more responsiblefor the increase in pleas than any change in the production of silver coins. How-ever, the hiring appears to have been on the rise in the years just before theplague, so part of this total may be due to increased production.⁵¹ It should also

Within the Mint

⁵⁰ Oct. : ASV, GR, R. , f. , #.⁵¹There is a gap in the registers of the Grazie, the principal source for these data, from Sept.

be noted that there appears to be no seasonal pattern for the grazie; the best-represented month is October, with twenty-seven pleas confirmed, and the worstis November, with only eight. In this respect, it must be borne in mind that thedate given these grazie is usually the date of the approval in the councils, ratherthan the date on which the request was originally filed, which might be monthsand even years earlier.⁵²

The data for these grazie for moneyers in the silver mint are presented ingraph .. A rise in hirings is apparent from about , culminating in .The earlier years may reflect the growth in the activity of the gold mint; mon-eyers transferred to that production would have left vacancies at the silver mint.The level of hiring seems to hold high until and then slide down until about, after which time grazie for the hiring of silver moneyers are sporadic andvirtually insignificant. Although the increase in the middle of the century doesnot reflect any other data we have on activity at the silver mint, the decline in suc-ceeding centuries is in accordance with other indications.

In general, the data on capacity and employment concur with those fromother sources; the mint had a potential of turning about , kilograms of sil-ver into coin at the end of the thirteenth century. Productive capacity rose withthe introduction of the ducat in and increases in the size of the mint andin staffing in the early fourteenth century. After the mid-fourteenth century, themint saw a general decline in staffing which appears to correlate with a declinein production. The great output of torneselli in the latter part of the centuryincreased the numbers of coins put out, and the amount of labor used, but thesesmall coins of only percent fineness amounted to a much smaller minting ofsilver than had the large output of heavy fine grossi a century earlier.

The documentary sources for coin production at the Venetian mint are scat-tered and often anecdotal, and additional data are not likely to be found in sig-nificant numbers in the future. The coins, however, survive in large numbers andoffer the potential for continued investigation into the size of various issues.


(the end of GR, R. ) to Apr. (beginning of R. ). Thus there are no records for at all, and the figures for and may underrepresent the actual numbers. There isalso a lesser gap in Register for data from the end of and part of , and sections ofRegister for to are totally illegible.⁵²See Mor, “Procedimento,” viii–xii.

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Results of Die Studies

The classic numismatic tool for estimating the size of a coin issue is the diestudy. This methodology rests on the recognition that dies, like any tool, breakafter a period of use and need to be replaced. With coins struck from hand-engraved dies, it is possible to recognize which surviving examples were struckfrom the same die and hence count the number of known dies from the surviv-ing specimens of a given issue. Even when the dies were prepared with punches,as the Venetian medieval ones often were, it is still usually possible to distinguishdies on the basis of the spacing of the individual letters and their relationshipto the images.

Unless the coinage survives (and is examined) in great numbers, however, itis unlikely that all dies used in an original issue will be present in a study. Sta-tistical techniques have been devised to extrapolate from the ratio of studiedcoins to recognized dies to an estimation of the total number of dies originallyused in the coinage.⁵³ Although the accuracy of such methods varies a bit, theygenerally agree with one another within a reasonable tolerance. It should be notedthat in general the die that received the blow of the hammer tended to break ear-lier than that which was fixed in the anvil, so it is usual to find that the dies forone side of the coin are known in greater numbers than for the other. This phe-nomenon undoubtedly lay behind the requirement at the Venetian mint that newmintmasters have twenty-four upper dies (torsellos) and sixteen lower dies (pillas)made up when they entered office.⁵⁴

If such die studies are made for succeeding issues, however such issues aredefined, they can be used to compare the relative size of the two issues. Thus,from the calculation that an old punch was used for the doge’s head on about dies of the grossi of Type issued by Antonio Venier and a punch bearing abearded portrait was used on about dies, on can infer that the new punchwas used on about one-third of the coins of the issue.⁵⁵ If the time spans of theissues are known and controlled for, the number of dies used in each should cor-respond, at least in general terms, to the relative rate of minting. Thus, if ,


⁵³One method is outlined in Giles F. Carter, “A Simplified Method for Calculating the OriginalNumber of Dies from Die Link Statistics,” American Numismatic Society Museum Notes ():‒. In general, for this and other applications of statistics to numismatics, see the papersin Charlotte Carcassonne and Tony Hackens, eds., Statistics and Numismatics, PACT (Strasburg,), and Depeyrot et al., Rythmes de la production monétaire.⁵⁴CMM, c. .⁵⁵Stahl, “Portrait,” ‒.

dies are calculated for an issue in the name of a doge who reigned for ten yearsand the same amount for his successor who reigned for only five, it could be con-cluded that the average minting rate in the later reign was twice that of the ear-lier one.

To date, very few die studies have been done on Venetian medieval coins.The main obstacle is the very size of the coinage. This is illustrated by the Veniergrosso study, in which obverse dies appear to have been used for a coinagethat lasted six years and represents a period of low production for the Venetianmint. In order to have any degree of confidence in the statistics for calculatingoriginal dies, the number of pieces studied needs to be near in number to totaldies used and preferably surpass it. This is usually only possible with the studyof a large hoard. However, a nonrepresentative sample of dies in a single hoardcould bias the results of such a study. The Venier grosso study was possible be-cause the acquisition of coins from three separate hoards had resulted in theavailability of coins for comparison.⁵⁶

Very short reigns offer the best opportunity for the identification of a rea-sonably small number of dies. A comparison of torneselli in the name ofMichele Morosini, who reigned for only four months in , identified dif-ferent dies of the obverse (cross) side, which resulted in the calculation of a pro-jected number of total dies used in the issue between and obverse dies.⁵⁷The observed reverse dies resulted in a projection of to original re-verses. The availability of additional specimens of the issue from the newlydiscovered Cephalonia hoard (which had more than , torneselli in total)allowed a reworking of the die study.⁵⁸ The observed dies rose in number to for the obverse, resulting in a revised projection of between and originalobverse dies and reverses observed with a projected to total. Thus, whilethe reverse projections held up well with the doubling of the population stud-ied, many more obverses are now projected than had been the case originally.

The grosso of Enrico Dandolo is of such fame and rarity that enough ex-amples have been illustrated or are in major collections to permit a die study.⁵⁹Thirty-one specimens examined were found to have come from twenty obversedies, implying an original total of between thirty-five and fifty-five obverse dies.

Within the Mint

⁵⁶The total number of published photographs of specimens of the issue is probably under adozen in museum catalogues, with an additional dozen or two to be found in an exhaustivesearch of sales catalogues.⁵⁷Stahl, Tornesello, ‒; this was based on twenty-six specimens in the Chalkis hoard, thirteenin another hoard, and seven in public collections.⁵⁸Stahl, “Cephalonia Hoard,” ‒, .⁵⁹Stahl, “Grosso of Enrico Dandolo,” ‒.

The length of the issue is dependent upon the establishment of the introduc-tion date of the coinage, so the implication of these figures for the rate of mint-ing is problematic. If the grosso was introduced in , production would haveto be seen as very weak, while if the date is accepted, a much heavier rateof minting would be inferred (see above, Chap. ).

Once the number of dies has been calculated, figures can be derived for theactual number of coins produced in the issue by applying an index number ofcoins likely to have been struck from each die. There is no theoretical way to cal-culate this index; it is a function of the composition of the dies and the blanks,the technique of striking, and the policies of the mint on the replacement of worndies. Enough statistics of medieval minting have survived to suggest that forthin, relatively carelessly struck medieval coins, the average production was onthe order of magnitude of , coins per upper die (usually the reverse), withabout twice as many from the protected lower die.⁶⁰

For the torneselli, this would result in an estimate of , coins mintedon the basis of the reverses calculated for the issue of Michele Morosini and,, calculated on the basis of obverses. To go from the production forthis four-month reign ( June to October ) to an average annual mintinginvolves the assumption that these months were more or less typical and that nottoo much production was lost in the delay involved with carving obverse dieswith the name of the new doge. In any event, the extrapolation of about mil-lion torneselli a year in is reasonably consistent with the figures of ,,

coins a year in and ,, a year in , derived above from documen-tary sources.

The Type grosso in the name of Antonio Venier was authorized on June and was presumably minted from soon after that date until the election ofMichele Steno on December , a period of six and a half years. The grossowas larger and better struck than the tornesello (and the other medieval coinagesfrom which die-to-coin ratios have been derived), so the figure of , coinsper obverse die is probably more reasonable than the , used above. The obverse dies from the issue would project a total coinage of about . milliongrosso coins, or a rate of about million per year. This figure is consistent withthat documented for ‒ of about ,, grossi per year if all silver hadbeen coined into grossi, and that of , grossi per year from free silver alonein the period ‒.

The only other die study of medieval Venetian coins published to date is


⁶⁰The data are surveyed in D. M. Metcalf, “What Has Been Achieved through the Applicationof Statistics of Numismatics,” in Carcassonne and Hackens, Statistics, ‒.

that of Lodovico Brunetti in for soldini of Francesco Dandolo on the basisof the examination of specimens.⁶¹ His own statistical methodology is notfollowed today, but his data can be submitted to more currently acceptable meth-ods to project a total number of about , reverse dies. Using the figure of, soldini per reverse die and a period of about seven and one-third years,we can calculate an annual mintage of more than million soldini a year. Thisis consistent with the figure of . million soldini and mezzanini documentedfor (see above).

In general, the use of die studies for calculating the output of the Venetianmint is consistent with the data from documentary sources. The resources forfurther die studies are mainly to be found in museums and other collections thathold large numbers of the same issue, usually derived from hoards or excava-tions. Too few images of Venetian medieval coins have been published, either inscholarly publications or auctions catalogues, to permit the building of a photocorpus for die study as is common in ancient numismatics.

It is often evident from the examination of coins found together, either ina controlled excavation or in a hoard, that the representation of different issuesis not even. With care for some factors that can distort such representations, itis possible to examine these finds for information on the relative production ofcoinage in various periods.

The first factor to control for distortion of find data is the time span inwhich various issues were produced. For Venetian coins, the periods of issue aregenerally the reigns of individual doges, since all the denominations of the thir-teenth through early fifteenth centuries bear the name of the doge reigning atthe time of manufacture. The issue of a denomination in the name of AntonioVenier, who reigned for eighteen years, is certainly to be expected to be presentin finds in far greater numbers than that in the name of his predecessor, MicheleMorosini, whose dogate lasted only four months. Therefore, all reports of findsof coins need to be divided by the length of the reign of the doge before theycan be compared.⁶²

Within the Mint

⁶¹Lodovico Brunetti, “Del quantitative coniato di soldini di Fr. Dandolo,” RIN (): ‒.⁶²With certain denominations, it is possible to divide the issues somewhat more finely; twotypes of grosso were minted in the reigns of Antonio Venier and Tomaso Mocenigo, respec-tively, and the soldino is known in two types for Andrea Dandolo, three for Andrea Contarini,and two for Antonio Venier and Tomaso Mocenigo, respectively. Most of the silver denomina-

Coins found singly in controlled excavations represent the accumulation ofindividual losses of coins that remained unrecovered in antiquity. It is a generalnumismatic observation that such finds usually represent the lowest denomina-tions in circulation at the site. This can be explained by the small size and darkcolor of such low denominations, plus the tendency of people to spend muchmore effort searching for a lost coin of high value than for a small one. Anotherfactor that influences the representation of coins at a site is the degree of com-mercial activity over time; if a site served as a habitation area in one period butadded market functions at a later time, it can be expected that the representa-tion of coinage would favor the later period. The growing monetization of arural economy will likewise distort the representation, though if this is a large-scale phenomenon, it might also be reflective of growing coin production, as well.

A comparison of finds of a given denomination from as wide a variety ofsites as possible can offer a picture of the relative presence of various issues incirculation and, indirectly, information on relative levels of production. Graph. represents the presence of piccoli at sites in northern Italy, controlled forthe length of each issue.⁶³ Each line represents an excavated site. The points rep-resent the number of coins in the name of a given doge found there divided bythe number of years of his reign; they are plotted at the midpoint of his reign.Certain lines are generally higher than others, representing a more productivesite, but in general the various lines rise at the same times, which implies that thebetter-represented reigns are those of higher mint production. In the early pe-riod, the production seems to have risen in the reign of Orio Malipiero (‒

) and dropped in that of Enrico Dandolo (‒).⁶⁴There were no piccoli minted in the reigns following the introduction of

the grosso under Dandolo. The presence of piccoli is high for the reign of Lo-renzo Tiepolo (‒), in which the denomination was revived, and seems to


tions carry masters’ marks, and to the extent to which these can be given specific dates, theproduction of grossi and soldini could be divided into smaller periods.⁶³See below, App. B, table B., for references to the specific finds. Reigns of less than one yearhave been excluded from the chart, as the presence or absence of a single coin can greatly dis-tort the statistics of such issues. It should be noted that several of these piccolo finds are fromreligious sites and may represent conscious deposits rather than the random accumulation ofstray losses.⁶⁴If the production of piccoli was curtailed before the end of Dandolo’s reign (see above, Chap.), the averages would have been higher, and no drop in average annual production would beevident.

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taper off for the next few decades, with the suggestion of a slight rise under Gio-vanni Dandolo (‒). This downward trend reaches a nadir in the reign ofGiovanni Soranzo (‒), whose long reign is represented by only a handfulof coins total from all excavations. The next reign, that of Francesco Dandolo(‒), witnessed the introduction of the soldino as the basis of the monetasystem but seems also to have initiated a period of somewhat heavier mintingof piccoli.⁶⁵ There is generally little presence of piccoli of the later fourteenthcentury from Italian excavations, and none at all for the long reign of AndreaContarini (‒), but production seems to have reached at least moderatelevels by the turn of the fourteenth century.

No other denominations occur commonly enough in Italian sites to be com-pared for inferences on production. In Greece the results are far more complete,owing at least in part to the extensive archaeological investigation of classicalsites whose occupation continued through the Middle Ages (see below, App. B,table B., #‒). For the silver coinages the numbers are still rather small tobe significant, except to note the large numbers of soldini from before the mid-fourteenth century and their general absence after then (graph .). This declineis more likely to have been due to the replacement of the denomination in Greekcirculation by the tornesello after than to any variation in the production ofsoldini at the Venetian mint. There is, however, a noteworthy dropoff in the pres-ence of soldini from Francesco Dandolo (c. ‒) through Bartolomeo Gra-denigo (‒), through the Type soldino of Andrea Dandolo (‒), evenwhen account is taken of the relative length of these issues.

It is for the tornesello that the Greek excavation sites become useful forexamining mint production (graph .). From Corinth more than one hundredtornesello finds have been published; from Athens the total is five times thisnumber. From a comparison of all sites, the presence of torneselli can be seento have been modest in the first decade after the introduction of the coin in ,increasing sharply in the s, with an apparent relative decline in the s,reaching a peak in the last two decades of the fourteenth century, and falling off

dramatically in the early fifteenth.⁶⁶ Since the tornesello was intended for theVenetian colonies in Greece (i.e., Crete, Corfu, Coron, and Modon) and spreadfrom these to the mainland towns of Athens and Corinth, the scarcity of early


⁶⁵However, the two leading sites in this respect, San Giovanni in Bragora and Feltre, are ecclesi-astical and so may not be typical of general circulation.⁶⁶The greatest relative representation is actually the issue in the name of Michele Morosini,whose three-month long term in has been eliminated from the graph to control for possi-ble distortion.

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coins from mainland excavations may reflect circulation as well as production.The retrenchment after may similarly be indicative of Ottoman incursionsinto the mainland in this period. In general, however, the information from theexcavations is consistent with the documentary information that the productionof torneselli increased enormously from about to and then becamemuch less important.

Excavations present a picture of only the small denominations and seldomcontain enough Venetian coins to be significant, but these objections cannot bemade to hoards. Hoards are the result of the hiding by individuals of their wealth,followed by their failure to retrieve it themselves or communicate the where-abouts to contemporaries. They are generally found by accident rather than incontrolled excavations and are often known to numismatists only after they havebeen in the hands of private individuals.⁶⁷

The large hoard of Venetian grossi found in Verona illustrates the generaltrend in hoard representation (see below, App. B, table B., #). The hoard isrepresented graphically in graph .. The actual numbers of coins have beendivided by the length of reign to equalize the effect of differential regnal peri-ods. Then these index numbers have been expressed as a percentage of the whole,to allow comparison with other hoards of different sizes.⁶⁸These are then plotted

Within the Mint

⁶⁷A serious danger in the analysis of hoards is the possibility that an individual has systemati-cally changed the original contents, most often by the removal of coins of high commercialvalue in the rare coin market. This is suggested by a comparison of the presence in publishedhoards of the finds of coins of Marin Falier, who reigned half a year, with the presence ofthose of his successor, Giovanni Gradenigo, who reigned one and a quarter years. The coins ofFalier are notoriously prized by collectors, not only because of the short period of his reign butalso because of the romance surrounding his execution. If production was more or less equal inthese two successive reigns, one would expect to find at least one-third as large a representationof Falier in hoards as of Gradenigo. However, six hoards are reported with ducats of Grade-nigo, and none of Falier. The total of soldini of Gradenigo reported in hoards is from hoards, while only soldini of Falier are reported from hoards. Even for torneselli, whoseretail value has never been high, reported coins of Gradenigo outnumber those of Falier by to . This specific case (and that of Michele Morosini, whose reign was even shorter) can beavoided by simply ignoring its presence or absence in statistical treatments, but what is flagrantin this case may also have operated on a less noticeable level in others, and all hoards exceptthose reported from archaeological contexts must be suspected of the possibility of tamperedcontents.⁶⁸A different method of comparison is used in Alan M. Stahl, “Venetian Coinage: Variations inProduction,” in Depeyrot et al., Rythmes de la production monétaire, ‒. The indexing of each

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on a graph at the central date of the reign in question. We can see a clear risefrom the issue of Pietro Ziani (‒), whose reign ended at least half a cen-tury before the burial of the hoard, through that of Jacopo Contarini (‒),the penultimate issue represented. The line then falls for the issue of GiovanniDandolo (‒), which may be explained by the fact that the hoard was buriedduring his reign and hence contains an incomplete representation of his issue.If production had been constant, the line would be expected to rise at a rela-tively even rate, representing the fact that older coins are increasingly likely tohave fallen out of circulation by the date of the burial of the hoard. The slopeof the line representing grosso issues in the Verona hoards is not, however, con-stant. The line rises sharply for the issue of Ranieri Zeno (‒), and againsharply for that of Jacopo Contarini.

Before hoard representation can be taken as indicating differential levels ofminting in various reigns, it is necessary to control for the effects of culling onthe composition of the hoard. In a period in which coins are of varying intrin-sic value (fineness and weight of precious metal), most individuals look throughcoins they receive for apparent differences and tend to spend those with lesserintrinsic value and save those with greater. This process appears to operate evenif there is no immediate possibility of profiting from the extra precious metal,such as melting the coins and selling the bullion on the open market. The resultof the collective operation of individual cullers is the separation from the com-mon circulation of coins of higher intrinsic value in savings collections. Thisprocess is usually referred to as Gresham’s law: “Bad money drives out good.”⁶⁹

The relationship of Gresham’s law to hoards is not straightforward. In the-ory, there are two types of hoards, one representing those coins that have beenculled and the other representing those left in circulation.⁷⁰The “savings hoard”is the result of the continued removal of “good” coins from circulation; in idealterms it would not include a greater concentration of new issues than of old ora distinction in the extent of wear over time. The “circulation hoard” is repre-sentative of the “bad” money that has been continually returned into circula-tion. It generally evidences a preponderance of recent issues because of the con-tinual attrition of old coins, and older issues in it exhibit a noticeably higherdegree of wear than more recent ones. In practical terms, it is seldom easy to

Within the Mint

hoard to a single reign illustrated there can be used only to compare hoards of more or less thesame year of deposition.⁶⁹Cf. Lane and Mueller, Coins and Moneys of Account, ‒.⁷⁰Philip Grierson, Numismatics (Oxford, ), ‒, distinguishes four types of hoards butbasically accepts the distinction between those representing culled versus circulating coins.

classify a given hoard in one of these categories, since any group of coins reflectsa mixed history of savings and circulation.

There are, however, instances in which the effects of culling are immediatelyapparent in hoards. For Venetian coins, this is clearest in the case of soldini, whosedebasement in comprised a change in fineness as well as weight. A hoardfound in excavation in Delphi had torneselli in the name of Michele Steno andhence had to have been buried after (see below, App. B, table B., #).Included were about soldini, all of the predebasement type; these must havebeen culled from circulation fifty years before the hoard was buried. The Pyrgoshoard was buried about ten years earlier (see below, App. B, table B., #). Init, the predebasement soldini represent less than percent of those present, indi-cating that this hoard reflects the circulating coinage after the debasement. Nei-ther hoard can be considered an accurate reflection of the relative sizes of theissues in terms of mint production.

For the most part, however, the effects of culling do not appear to have dis-torted representation in the hoards too much. The soldino was the only denom-ination that underwent repeated debasements, but between and this wasonly in weight, not in fineness. A change in weight can be compensated for incirculation by the clipping of old coins to bring them to the new standard orthe weighing of coins in transactions rather than counting them. The grosso re-mained unchanged in standard for more than a century and a half; only in hoardsafter the resumption of the denomination in can the effects of culling beseen.

Other phenomena that can affect the use of hoards as an index of mintingare coin wear and differential distribution. The wear of coins in circulation the-oretically makes the old coins of less intrinsic value and hence liable to be over-represented in a circulation hoard and underrepresented in a savings hoard. How-ever, Venetian medieval coins had low relief and appear to have circulated oftenin closed and even sealed bags, so such wear appears to have been minimal. Inthe Cephalonia hoard, deposited after , Type soldini of half a century ear-lier were within percent of their prescribed issue weight; the factor of wearwas about percent a decade.⁷¹

Differential distribution could affect the representation in a hoard by caus-ing a heavy presence of coins issued in a period in which greater quantities wereshipped to the area in which the hoard was assembled. This effect is best con-trolled through the comparison of hoards found in different regions. To see


⁷¹Stahl, “Cephalonia Hoard,” ‒.

whether the increased representation of certain issues in the Verona hoard rep-resents a real increase in minting during these reigns, it is necessary to comparethis hoard with data from as many others as possible; this is done in graph ..For this graph, all reigns of less than one year have been eliminated, as has theclosing reign of the hoard.⁷² Only those hoards whose contents number morethan twenty coins and represent at least three reigns after these deductions arecharted. All hoards are indexed so that the total values for all issues charted (con-trolled by length of reign) add up to ..

Despite the confusion of the number of hoards plotted and the appearanceof several anomalously high peaks, the graph is quite clear in some of its impli-cations. The first thing to note is the lack of any representation of grossi in thename of Enrico Dandolo (‒), in whose reign the denomination began.⁷³His successor, Pietro Ziani, whose reign was . years (‒), is representedin a total of fourteen hoards, some deposited in the fourteenth century. Six hoards(chiefly Greek) were deposited in the reign of Ranieri Zeno (‒), resultingin high curves for the first three issues plotted. From this point on, the hoardsare pretty continuous for the next century.

As noted above in the discussion of the graph of the Verona hoard (graph.), the expected curve for even production would be a continuous upwardslope in the line of each hoard, representing the greater representation of newissues in the circulating stock as a result of gradual attrition of old coins. Down-turns (other than for the closing issue in a given hoard, which are not plottedhere) indicate a contrary trend, a relative decrease of the presence of a new issuein comparison with previous ones. If this downtrend is visible in a number ofhoards that are not geographically concentrated, it can be interpreted as theindication of a decline in mint production levels.

Such a downturn is evident in graph . in the index figures from the reignof Jacopo Contarini (‒) to that of Giovanni Dandolo (‒). All nine-

Within the Mint

⁷²Very short reigns beg the question of transitional minting. There is no documentation as towhat happened between the death of one doge and the completion of dies in the name of hissuccessor. There are no anonymous coins known from these periods, such as the Sede Vacantecoins of the papacy, but it is not certain that minting would have continued in the name of thepast doge until new dies were ready; production could have halted for the week or two that wasusually involved. Such lapses would have little effect when considered in terms of long reigns,but with reigns under a year their effect could be significant. For this reason, as well as that of“collector culling” cited above, short reigns are best excluded from calculations based on hoards.⁷³Grossi of Dandolo do appear in several hoards that were either too small or had too fewreigns to meet the criteria of this graph; see below, App. B, table B., # and , and Stahl,“Grosso of Enrico Dandolo,” ‒.

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teen hoards that contain both issues show a decline from the earlier reign to thefollowing one. This apparent slowing of production of the grosso is no doubtto be explained in relation to the inception of the minting of the gold ducathalfway through Dandolo’s reign. From the available evidence, however, it is notpossible to determine which phenomenon led to the other, or whether they bothrepresent responses to larger changes in the bullion market and monetary con-ditions of the s.

There are no later downturns in graph . which are clear enough to implydeclines in grosso minting. In the interval from the reign of Bartolomeo Gra-denigo (‒) to that of Andrea Dandolo (‒) there is a downturn inthree of the four hoards plotted, followed by the apparent cessation of the mint-ing of the grosso in the reign of Dandolo’s successor, Marino Falier (‒).The numbers of these hoards are, however, too small to be more than sugges-tive. The scarceness of hoards of grossi buried after the early fourteenth centuryin and of itself does indeed suggest an overall diminution of production, but suchother factors as the rising availability of deposit banking and the shifting of cir-culation to the eastern Mediterranean may have also affected this representation(see above, Chap. ).

There are few hoard finds of piccoli to give data on the relative productionof this, the first of all Venetian denominations. There are no hoards known fromthe late twelfth or early thirteenth century, that is, before the hiatus in the mint-ing of the denomination from about to . It is noteworthy, however, thatthe three hoards of the late thirteenth century (Sattendorf, Piovenne Rochette,and Vrh Trebnje) all contained significant, if small, representations of the pre- coinages, indicating that these must have been sizable and must have re-mained in circulation through the six decades when the denomination was notminted.

The only trend in the relative representation of piccolo issues revealed by acomparison of hoards is a sharp decline in minting from the issue in the nameof Lorenzo Tiepolo (‒), which reintroduced the piccolo, to that of hissuccessor, Jacopo Contarini (‒), and a resumption of strong minting inthe next reign, that of Giovanni Dandolo (‒). It will be noted that this isexactly the converse of what appears to have happened to the grosso in thesesame reigns. It would seem that the heavy minting of grossi under Contarini wasaccompanied by a decline in the minting of piccoli. Whether this was a resultof the transfer of resources to meet a surge in demand for grossi or the resultof changes in minting policies by the government is not certain. It is clear thatat least part of the recovery of minting of the piccolo in the next decade was

Within the Mint

the result of policy: in the Great Council decreed that of the £, worthof silver in the mint £, be made into piccoli and only £ into grossi.⁷⁴

Comparison of the composition of hoards of ducats and soldini gives littleusable information on the chronological trends of the minting of these denom-inations. There is a rise in the representation of ducat issues of the mid four-teenth century, but not as much as one might expect from the documented floodof gold in the reign of Andrea Dandolo (‒) and the widespread imitationof issues in his name. A comparison of hoards with soldini minted before thedebasement of indicates a heavy minting in the first issue (before ) anda drop-off thereafter. Because of the debasement of the soldino in the middle ofthe century, culling becomes a factor that distorts the relative representation ofissues in hoards and thus the applicability of such comparisons to questions ofmint output. Later in the fourteenth century, the hoards suggest a rise in pro-duction in the mid s, a decline in the s, and a revival in the s ands, but the paucity of hoards and the possible effects of later debasementscaution against reliance on these apparent trends.

The picture of the minting of the tornesello from excavations and hoardsis remarkably congruent (compare graph . with graph .). This may well bebecause the tornesello was so base and overvalued a coin that there was no pointin culling issues of it, so representation in finds is a relatively direct index of pro-duction. In addition, the tornesello circulated in a single geographical area,Greece, so differential shipping of stocks does not affect the representation. Inany event, it is clear that minting was relatively modest from the introduction ofthe denomination in until the reign of Marco Corner (‒), when itshot up markedly. It appears to have undergone a decline, or at least a diminu-tion in the rate of increase, under Andrea Contarini (‒) and reached a heightunder Antonio Venier (‒). The strong representation of the brief reignof Michele Morosini (four months in ), which does not appear on the graph,suggests that the actual height of minting was around this time. It is certain thatminting declined in the early decades of the fifteenth century, amounting to al-most nothing after the end of the reign of Mocenigo in .

and the data offered by nu-mismatic analyses, it is possible to form a general view of the volume of pro-duction at the Venetian mint in at least some periods of the later Middle Ages.

The minting of the piccolo in the late twelfth century and very early thir-


⁷⁴ Nov. : CMM, c. .

Gra

ph

..T

o rn e

sello

hoa

rds.

Im

age

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teenth appears to have been quite heavy; after a fifty-year hiatus these early issuesmaintain a strong presence in finds of the later thirteenth century. The produc-tion of the grosso clearly dominated the minting of the thirteenth century. Itappears to have started off slowly in the reign of Enrico Dandolo but picked upsoon after and continued strong until the s. At the time of the compilationof the capitulary of the mintmasters for silver in , the zecca had the capac-ity to mint about million piccoli a year (using kg of silver) and about .million grossi (using , kg of silver). In this period, the production of thegrosso was on the rise, but that of the piccolo was declining. The ducat was ini-tiated in , in the middle of a decade characterized by a decline in the pro-duction of grossi and a rise in that of piccoli.

Documents of , the year in which the mint was expanded, indicate thatproduction of grossi was just over million coins a year (, kg of silver), whilealmost million piccoli a year were ordered minted ( kg of silver). In theearly s, the soldino replaced both the piccolo and the grosso as the basic coinof the Venetian domestic economy, and data from that period suggest a mint-ing of million to million soldini a year, using , kilograms of silverannually. In the s, a flood of gold into Venice led to an increase in the facil-ities of the zecca to allow a minting capacity of , ducats a year, using, kilograms of gold. In this decade, the production of silver coinage seemsto have first declined and then picked up in the years around the Black Death of and dropped off by .

The tornesello was initiated in , and its production rose steadily throughthe remainder of the century, reaching more than million coins a year by thes and as many as million coins by ; the enormous production of thisbase coin would have used only about kilograms of silver a year. In , theproduction of the soldino was as high as million coins a year, using almost, kilograms of silver per year. After the grosso was reintroduced in , theproduction of fine-silver coins was on the order of about million grossi a year(about , kg) in the s, declining to about , grossi (, kg) in

and , ( kg) in . Production of the ducat sank to , coins peryear ( kg of gold) in the s but occasionally rose as high as , ducatsa year (, kg) during the next half century.

In the period from to , then, the gross, overall minting of silver canbe seen as having declined from about , kilograms a year to under ,

kilograms; the minting of gold reached heights of as much as , kilogramsa year but was usually less than half that amount, with no overall trends visibleother than a rise in the mid-fourteenth century.


On April , Doge Tomaso Mocenigo died. In a scene that has becomeone of the mainstays of Venetian historiography, he is supposed to have invitedthe leading nobles to his bedside for a lecture on the state of the republic andthe election of his successor. Among other statistics in his famous arenga was anaccount of the current production of the mint. Each year it was said to be pro-ducing , gold ducats, and the silver issues included , ducats’ worthof grossi going to Syria and , ducats’ worth of soldini and mezzanini go-ing to the Terraferma, the Levant, and England respectively. As we have seen,these quantities are significantly higher than any we have seen throughout theMiddle Ages and are certainly in contrast to contemporary characterizations inlegislation of the gold and silver mints as being “in desolation and reduced toalmost nothing.” The monetary situation presented in the arenga represents atbest the exaggeration of a statesman wishing to put the best light on his accom-plishments; more probably it results from the efforts of men of a later age todepict his reign as a “golden age” of the mint of Venice.

The zecca would eventually emerge from the desolate state it had reachedin . The blockade of Sigismund would end in , allowing traditionalsources of ore to reach Venice. The Venetians would adapt to the Ottoman con-quests in the Levant and reestablish, at least to some extent, the old flows of bul-lion and goods into the city. The conquests of the Terraferma would ultimatelygive Venice new lands in which to circulate overvalued base coinages as well asits standard silver and gold denominations. Bullion supplies would ebb and flowin the course of the fifteenth century, and relief would finally come with the ex-ploitation of new sources of ore, first from the Alps and ultimately from theNew World. Nevertheless, the mint of Venice would never again approach theimportance it had held when the silver grosso dominated the trade of theMediterranean world in the thirteenth century and the gold ducat that of thefourteenth.

Within the Mint

Offices Relating to Bullion and the �ecca

The tables in this appendix display the documented holders of offices relating tothe Venetian mint up to the year . Documentation on the careers of these individu-als can be found in Alan M. Stahl, “A Prosopography of Medieval Venetian MintOfficials,” Medieval Prosopography (). Individuals whose office holding is directlydocumented are in normal type; those for whom the documentation of the particularoffice is ambiguous and has been inferred are in italics. Various symbols link the occur-rences of the name of an individual in an office: * indicates apparently initial election;† indicates documented continued holding of an office; ‡ indicates inferred continuedholding of an office; § indicates apparent ending of office holding. Double lines, || and#, link father and son in continued holding of an office.

Appendix A

Table A.. Advisors

(continued)

Offices Relating to Bullion and the Zecca

Table A.. (continued)

Appendix A

Table A.2. Silver Officials


Table A.2. (continued)

Appendix A

Table A.2. (continued)


Table A.. Gold Estimators

(continued)

Appendix A



Table A.. Mintmasters for Silver

(continued)

Appendix A


Appendix A

Table A.. Mintmasters for Gold

Appendix A

Table A.. Mint Weighers for Silver

Appendix A

Table A.. Mint Weighers for Gold


Table A.. Gastaldo

Finds of �edieval �enetian Coins

Table B. lists the Venetian doges whose names appear on medieval coins. Table B.contains summaries of finds that contained ten or more Venetian coins minted in thenames of doges between and ; a question mark replaces the quantity of coinsfrom a given issue when this is not reported. Only the Venetian contents are describedin detail. First come coins from excavations, which usually comprise the lowest denom-inations in circulation; these are arranged geographically from west to east. The hoardsare arranged according to the denomination of Venetian coins in them, starting withducats and then working down the denominations of silver and billon. Within eachdenomination, hoards are listed in approximate chronological order of their latest coin(not necessarily Venetian). Only coins identified by denomination and doge are listedhere. For those doges under whom more than one type was issued, the number of thetype found is in parentheses following the name. Hoards whose find spots are unknownare omitted. Hoards that contain more than one denomination of Venetian coin aredescribed under the heading of the highest denomination and referred to under subse-quent headings.

Appendix B

Table B.. Venetian Doges Whose Names Appear on Medieval Coins

Finds of Medieval Venetian Coins

Table B.. Finds from Excavations and Hoards

Appendix B

Table B.. (continued)

Appendix B


Appendix B


(continued)

Appendix B


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Bibliography

a Caligi, Plastrino, account, system of, ; lira based on grosso

(L: libra ad grossos;V: lira a grossi), , ‒

, , ; lira of grossi (L: libra grosso-rum;V: lira di grossi), , , , , ‒

, ; lira of moneta, ‒, , ,, ‒, , , ; lira of pennies(L: libra parvorum; V: lira di piccoli), , ,, , ‒, , , ; mintaccounting system for gold, ‒

account book, , ,

Accounts Office (L: rationes veterum; V:rason vecchie), , , ‒, , , ,, , , , , , , , ,, , , ,

Achaia,

Acre, Adoaldo, Matteo (mintmaster), ‒

Adriatic Sea, , , , ,

advisor (L: sapiens; V: savio): council, ,, (see also Mocenigo, Leonardo):for mint, , , , ‒, , , ,, ‒, , , , , , ,, ‒ (see also Bon, Marino andScipione; da Molin, Marco; da Mula,Bernardo; Darpin, Giovanni; Dente,Jacopo; di Garzoni, Giovanni; Donato,

Andrea; Duodo, Michele; Gabriel,Andrea; Girardo, Francesco; Grimani,Giovanni; Loredan, Nicolò; Morosini,Pietro; Onoradi, Donato; Premarin,Vezeli; Soranzo, Benedetto; Trevisan,Jacopo); on orders, , ; state, ;for state revenues, , , , ,

advocator comunis. See state advocateAegean Sea, , , , , , , ,

affinator. See refineragio, , , , , ,

Aigues-Mortes, Albizo: Giovanni (engraver), ;

Leonardo (engraver), ; Marco(engraver), ; Nicoleto (emender),; Vettore (engraver), ,

Aleppo hoard,

Alexandria, , , , , , ,

Alexius I (Byzantine emperor), ,

Amadeus VI of Savoy, ,

Ancona,

annealing, apprentice, , , , , ,

Apulia, , , ,

Aquileia, , , , , , , , ,, . See also friesacher

Index

Titles of Venetian offices and minting terms are followed by standardized forms of their Latin

(L) and vernacular (V) equivalents. Coins are entered under their names, not under their places

of origin.

Arabs,

Armaments Office,

arsenal, , ,

Asia Minor,

Asolo, ,

aspron trachy, , , , ,

assay (L: sazium, exagium; V: sazio), , ,, , , ‒, , ‒, ‒

. See also cupellationassayer, mint,

Athemano,

Athens, , , ,

auditor, . See also Bon, Marino;Donato, Andrea

Augsburg. See Henry of Augsburgaugustalis, ,

Austria,

Aventurado, Secondo (mintmaster), ‒

, ,

Avignon, ,

Aydin, emirs of,

Baffo, Marco (mintmaster), , , ,

bagattino, . See also penny, of Verona;penny, Venetian

balance (trabuco), ,

Balbi, Antonio (worker),

banker. See moneychangerBarbarigo: Filippo (mint advisor), ;

Filippo (mintmaster), , , , ,, ‒, ,

Barbo, Martino, Bardi Bank, Florence, Baro, Giovanni (moneyer),

Bartholemew (count of Slavonia), ,

Bartolomei, Francesco,

Bastio, Alessandro,

Bavaria,

Beirut galleys,

Belingarda (Florentine), ,

Bellenzero (mint scribe),

Bembo, Bernardo (account official),

Benedetto, Pietro (moneychanger), , ,‒,

Berengar (Carolingian emperor), Bergamo,

Berman, Ariel,

Bernardus Teotonicus (silver merchant),,

bianco. See halfpennybimetallic ratio, , , , , , ,

Bincego, Benvenuto, of Seravalle,

Biringuccio, Vanuccio, Pirotechnia, , ,

Black Death, ‒, , , , ‒,, , , , , , , ,, , ,

Black Sea, ,

blacksmith (L: faber; V: fabro), , , ,, , , ‒, , . See alsoda le Forfede, Antonio; Travagla,Nicolò

blanch, , , , , ,

Blanco, Nicoleto (moneyer),

blank. See flanBoarsino of Ragusa,

Bobizo, Donato “Gallina” (mintmaster,moneychanger), , ,

Boccanegra, Simone (doge of Genoa),

Bohemia, , ,

Bollani: Andrea, ; Giovanni (mint-master),

Bologna, , , , , , . Seealso Giovanni of Bologna

bolognino,

Bon family, ; Andrea (mintmaster),; Filippo (mint scribe), , n,; Giovanni (weigher), ; Marino(mint advisor), , ; Scipione(mint advisor), , ,

Index

Bonifacius (Clericus) of Milan, , ,

Bonifacius (worker in silver office),

Bosnia,

Brabant,

brassage (production cost of minting),, ‒, , ‒, , , ,, , ,

Bratislava, ,

Brescia,

Brescoa. See grosso, of SerbiaBreydenbach, Bernhard von, ‒

broker, silver. See silver brokerBrskovo. See grosso, of SerbiaBruges,

Brunetti, Lodovico,

Bulgaria,

bullion: famine, , , , , ‒;sources of, . See also gold; silver

Butinus, Pietro, of Bologna,

by-products of minting and refining(L: ceneracia; V: zenerazii), , , ,, , ‒

Byzantium, , , , , , ; coins of, ,, , , , , , , , , ‒.See also aspron trachy; hyperpyron

Cairo,

Calegario; family, ; Pietro (caster),

callo (bullion lost in refining; fee forrefining), , , ‒

camerarius comunis. See state chamberlaincameratum. See silver, registeredCandia, , ,

Cannaregio (sestier), , ,

Caparelli hoard, , ,

capitulary, , . See also mintmaster,capitulary of

Caresini, Raffaino (ducal chancellor),

Carinthia, , , . See also Lovecher ofCarinthia; Rambret of Carinthia

Carrara family, ; Jacopo II (ruler ofPadua),

carrarino, , ‒

Castello (sestier), ,

caster (L: infonditor, infusor; V: fondedor), ,, , , , ‒, , ; salaryof, , ‒. See also Calegario, Pietro;Chanaca, Antonio; Pugno, Vettore

Castile,

casting,

Cavalcante, Pietro, of Candia,

cedula, , See also mintmaster, receiptor report to doge

Cellini, Benvenuto, ,

Celsi, Lorenzo (doge),

cementation, ‒

ceneracia. See by-products of minting andrefining

cenoglello. See soldinoCephalonia hoard, , , ,

Cerigo, Joshua of,

Chalkis hoard,

Chanaca, Antonio (caster),

chancellor, ducal,

charcoal, ,

Charles of Anjou (king of Apulia andSicily),

Charles IV of Luxembourg (king ofBohemia),

Charystos,

Chieti,

Chioggia, ,

Chioggia, War of, ‒, , , , ‒

, , , , , ,

Chios, ,

Christian of Vienna,

Cinque alla Pace. See Keepers of thePeace

cittadino, , ,

Clarenza, ,

clipped grossi: deputy of, ‒, ‒,

Index

clipped grossi (continued) (see also de la Fontana, Bartolomeo;Dolfin, Franceschino; Emo, Nicoleto);official of, , , , ‒, ‒,, ‒ (see also Zusto, Simoneto)

clipping (L: tondere; V: stronzare), , , ,, ‒, , , , , , ‒,‒, ; of flan from square (L:cesalia; V: cesagie), ‒

Cologne, coins of, ,

Conegliano,

Conrad II (Ottonian emperor), Conrad III (German emperor), Conrad of Rastatt,

Conrad of Vienna,

Conradino of Parma,

Constantinople, , , , , , , ;

Latin Empire of,

Contarini family, , ; Andrea (doge),, , , , ; Francesco, ;

Jacopo (doge), , , , , ;Perato (foreman), ; Pietro (mintadvisor), ; Pietro (mintmaster,moneychanger),

contraband officials,

copper, , , , , , , ,; ghetto official of,

Coppo family,

Coregari family, Corfu,

Corinth, , , ,

Corner: Alvise (gold merchant), ; Marco(doge), ; Maria, ; Nicolò (mint-master),

Coron, , , ,

Corpus Nummorum Italicarum,

counselor (L: conciliarius; V: consiero), , ,, , ‒, , , , , , ,, , , , , , , , ,, , , . See also Girardi, Fran-cesco; Signoria

count, transactions by, counterfeiting, , , ‒, , , ,

‒, , ‒, ,

Cox, Dorothy,

Crete, , , , , , , , , , ,, , , , , , , ,, , ,

Cristaleri, Alvise,

Croatia, ,

Crusade, Fourth, , ,

culling, ‒, , , , , ‒,, , ,

Culredar, Giovanni (moneyer),

cupellation, , , , , , ‒,. See also assay

Cyprus, , , ,

da Canal: Daniele (mintmaster), , ;

Martin, da le Forfede, Antonio (mint blacksmith),

‒

da le Pele, Nicolò (foreman of moneyers),

Dalmasio (schoolteacher), ‒

Dalmatia, ‒, , , , ,

da Molin: Bonfiglio, ; Marco (mintadvisor), , ‒

da Mosto, Bianco (mintmaster), , ,

da Mula, Bernardo (mint advisor),

Dandolo: Andrea (doge), , , , ,, , , , , , , , ,, , ; Daniele (mintmaster),; Enrico (doge), , , , ‒,, , , , , , , ;

Francesco (doge), , , , ,, , ; Giovanni (doge), , ,, , , ‒, ; Nicoleto,illegitimate son of Gabriele,

da Pessina, Silvestro (gold merchant),

Index

da Pozzo, Antonio (weigher), ,

Darpin, Giovanni (mint advisor), ‒

da Riva, Antonio (mintmaster),

dazio. See gold, import duty on; silver,import duty on

de’ Barbari, Jacopo, ‒,

debasement. See mutation of currencyde Bernardo, Francesco (gold estimator,

mintmaster, silver official), ‒, ,, ,

de Bora family, , ; affair, , ‒;

Alvise (moneychanger), ; Bertucio(moneychanger), ; Marco (money-changer), ; Nicolò (moneychanger),; Pietro (moneychanger), ; To-maso (moneychanger),

debt of Venetian state, , , , ,

de Cataldo, Zilio (gold merchant),

decimo, , ,

de la Fontana: Bartolomeo (deputy forclipped grossi), , ; Tomaso (mintweigher),

de Lambertis, Nicolò (moneyer), de la Torre, Giovanni (gold merchant),

de Leonardo, Giovanni (emender),

della Scala family, , , , ; AlbertoII, ; Jacopo, ; Mastino,

Delphi hoard,

de Marcadelis, Giovanni, of Padua,

Demetrius, Saint,

denarius. See pennydenaro. See pennydenier tournois, , , , ,

Dente family, ; Jacopo (gold estimator,mint advisor), ; Pietro (mintmas-ter),

deputy of clipped grossi. See clippedgrossi, official of

de Richeriis, Jacopo, of Bologna,

die (L: ferramentum; V: ferro), , , ‒

, , , ; axis, ‒; composi-tion of, , , ; numbers of, ,, , , , ‒; pile (L: pilla),, , ; trussel (L: torsellus), ,, . See also blacksmith; engraver

Diedo: Francesco (emender), ;Lorenzo (silver official),

di Fede del Sega, Lippo (Florentine mer-chant), , ,

di Garzoni family, ; Giovanni (mintadvisor), , , ‒,

dinar: Castilian, ; Crusader, , , ;

Islamic,

di Priuli, Angelo (mintmaster), dirhem: Crusader, ; Islamic,

doge, , , , , ‒, , , , ,, , , , , , , , ,, , ; image of, , , , , ,‒; palace of, . See also under namesof individual doges

Dolfin: Andrea (head of Forty), ;

Franceschino (deputy of clippedgrossi), ; Giovanni (doge), ,

Dolze, Ermolao,

dominus de nocte. See Lord of the NightWatch

Donato: Andrea (mint advisor), , ‒

, ; Nicolò (silver official), ‒

Dorsoduro (sestier),

dowry, , ,

ducale, ,

ducat, ‒, , , , , , , ,‒, , , , ‒, , ‒

; of account, , ; circulation of,‒, , , ‒, , , ,; export of, ; finds of, ‒;

imitations of, , , , , , ,, ‒, ‒, , , ;

standards of, , ‒, , , ,, , ‒, ; supply of, ;

value of, , , ‒, , , , ,

Index

ducat (continued), ‒, , , , , ,

(see also agio); volume of minting, ,, ‒, , , , , ‒,‒, ,

duke of Crete, ‒

Duodo: Jacopo (mintmaster), ; Mi-chele (gold estimator, head of Forty,mint advisor, silver official), ‒,, ‒

écu (French gold coin), Edward III (English king), Egypt, , , , , , ,

emender (L: mendator; V: mendador), , ,, , , , , , ‒, ,‒; foreman of, , ‒, ;

number of, , , , ; wages of,, , , , . See also Albizo,Nicoleto; de Leonardo, Giovanni;Diedo, Francesco

Emilia, , ,

Emo: Giovanni (mintmaster), ; Nico-leto (deputy of clipped grossi),

England, , , , ‒, ;

coins of, , . See also sterlingengraver (L: intaiator; V: intaiador), , ,

, , , , , ‒, , ,, , ‒; salary of, , , .

See also Albizo, Giovanni, Leonardo,Marco, and Vettore; Ognibene; Quin-tavalle, Giovanni; Sesto, Alessandro,Bernardo, Giralomo, Jacopo, Lorenzo,Luca, and Marco

Ephesus. See Theologoestimo, , , , , ‒,

excavation finds, , ‒, ‒

Extraordinaries, Office of,

faber. See blacksmithFaenza, , ,

Falier, Marino (doge), , ,

Famagusta, ,

Ferrara, , ,

Fibonacci (Leonardo Pisano), ,

flan, ‒, , , ,

Flanders, , ,

Florence, ‒, , , , , ; mintof, , , , ‒

florin: of Florence, , , , , ,, , , , , , , ; ofHungary, ; of Rhineland,

flux. See callofoglia d’oro. See gold leaf officialFondaco dei Lombardi (L: Fonticum

Lombardorum),

Fondaco dei Tedeschi (L: Fonticum Theu-tonicorum), , , , , ‒, ,, , , , , , ,

fondedor. See casterforeign coins in Venice, ‒, , ‒,

, , , , , ; import dutyon, , ,

foreman (L: galstaldio; V: gastaldo), , ,, , , , , , , ‒,. See also Contarini, Perato

forge (L: fusina; V: fondadura),

Forty, Council of (L: Consilium de XL;V: Quaranta), , , , , , , ,, , , , , , , , , , ,‒, ‒, , , , , , ,, ‒, , ‒, , , ,, , , , , , , ,, , , ‒, , , ,, , , , , , , ,, , , , , , , , ,, , , ; heads of, , , ‒

, , , , , , , , ,, , , (see also Dolfin, Andrea;Duodo, Michele; Gabriel, Nicolò);mint supervisors, , , ‒, .

See also Full College; Signoria

Index

Foscari, Francesco (doge), , , ,, ,

Foscarini: Andrea (mintmaster), ;Giusto (mintmaster), ; Gregorio(gold estimator, mintmaster), ‒;Tereno,

France, , ,

Francesco, brother (scribe),

Frankfurt,

Frederick I Barbarossa (Germanemperor), ,

Frederick II (German emperor),

freight charge (L: nabulum;V: naolo), ‒

Frescobaldi, Niccolò, ,

Frescobaldi bank, friesacher, ; of Aquileia, , , , ,

, , ; false, , ; of Frie-sach, ; of Gorizia, ; of Triest, ;

of Venice, ‒,

Friuli, , , , , , ,

Full College (L: collegium; V: pien collegio),,

furnace (L: fornax; V: fornace),

Gabriel: Andrea (mint advisor, money-changer), ‒, , , ‒;

Maffeo (gold estimator, money-changer), ; Nicolò (Head of Forty),‒

gastaldo. See foremanGatilusio, Francesco (lord of Mytilene),

Gaussian distribution,

Genoa, , , , , , , , , , (see also Chioggia, War of ); coinsof, . See also genovino; grosso

genovino, , , , ,

Germans, , , , , , ‒, , ,‒, ‒, , , , , ,, , , , , , , . Seealso Fondaco dei Tedeschi

Germany, , ,

Gesuati (church),

ghetto. See copper, ghetto official ofGiovanni of Bologna,

Giovanni of Mantua, ,

Girardi family, ; Francesco (mint advi-sor), , , ‒

Giudecca, mint refinery at, , ‒. Seealso Inchiostro, Pietro

Giudici del Proprio, ,

Giustinian: Giovanni (mintmaster), ;

Pietro, chronicle attributed to, gold: fineness of, ‒, , , ‒;

import duty on, , , ; price of,, ‒, , ; refining of, , ,, , , , , , , , ‒

(see also Giudecca, mint refinery at;Rialto, refinery at); sale of, , ,‒, ‒, , (see also Cataldo,Zilio; Corner, Alvise; da Pessina, Sil-vestro; de la Torre, Giovanni); silver,relationship to (see bimetallic ratio);sources of,

gold estimator (L: estimator auri,V: stimadord’oro), , , , , , ‒, , ,, , , , , ‒, , , ,‒, , , , , , , ,, , , , , , , ,‒. See also de Bernardo, Francesco;Dente, Jacopo; Duodo, Michele; Fos-carini, Gregorio; Gabriel, Maffeo;Gold Office; Malipiero, Bernardo;Quintavalle, Donato; Papaziza, Paolo;Premarin, Vezeli; Stornado, Marco;Trevisan, Jacopo

gold leaf official (L: folia auri; V: fogliad’oro), , , , , , ,

Gold Office, . See also gold estimatorgoldsmith, , , , , , ,

Gomberto, Pietro (mintmaster),

Gorizia,

Index

Gradenigo: Bartolomeo (doge), , ,, , , ; Giovanni (doge), ,; Leonardo, , ; Pietro (doge),

Grado, patriarch of, grazia process, , , , , , ,

, , ‒, , ,

Great Council (L: Maior Consilium; V:Maggior Consiglio), , , , , ,, , , , , , ‒, ‒, ,, , , , , , , , ‒

, , , , , , , , ,, , , , , ‒, ,, , , , , , , ;

Serrata, , ‒, ‒, , , ,,

Greece, , , , , , , , ,, , , , , , ,

Gresham’s law, , , , , ,‒

Grierson, Philip, ,

Grimani: Giovanni (gold estimator, mintadvisor), , , , , ; Pietro,

Grioni, Benedetto (silver official),

grossetto,

grosso: of Florence, ; of Genoa, , ;

of Lucca, ; of Pisa, ; of Ragusa,; of Serbia, ‒, ‒, , ,, , , ; of Sienna, ; of Spa-lato, ; of Trent, ; of Tyrol, , ,, , , , ; of Venice for Ska-dar, ; of Verona, , , , , , ,, ,

grosso, Venetian, ‒, , , , , ,, , , , , , , , , ‒

, , , , , , , , ,‒, , , ‒; of account,, ; circulation of, , , ,‒, , ; finds of, , , , ,, ‒, , , , , ,

‒; standards of, ‒, , , ,, , ‒, , , , , ‒

; value of, ‒, , ‒, , ,, , , ‒, (see also agio);volume of production, , , , ,, , , , , , , ‒,‒, ‒,

grossone, ,

Guidi, Andrea di Jacopo (mint scribe),, ,

Guido (Carolingian king), guild, ,

Guoro, Lorenzo (silver official),

halfpenny (L: albulus; V: bianco), , , ,, , , ‒, ; finds of, ‒

Henry of Augsburg,

Henry of Heslingen,

Henry of Salchemburg,

Henry III (German emperor), Henry III (king of England), Henry IV (German emperor), Henry V (German emperor), ,

Henry VI (German emperor), Hermenches hoard,

Hijaz,

hoard finds, , ‒

Holland,

Holy Sepulcher, Church of, ,

Hrvoje Vukcic Hrvatinic (duke ofSpalato),

Hungary, ‒, , , , , , ,, , , , ,

hyperpyron, , , , ,

Inchiostro, Pietro (refinery supervisor),

India,

infonditor. See casterinfusor. See casteringot (L: virga, petia; V: verga, pezzo), ,

Index

, , , , , ; gold, ,, , , , , , , , ;

silver, , , , , , , , ,, , , , , , ‒,‒; small (summo), , , ,

inquisitor,

intaiator. See engraverIoannina hoard,

Isaac II (Byzantine emperor), Islamic coins, , , . See also dinar;

dirhemIsrael,

Istria, , , , ,

Jeremie, Jacobello (moneyer),

Jerusalem, , ,

Jesus Christ (image of ), , , , , ,, ‒

Jew, , . See also Cerigo, Joshua ofJohannes of Poland,

John II Comnenus (Byzantine emperor),

John the Deacon, John III Vatatzes (Byzantine emperor),

Keepers of the Peace (L: Quinque adPacem; V: Cinque alla Pace),

key, , , , , ,

Kleinvassach hoard, Kremica, ,

Kress, Hilpot, Kutná Hora,

laborator. See workerlavrador. See workerlead, ‒,

ledger, . See also mintmaster, ledger oflegend, coin, , , , , , , ‒

Levant, , , , , , , , , ,, , ,

lion. See Mark, SaintLombards, ,

Lombardy, , , ,

long family, ‒, , , , , ‒

,

Longo, Cecco (worker),

Lord of the Night Watch (L: dominus denocte; V: signor di notte), , ‒, ,

Loredan, Nicolò (mint advisor), ‒

Loreto,

Lothar (Carolingian emperor), , ,

Lothar II (German emperor), Louis IX (king of France), Louis the Pious (Carolingian emperor),

, , ,

Lovecher of Carinthia,

Lucca, , , , ; gold coin of, Lurate Abbate hoard,

Macedonia,

Maggior Consiglio. See Great CouncilMagno: Giovanni (weigher), ; Marino

(weigher), ‒

Maguellone,

Maior Consilium. See Great CouncilMaiorana, Giovanni (moneyer),

Malipiero: Bernardo (gold estimator,mint master), ; Orio (doge), , ,, ,

Mamluk coins,

Mantua,

Manuel I (Byzantine emperor), , ‒

Marciana library,

Marie de Bourbon (ruler in Pelopon-nese), ,

Mark, Saint (image of ), , , , , ‒

, , , , , , , , , ,‒, ,

mark (unit of weight): of Cologne, ; ofVenice, ,

Marmora, Filippo (moneychanger),

Marmora, Sea of,

Index

Mary, Virgin, ‒

master, workshop,

matapan. See grosso, VenetianMatteo di Rimini, ,

medal, Sesto, ‒

Megliorato, Tisio (Florentine merchant),‒

Memmo, Franceschino, illegitimate sonof Pietro,

mendator. See emendermeseta. See silver brokermezzanino, ‒, ‒, , , , ,

, , , , , ‒, , ,‒, ‒, , , , ; coun-terfeits of, ; finds of, , ‒, ,, , ; standards of, ‒;

for Verona and Vicenza, , ,

Michael, Saint,

Michiel, Vitale II (doge), , , , ,

Milan, , , ; Bonifacius clericus of,

miliarensis, Minor Council, , , ,

mintmaster (L: massarius; V: massero), ,, , , , , , , , ,, , ‒, , , , , ,, ; accounts of, , , , ,, , , ‒, , , ,; associate, , , , ; auxil-iary, ; capitulary of, , , , , ,, , ‒, , , , ,, , , , , , ; anddistribution of new coins, , , ,, ‒, ; election of, ‒,, , , , ‒; for gold, ,, , , , , , ‒, ‒,, ‒, , , , ‒; forgrossi, , ; ledger of (L: quaternum;V: quaderno), ; mark of: —on coins,, , , , , , , , , , ,, , , ; —on ingots, ; mis-

deeds of, , , , , , , ,, , ‒, , , ‒,, ; number of, , , , , ,, , , , , , , ‒, ,‒; pay: —salary, , , , ,, , ‒, ; —utilities (spe-cial fees and fines), , , , ,, ‒, ; for pennies, ; pur-chase of bullion, , ‒, ‒,, ; —state capital for, , , ,, , , , ‒, , ; receiptor report to doge (L: cedula; V: cetola),, ; review of (L: proba; V: prova),, , ; for silver, , , , ,, ‒, , , ‒; state-ment of accounts (L: ratio; V: raxion),; term of office, , ; for torne-selli, . See also account book; Ado-aldo, Matteo; Aventurado, Secondo;Baffo, Marco; Barbarigo, Filippo;Bobizo, Donato; Bollani, Giovanni;Bon, Andrea; Contarini, Pietro; Cor-ner, Nicolò; da Canal, Daniele; daMosto, Bianco; Dandolo, Daniele; daRiva, Antonio; de Bernardo, Fran-cesco; Dente, Pietro; di Priuli, Angelo;Duodo, Jacopo; Emo, Giovanni; Fos-carini, Andrea, Giusto, and Gregorio;Giustinian, Giovanni; Gomberto,Pietro; Malipiero, Bernardo; Moro-sini, Fantino; Nani, Costantino; Nav-ager, Giovanni and Marco; Papaziza,Giovanni and Pietro; quindena; Quin-tavalle, Donato; Sanudo, Marco; Stor-nado, Giovanni; Tiepolo, Antonio;Trevisan, Jacopo and Nicolò; Venier,Filippo; Zanchani, Cristoforo

misseta. See silver brokerMocenigo: Leonardo (council advisor),

; Tomaso (doge), , , , ,, ‒,

Index

Modon, , , , ,

Molina di Ledro hoard,

Molo, , ‒,

moneta. See account, system ofMonetario: Domenico, ; Gregorio, monetarius. See moneyermoneychanger, , , , , , , ,

, , , , , , ‒, , ‒

, , , , , , ‒, ,, , , , , , , , ,, , , , , , . See alsoBenedetto, Pietro; de Bora family;Gabriel, Andrea and Maffeo; Mar-mora, Filippo; Quintavalle, Catarino,Donato, and Francesco; Rizzo, Gio-vanni; Rosso, Marco; Soranzo, Ga-briel; Stornado, Giovanni, Marco, andVettore

moneyer (L: monetarius, stampator;V: mon-edador, stampador), , , , , ,, ‒, ; foreman of ( gastaldio), (see also da le Pele, Nicolò); graziefor, , ; number of, , , ,‒, ‒; wages of, , , ,, . See also Baro, Giovanni; Blanco,Nicoleto; Culredar, Giovanni; Dan-dolo, Nicoleto; de Lambertis, Nicolò;Jeremie, Jacobello; Maiorana, Gio-vanni; Memmo, Franceschino; Tano-ligo, Nicoleto

Monte Cassino,

Morosini family, ; Fantino (mintmas-ter), , ; Michele (doge), , ,, , ; Orsato, ; Pietro (mintadvisor), ; Ramboldo (weigher),

Murano,

Murari, Ottorino, mutation of currency, ; in Florence,

; in Venice, ‒, ‒, ‒, ,‒, , , , , ‒, ‒,

‒, ‒, ‒, ; in Verona,,

Mytilene,

nabulum. See freight chargeNani, Costantino (mintmaster), , ,

Navager: Giovanni (mintmaster), ;

Marco (mintmaster), ,

Nazareth,

Negroponte, , ,

Netherlands,

Nicaea, empire of,

Nigro, Jacobello (mint refiner, mintscribe), , ‒

noble status, , , , , , ,, , , ,

Notrus, Paolo, of Padua,

Novara,

Noventa di Piave excavations,

Nuremberg, ,

Ognibene (engraver), ,

Ognebene of Trent,

Old Justices (L: Iusticii Veteres),

Onoradi, Donato (mint advisor), ‒,‒

operator. See workerOrseolo, Pietro II (doge), Otto II (Ottonian emperor), Otto III (Ottonian emperor), Ottomans, ,

ovrer. See worker

Padua, , , , , , , ‒, , ,, , , , , , , ,, , , ‒, , , ,

pagliola gold,

Panciera, Antonio (partiarch ofAquileia),

Index

Papadopoli, Nicolò, , ,

papal tithe, , , , , , , ,,

Papaziza family, ‒; Giovanni (mint-master, moneychanger), , ; Paolo(gold estimator, silver official), ;Pietro (mintmaster),

Parma, ,

parvus. See penny, Venetianpeace. See Keepers of the PeacePegolotti, Francesco Balducci, La Pratica

della mercatura, , , , , ,‒, , ,

Peloponnese, ,

penny (L: denarius;V: denaro): imperial, ;

of England (see sterling); of France (seedenier tournois); of Greece (see deniertournois); of Lombardy, ; of Lucca,; of Milan, , , ; of Padua, ; ofPavia, ; of Pisa, , , ; of Ravenna,, , ; of Venice for Verona andVicenza, , , ; of Verona, , , ,, , , , , ,

penny, Venetian (L: denarius parvus; V: de-naro piccolo), ‒, , , , , ‒,, , , ‒, , , ‒;

finds of, , , , , , ‒, ‒,, , ‒; standards of, , ,, , , ; volume of produc-tion, , , , , , , ‒,‒, ‒, ‒

pensator. See weigherPerugia, ; gold coin of, Peruzzi bank, Florence, pexador. See weigherPesaro,

Phocea hoard,

Piacenza,

Piazzetta, ‒, . See also San Marco,piazza

piccolo. See penny, Venetian

Piloti, Emmanuel, ,

Pisa,

Pisano, Leonardo. See Fibonacciplague. See Black Deathpledge (L & V: plezaria), , , , ,

, , , , , , , ,,

Pliny the Elder,

Polani: Domenico, ; Nicolò (silverofficial),

Poland. See Johannes of Poland; Theo-dore of Poland

Ponte di Brenta hoard,

popolano, , , ,

Pordenone,

Portugal, ,

post, captain of,

Prague,

Premarin, Vezeli (gold estimator, mintadvisor),

prices of commodities, proba. See mintmaster, review ofProcurator of San Marco, , , , ,

‒, , , , ,

proveditor di comun. See state provisonerprovisor comunis. See state provisionerPugno, Vettore (caster),

punch (V: ponzon), , ‒,

Pyrgos hoard,

Quaranta. See Forty, Council ofquartarolo. See quarter pennyquarter penny (V: quartarolo), , , , ,

, , , , , ‒

quaternum. See mintmaster, ledger ofquattrino of Venice for Verona and

Vicenza,

Querini-Tiepolo conspiracy, ,

quindena (V: quindixena), , , , ,, , ; length, , , , ,‒,

Index

Quinque ad Pacem. See Keepers of thePeace

Quintavalle: Catarino (money changer,silver broker), , ; Donato (goldestimator, mintmaster, moneychanger,weigher), , , , ; Francesco(money changer, silver broker), ;Giovanni (engraver), , ‒

quinto, ‒, , , , , , , ,, , ‒, , , , ‒,‒, . See also decimo; silver, priceof and sale of

Ragusa, , , , , , , , ,, , , ,

Rambret of Carinthia,

rason vecchie. See Accounts Officeratio. See mintmaster, statement of

accountsRavenna, , , , , , , ,

receipt. See cedularefiner (L: affinator;V: afinador), , , ,

, , , , ‒, , . Seealso Cristaleri, Alvise; Rizzo, Nicoleto

refining, , , , ‒; See also by-products of minting and refining

Regensburg,

Reggio, ,

remedy (weight tolerance), , ‒, ,‒, , , , ‒

Reuwich, Erhard, ‒

Rialto: bridge, , , , ; market,‒, , , , , ‒, ,; refinery at, , , , , ‒.

See also silver official at RialtoRigus of Vienna,

Rimini, , , , , . See also Mat-teo di Rimini

Rizzo: Giovanni (moneychanger), ;Nicoleto (refiner, silver broker), ,

Roger II (king of Sicily), ,

Romagna, , , , ,

Romania (Latin East),

Romanus III (Byzantine emperor),

Rome,

Rösch, Gerhard, ,

Rosso family, ; Marco (money changer,silver broker),

Rudolph II (Carolingian king), Runtinger, Matthäus, ‒

Saccocci, Andrea, Sagredo, Giovanni (weigher), ,

Saladin (Ayyubid sultan), Salt Chamber,

Salvarosa hoard,

Salzburg,

San Aponal (church), San Bartolomeo (church), , , ,

San Giacomo di Rialto (church),

San Giorgio di Nogaro excavations,

San Giorgio di Pola hoard,

San Giovanni Chrisostomo (church), San Giovanni di Giudecca (Le Zitelle)

(church), San Giovanni di Rialto (church),

San Giovanni Nuovo (church), ,

San Luca (church),

San Marciliano (church), San Marco: basilica, , , , , ,

(see also Procurator of San Marco);piazza, , , ‒, , , ,, , , , ; sestier, , ,. See also Piazzetta

San Moise (church),

San Polo (church, sestier), ,

San Salvatore (church), San Secondo (tomb in Gesuati),

San Silvestro (church), Sansovino, Jacopo, , , , ,

Sant’Angelo (church),

Index

Santa Croce (sestier),

Santa Maria Formosa (church), Santa Marina (church), Santa Sofia (church), ,

Sanudo: Marco (mintmaster, silver offi-

cial), , ; Marin, , , ,

sapiens. See advisor.Saraceno, Pietro, of Reggio,

savio. See advisor.Savoreto (scribe of silver officials),

Savoreto, Simeone (notary, scribe of sil-ver officials), ,

Savoy, , ,

Scaliger. See della ScalaSclavo, Pietro (silver broker), scribe (L: scriba, notarius;V: scrivano), ‒

; of mint, , , , , , , ,, , , , , , , ,‒ (see also Bellenzero, Marco;Bon, Filippo; Francesco; Guidi, Andreadi Jacopo; Nigro, Jacobello; Zanchani,Pietro); of refinery, , ; salary ofmint scribes, , , ‒; of silveroffice, ,

Scutari. See Skadarseal of Venice, , ,

sealed sacks of coins or bullion, , ,, , , , ‒, , , ,,

seignorage (state profit on coinage), ,, , , , , ‒, , ,‒, , , ,

Selymbria,

Senate (L: Consilium rogatorum; V: Pre-gadi), , , , , , , ,, ,, , , , , , , , , ,‒, , , , , , , ‒

, , , , , , , ,, , , , , , , ,, , , , , , , ,

Senj,

Seravalle,

Serbia, , , ,

Serbian grossi, office of, , ‒

Sesto family, , , ; Alessandro(engraver), ; Bernardo (engraver),‒; Bernardo (engraver), ;Giralomo (engraver), ; Jacopo(engraver), ; Lorenzo (engraver),‒; Luca (engraver), ; Marco(engraver), ‒

short family, ‒, , , , ,‒,

Sicily, , , ,

Sigismund of Luxembourg (Germanemperor and king of Hungary), ,‒, ,

signor di notte. See Lord of the Night WatchSignoria, , , , , , , , ,

, , , ,

silver: export of, , , , , , ,; fineness of, , , , , ,‒, ‒; —de bulla standard, ,, ‒; —silversmith standard,, ; —sterling standard, ; gold,relationship to (see bimetallic ratio);import duty on, , , , , , ,, , , , (see also quinto);price of: —free, sold to mint, , ,, , , , , ‒, ‒, ‒

, , ; —market, , , ,; —quinto, , , , , ‒,, ‒, , ; refinery at mint,, ‒; registered, , ; sale of,, ‒, , , , , , , ‒

, ‒, ‒, ‒, , , (see also Bernardus Teotonicus;quinto, silver official; Tanoligo, Luca);scribe at mint, ; source of, ,

silver broker (L: misseta; V: meseta), ‒,, ,

silver official at Rialto, , , , , ,

Index

, , , , , ‒, , ‒,, , , , , , ‒;salary of, , ‒, . See also Bastio,Alessandro; de Bernardo, Francesco;Diedo, Lorenzo; Donato, Nicolò;Duodo, Michele; Grioni, Benedetto;Guoro, Lorenzo; Papaziza, Paolo;Polani, Nicolò; Premarin, Vezeli;Sanudo, Marco; Stornado, Marco;Zorzi, Michele

silversmith, , , , , ,

Skadar (Scutari),

Slavonia, ,

Slovenia,

smelter. See castersmith. See blacksmith; goldsmith; silver-

smithsoldino, ‒, , , , ‒, , ,

, , , , , , , , ‒

, , , , , ‒, ‒,, ; finds of, ‒, , ,‒, , , , , , ,, , ‒, ; imitations of,, , ; standards of, , , ,‒, , ‒, ‒, ‒, ,, , , , , , ‒, ‒

; volume of production, , , ,, ‒, , , ,

Sopraconsolo dei Mercanti,

Soranzo: Benedetto (mint advisor), ,‒; Gabriel (moneychanger), ,, ; Giovanni (doge), , , ;Pietro, ‒,

Spain,

Spirito, Francesco (weigher), , ,

square (of metal) (L: quadrellum; V:quarelo),

stampator. See moneyerstandard: gold, , ; weight, ,

state advocate (L: advocator comunis; V: avo-

gador di comun), , , , , ,, , , , ,

state chamberlain (L: camerarius comunis;V: camerlengo di comun), , , ,, ,

state provisioner (L: provisor comunis;V: proveditor di comun), , , , ,, , , , , , ,

Steno, Michele (doge), , , , ,, ,

sterling, English coin, , . See also sil-ver, fineness of

stimador d’oro. See gold estimatorStornado: Giovanni (mintmaster, money-

changer), ‒, , , , ;Marco (gold estimator, moneychanger,silver official, weigher), ‒; Vettore(moneychanger),

Strevestribus, Petrus,

striker. See moneyersubsidy of minting, , ,

summo. See ingot, smallSyria, , , , ,

tablet (L: tabula; V: tolla),

Tana (Black Sea port), , ,

Tanoligo: Luca (silver merchant), ‒,, ; Nicoleto (moneyer),

tari: of Amalfi and Salerno, ; of Nor-man Sicily, ,

tax official,

Ten, Council of, ,

Terraferma, , , , , , , ,, , , , , , ,

theft: from individuals, , , , ,, , ; from mint, , , ,, , , , , , ; fromrefinery, ; from town hall of Candia,

Theodore, Saint,

Theodore of Poland,

Index

Theologo (Ephesus),

Theophilus,

Thessalonica,

Tiepolo: Antonio (mintmaster), , ;

Jacopo (doge), , ; Lorenzo(doge), , , , , , ,

Todi,

Torcello, , ,

Tornaricus, Johannes, tornesello, , ‒, , , , , , ,

, , ‒, , , , , , ,, , , , ‒, , , ,, ; circulation of, , ‒;finds of, ‒, , , , ‒;

standards of, , ; volume of pro-duction, , , ‒, ‒, ‒

, ,

touchstone (V: tocha), , , ‒, ‒

, , , , , ,

trabuco. See balance; cullingTransylvania,

Travagla, Nicolò,

trébuchet,

Trent,

Trevisan: Jacopo (gold estimator, mint-master), , ; Nicolò (mintmaster),, , ,

Treviso, , , , , , , , ,, , ‒

Triest,

Tuderano,

Tunfred of Rheinberg, ,

Tunisia,

Turin, Peace of, ,

Turkey,

Tuscany, , ,

Tyrol, , , , ,

Ukraine,

unzia (coin of Apulia),

Urbino,

Ursia (reseller of merchandise),

Urso II (doge),

Venetians, , , , , , ,

Venier: Antonio (doge), , , , ,, , ‒, , ; —portraiton grosso, , ‒, ; Filippo(mintmaster), , ; Nicolò (mintadvisor), ,

Venzone cross, Verona, ‒, , ‒, , , ,

, , , ; hoard, ‒,

Vicenza, ‒, ‒, , , , ,

Vielmo, Francesco (mint advisor,weigher), , ,

Vienna. See Christian of Vienna; Conradof Vienna; Rigus of Vienna

Villani, Giovanni, Visconti, Luchino (lord of Milan),

visdomino. See Fondaco dei TedeschiViterbo,

warden. See foremanweigher (L: pensator, ponderator; V: pexador),

, , , , , , , , ,, , , , , ‒, ,‒; election of, ‒, , ;

number of, , , , , , ‒;

salary of, , , , , , , ‒

. See also Bon, Giovanni; da Pozzo,Antonio; de la Fontana, Tomaso;Magno, Giovanni and Marino; Moro-sini, Ramboldo; Quintavalle, Donato;Sagredo, Giovanni; Spirito, Francesco;Zanchani, Pietro

weight, transaction by, Wolfger von Ellenbrechtskirchen (patri-

arch of Aquileia),

Index

worker (L: laborator, operarius; V: lavrador,ovrer), , , , , , , ,, , , ‒; number of, ,, ; wages of, , , , , .See also Balbi, Antonio; Longo, Cecco

workshop (L: apotheca, fornax;V: botega, for-nace), ‒, ; laborer (L: famulus; V:fante), ; master (L: magister;V: maistro),

X-ray fluorescence (XRF), ‒

X-ray spectroscopy (XRS),

Yemen,

Zanchani: Cristoforo (mintmaster), ;

Pietro (weigher, mint scribe), , ,,

Zara, , , ‒, , , ,

Zecca of Venice: building, , , , ,, , ‒, ; location of, ,, ‒; use of term, ‒

Zeno, Ranieri (doge), , , ,

Ziani, Pietro (doge), , , , , ,, , ,

Zibaldone da Canal,

Zorzi: Marino (doge), ; Nicolò (silverofficial),

Zucchello, Pignol, ,

Index

zecca

Documents

silver mint

minting of silver

silver ocials

sale of silver

gold silver speculation

sources of silver

silver oce

silver markets