Money and the Middle Ages

By Jacques Le Goff, Jean Birrell (trans.)

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This is a scholarly, yet brief and readable, study of the development and use of money in the High Middle Ages. Some areas are still obscure: when sums of money are mentioned in contemporary records, it is often not clear whether actual coins are being referred to, or merely units of account.

The growth in the use of money paralleled and reinforced the development of the nation‑state. There were also the problems of the multiplicity if types and weights of coins in circulation, and also of bimetallism and trimetallism (gold, silver, and copper). This book is interesting in itself and provides useful background to the period; for example, I had no idea that gold was very rarely used for coinage.