I’m talking money. Medieval money, to be specific. When I
wrote my first published novel, Loyalty’s Web, I had few resources to help me understand the monetary system of
Western Europe in the 12th Century. The internet wasn’t widely available when I
wrote my first draft. I thought it made perfect sense that the upper classes,
like royalty, would have coffers and coffers filled with gold coins, so I put
gold coins into my draft and didn’t look back. Loyalty’s Web was first published in 2007 (years after that draft
was actually written) and no one ever called me on the gold coins in the story.
This year, I have been focused on a rewrite of an even older
story of mine called The Lady and the Minstrel. In a new scene that I wrote for the book, I wanted to contrast an
English gold coin with a French gold coin in the early 13th Century. This time
I had easy access to internet research, so on the internet I hopped. And what,
to my dismay, did I discover? Gold production took a nose dive along with the
fall of the Roman Empire! While gold continued to be used in small amounts like
jewelry, illuminated manuscripts, and even embroidery thread for the rich, when
it came to money, silver ruled the day during the Early and High Middle Ages.
(Roughly the 8th-13th Centuries.)
(Oops! No! Very, very rare! And a later century)
The first significant gold mine in medieval Western Europe
wasn’t established until around 1320 in Slovakia. And it took the discovery of
additional gold deposits to begin mining enough gold to mint coins in any kind
of sizeable numbers.
The first thing I did on learning this was to go through The
Lady and the Minstrel and change all my
gold coins to silver ones. I also received the publishing rights back to Loyalty’s
Web this summer and am planning to
republish it soon. But not before I do a find/replace search to change all the
gold coins in that story to silver ones, too!
(Yes! This is more like it.)
So when you write your medieval novel, don’t make my
mistake. Give your characters silver coins from the beginning and keep the gold
for fripperies like jewelry and embroidery threads!
Here are some helpful websites to learn more about coins in
the Middle Ages:
Oh, and if you’re wondering, like one of my characters did,
what one of King John of England’s coins looked like vs. one of King Philip
II’s of France, check out these two websites:
King John’s coins: The FitzWilliam Museum: King John, 1199 - 1216. Silver penny, Winchester mint
King Philip’s coins (Capetingi filippo II agusto = Philip II Augustus)
(Here’s another version of a coin for Philip II:
http://home.eckerd.edu/~oberhot/froy.htm#Philip2)
And if you’re interested, here’s a website to see coins from
the various Plantagenet kings up through the Wars of the Roses. You’ll notice
that they’re all silver.
