Few currencies in the monetary history of medieval Europe can boast of success equal to that of the Florentine gold florin. First minted in Florence in November 1252, or so the story goes, the florin represented a ‘great novelty’ in the monetary context of the time, as it gave physical form to the pound or libra, which had until that moment been merely a unit of account in the £.s.d. monetary system introduced by Charlemagne in the late eighth century.¹ From the very beginning, the new coin bore on one side a stylised lily, the emblem of Florence, and the legend + FLOR - ENTIa and, on the other side, the standing figure of St John the Baptist, patron saint of the city, facing forward and wearing a coat of animal hair, with a sceptre in his left hand and his right raised in benediction, surrounded by the legend S ^. IOHa - NNES .B . (see Figure 1.1).²

Figure 1.1The gold florin of Florence – specimen of the earliest issue, scale 2:1.

From the late thirteenth to the early decades of the sixteenth century, when it was eventually replaced by the Florentine gold scudo in 1533, the florin encountered such widespread success in Europe and the Mediterranean that it became, along with the Venetian ducat, one of the most important gold currencies of the time. Despite a minor change in its weight in 1422, it was minted to virtually the same standards throughout its entire lifetime, establishing itself as one of the most stable and trusted coins in circulation.³ Given the florin’s wide diffusion and lasting success, it is no wonder that other cities modelled their gold issues on its weight and fineness.⁴ Moreover, from 1322, many rulers, beginning with Pope John XXII (1316–34) at the Avignon mint of Pont de Sorgues, began to strike their own florin imitations – gold coins bearing the same features as the Florentine specimen but with different inscriptions.⁵

To present a more rounded picture of this coin as a major, although not revolutionary, monetary phenomenon of the Middle Ages and prepare the ground for further analysis, this chapter deals with the period before the introduction of the florin – its ‘pre-history’, as it were. It does so by moving from a ‘macro’ to a ‘micro’ perspective, that is, from the study of the broader economic and monetary conditions of Europe and the Mediterranean region as a whole to the economic and political contexts of Florence between the late twelfth and the mid-thirteenth centuries. The chapter opens with a detailed overview of the production and circulation of gold coins in those regions to show that since many foreign gold coins continued to circulate in western Europe, the minting of the Florentine florin was likely the most effective response to the contemporary decay of the other gold currencies in use rather than a revolutionary act per se. Several concomitant factors, ranging from the growing demand for stable money coming from the long-distance market and the decline in the intrinsic value of the gold coins then in circulation to the different levels of demand and supply placed on gold and silver in western Europe and the Muslim world, incentivised Florence, but also Genoa and probably Lucca, to strike new gold coins in the mid-thirteenth century. In the case of Florence, however, the minting of the florin coincided with an exceptional expansion of the urban population and manufacturing and political upheaval following the death of Emperor Frederick II Hohenstaufen in 1250, which together opened up unique opportunities for the introduction of the new gold coin. As will be shown, the Florentine florin furthered both the economic interests and political purposes of the so-called Primo Popolo, the new city-government dominated by merchants. From its very first issue, the florin was conceived of both as a financial innovation in a flourishing city set to become one of the major economic and financial powers of the late Middle Ages and a circumvention of an imperial privilege, i.e., the minting of a full-value gold currency, and thus a new political tool intended to redefine civic authority as a government of quasi-imperial power.

Gold money before the ‘back to gold’ movement

The minting of gold coins in western Europe came to an end in the final decades of the eighth century.⁶ The increasing gold famine, which had been becoming more and more dire since the end of the fourth century, represented a major cause for the cessation of their production.⁷ The Anglo-Saxon and Frankish kingdoms were the first territories to succumb, abandoning the minting of gold in the 670s. The shift in western Europe to a new monetary system based on the silver denarius as the only actual coin produced, together with the £.s.d. currency system for accounting purposes, emerged in the 790s as part of the monetary reforms of Charlemagne (774–814).⁸ For nearly five centuries after the system was established, the silver denarius remained the highest denomination officially minted in Europe, exceeded in value only by its multiple, the new silver grosso, from the late twelfth century onwards.⁹ Nevertheless, only western Europe was affected by this gold-to-silver transition. During the Middle Ages, gold never stopped being turned into coins in certain regions of southern Europe and the Mediterranean basin. Together with copper, it formed part of the monetary systems of territories under Muslim and Byzantine rule. Map 1 illustrates where gold coins were being produced in the first half of the thirteenth century, before the return to gold in the West.

Map 1Principal centres minting gold in the first half of the thirteenth century and their denominations.

Dinars and double dinars, the standard Muslim gold coins, were minted in southern Spain and North Africa, respectively, first by the Almoravids (1094–1147) and then by the Almohads (1121–1269), in Tunisia and eastern Algeria by the Hafsids (1229–1574), and in the Arabic East.¹⁰ The Almoravid dinars, or morabitinos, were made of 22-carat gold (91.6 per cent) with a theoretical weight of 4.10 g, although extant specimens are approximately 3.96–3.86 g.¹¹ The Almohad dinars, also known as masmudini or massamutini in Christian Europe, weighed only 2.30 g and were made of nearly pure gold (99 per cent), although not quite 24 carats.¹²

From 1173, King Alfonso VIII of Castile (1158–1214) began to strike imitative Almoravid dinars with Christian inscriptions circulating under the name of morabitinos or maravedis alfonsis.¹³ Their weight and fineness remained constant at around 3.85 g and 20⅘ carats (86.6 per cent) for most of the duration of their production, which ceased in 1217.¹⁴ Christian morabitinos were also used by King Alfonso IX (1188–1230) in the Kingdom of Leon, and by Sancho I (1185–1211), Alfonso II (1211–23), and Sancho II (1223–48) in the Kingdom of Portugal.¹⁵ It is likely that Christian double dinars or doblas were issued by King Ferdinand III of Castile (1217–52) around the 1240s, but no actual specimen is known to date.¹⁶ Under the Hohenstaufen dynasty (1194–1266), Sicily and southern Italy relied on gold quarter dinars known as tarì of 16⅓ or 16⅔ carats (68–69.4 per cent), usually sold by weight due to the wide variation in weights and shapes between individual specimens.¹⁷ In 1231, the Emperor and King of Sicily, Frederick II Hohenstaufen (1220–50), created a new gold coin of 5.31 g and 20½ carats (85.4 per cent) called augustalis, struck at the royal mints of Brindisi and Messina.¹⁸ In the East, the traditional currency of the Byzantine Empire was the gold hyperpyra, introduced by the Emperor Alexius I Komnenos (1081–1118) in 1092 to stop the dramatic debasement of the Byzantine gold solidi or nomismata.¹⁹ Minted with a weight of 4.55 g and 20½ carats (85.4 per cent), the hyperpyra maintained these features until the reign of Emperor Andronikos I Komnenos (1183–35), when their fineness fell below 19 carats (79 per cent).²⁰ Their production ceased in the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade (1204), when the new Latin Empire supplanted the Byzantine Empire.²¹ Between the 1190s and the Seventh Crusade (1248–54), in the Christian states of Syria and Palestine, the Crusaders adopted imitative Muslim (Fatimid) gold dinars called Saracen bezants of c. 3.44 g and 16.27 carats (67.8 per cent).²²

Some of these gold coins circulated widely in western Europe before the so-called ‘return to gold’.²³ Jean Duplessy dated the ‘golden age’ of the Muslim dinars between the beginning of the eleventh and the mid-thirteenth centuries, when Almoravid and Almohad gold dinars, as well as Iberian imitations, entered the monetary circulation of England, France, and Italy through trade or tributes, also acting as money of account on occasion.²⁴ Byzantine gold coins made their appearance in several administrative and financial transactions between the English Crown, its officials, and its subjects and formed part of the treasure amassed by King Henry III (1216–72) in the 1240s and 1250s.²⁵ A similar monetary circulation is attested in the Kingdom of France, too, where a large number of gold oboles (another name for the Almohad dinars in Christian Europe), as well as their Iberian imitations, hyperpyra, and Sicilian augustales were purchased locally to be sent overseas to Alphonse of Poitiers (1220–71), the brother of King Louis IX, who was in captivity in Egypt during the Seventh Crusade.²⁶ In the first half of the thirteenth century, many of those foreign gold coins also circulated among the merchants of the major Italian trading cities, such as Genoa, Pisa, and Venice – places that were perfectly accustomed to using them in their commercial transactions and to reckoning in those foreign gold currencies. The surviving archival documentation suggests that Sicilian taris, Muslim dinars, and Saracen bezants were more common among the Genoese and the Pisans, and gold hyperpyra and Saracen bezants among the Venetians.²⁷ It was also due to the presence of so many gold denominations that, by the end of the 1220s, the Venetian government had to appoint Pietro Nani and Iacopo Miani as ‘gold estimators’ – officials in charge of the quality of gold circulating in Venice in the form of coins, ingots, or bars.²⁸ Despite the few earlier documented cases of counterfeited Muslim and Byzantine gold coins discussed below, the minting of gold in western Europe only fully resumed in the early 1250s, when the cities of Genoa, Florence, and probably Lucca began to mint their new gold currencies.

Genoa, Florence, and Lucca compared

The earliest written evidence documenting the new production of gold coins in thirteenth-century Genoa comes from the commune’s annals, known as the Annales Ianuenses.²⁹ Started around 1100 on the personal initiative of Caffaro di Rustico of Caschifellone (c. 1080–1166), a local politician and urban chronicler, and formalised by the city consuls in 1152, the Annales narrate the history of Genoa for almost two centuries, from 1099 to 1294. Caffaro was the sole author of the events described until 1163, which he recalled from his own memory, notes, and experience. His work was then continued for another 130 years by other chancery scribes, notaries, and chroniclers, all adhering to Caffaro’s model. The Annales are regarded as the first communal chronicle in Italy.³⁰

Among the events recorded for the year 1252, one can read ‘eodem anno nummus aureus Ianue fabricatus’.³¹ This most likely occurred some months before the introduction of the gold florin, which Villani placed in November of the same year, as noted. Although simple and brief, especially when compared to the bombastic description of the florin’s birth, this sentence is still subject to speculation and debate. This is mainly due to the use of the expression ‘nummus aureus’. The term was probably chosen to recall the prestige of the Roman gold coin issued from the first century BC to the beginning of the fourth century AD when it was supplanted by the gold solidus of Constantine the Great (303–7), as it did not correspond to any of the gold denominations minted in Genoa from the mid-thirteenth century onwards.³²

In MEC 12, Michael Matzke argued that the earliest gold coin produced in the city was the small quartarola, with a theoretical weight of 0.88 g and 23.7 carats. This was followed almost twenty years later, i.e., around 1270, by the so-called gold genovino, a larger gold coin of the same weight and fineness as the florin.³³ In support of his claim, Matzke observed that the inscriptions, symbols, and style of the earliest gold genovino did not resemble those of the supposedly contemporary silver grossi and billon denari of Genoa. Instead, he wrote, the symbol at the centre of the gateway on its obverse ‘always forms a small fleur-de-lis’, which ‘can only be interpreted as a reference’ to the larger lily on the Florentine florin.³⁴ In other words, the first gold genovino was nothing but a Genoese florin.

Despite its originality, this interpretation clashes with the information we find in the surviving documentation. Matzke based his analysis exclusively on the iconographical and stylistic features of the few specimens of Genoese gold coins available today. He made no attempt to engage with the archival sources of the time or even acknowledge their existence. His choice is quite surprising, especially considering that written evidence documenting the circulation of heavier Genoese gold coins beginning in 1253 has long been known. I am referring here to a notarial act recording a payment of four ‘denariis grossis aureis ianuensis’ made by the commune of Genoa to the Turin jurists Guidorcio del Pozzo and Ruggero Pavaroli, first published by Lopez in 1936.³⁵ Monica Baldassarri has recently put forward a new interpretation of this source by integrating lexical analysis with new data derived from the non-destructive analytical technique of X-Ray Fluorescence (henceforth XRF), which uses the interaction of x-rays with the metal of surviving coins to ascertain their elemental composition without causing damage.³⁶ The result is a more rounded picture of the return to gold in the city of Genoa.

Baldassarri accepts that the quartarola predated any other Genoese gold coin but, contrary to Matzke, dates the minting of the genovino to the same period. As she correctly points out, the adjective grossus, which also appears in the written source mentioned above, was typically used in Latin to describe the dimension of something ‘larger, thicker, and/or heavier’ than normal.³⁷ This is also how it began to be employed in thirteenth-century Italian territories to name, qualify, and thus distinguish the newer, bigger, and heavier silver coins known as denarii grossi from the older and lighter ones, which, by contrast, were called denarii parvi or little deniers. For this reason, the adjective grossus would hardly fit a coin like the gold quartarola, which was only 0.88 g and 11–12 mm, i.e., no larger than a half denaro. Instead, it seems to be more suited to a bigger and heavier denomination, most likely the first gold genovino, which was 3.52 g (theoretical weight) and 20 mm. It is worth mentioning in this regard that the same adjective also formed the Latin name of another Italian gold coin in circulation at the time, whose size and features were more similar to those of the genovino than the quartarola: the ‘denarius grossus de auro’ or grosso d’oro of Lucca, which was 3.50 g (on average) and 21 mm and will be discussed below. In light of these considerations, the argument that the genovino was minted around the same time as the quartarola, i.e., a quarter of it in the local monetary system, and perhaps as part of a wider monetary reform that also included the silver coinage of Genoa, proves to be better supported and more convincing.³⁸

Despite the similar weight, the first genovino was not as pure as the gold florin and therefore cannot be called such. This is explicitly documented in the lists of coins preserved in both abacus manuals and merchants’ notebooks dated between the 1250s and 1300, the nature and characteristics of which will be examined later. For now, suffice it to say that the compilers often differentiated between gold florins of exactly 24 carats and two types of gold genovini, namely the ‘vecchi’ or ‘old’ ones of 23¼–23½ carats, minted from 1252 and the ‘nuovi’ or ‘new’ ones of 24 minus ⅕ or ⅟₁₅ carats, probably issued by the early 1270s.³⁹ Further documentary evidence can be found in the register of the Genoese notary Angelino de Sigestro: on 12 March 1274, he recorded that Pino, son of Guidone Medici from Florence and procurator of the Florentine citizens and merchants Duccio Davicini and Giacomo Manetti, received from Simone Rondana an unspecified sum of genovini – a term most likely used here as money of account – with the promise to return by Easter ‘100 ounces of gold of the alloy of the mint of Genoa of carats 23 ½’, namely, the fineness of the old genovini in the lists of coins mentioned above.⁴⁰ Those values are now also confirmed by the results of the XRF analyses conducted on the gold content of these denominations, where the florin had a fineness of 99.1 per cent, while the ‘old’ genovino had 98.7 per cent.⁴¹

Such a discrepancy in the quality of gold between these two currencies can be seen as additional proof that the Genoese gold coinage predates the Florentine one. It seems more plausible that Genoa minted its first or ‘old’ genovino a few months before the florin, with no regard for what was happening in the Tuscan city. Yet, due to the growing popularity of the Florentine coin, which was also preferred to the other gold coins in circulation for its unparalleled fineness, the Genoese government soon had to adjust the fineness of its old genovino so as not to fall behind a major competitor like Florence. Adopting the Florentine standards as the international benchmark for the issue of new gold coins was, after all, a common practice among the many Italian and western European cities that minted gold – or at least tried to – from the second half of the thirteenth century onwards.⁴² In Genoa, this led to the introduction of a second or ‘new’ genovino, with a gold content closer to the Florentine standard, as noted.⁴³

Finally, since the surviving documentation is completely silent on the style and iconography of the genovino, the alleged presence of a stylised Florentine lily in the gateway portrayed on the side usually regarded as its obverse – which is in itself a minute detail difficult to spot and recognise at first glance – is purely speculative. Instead, Matzke failed to acknowledge the striking resemblance between the style of the legends (letterform and distribution of punctuations) and the type (city image or gateway, with a dot or dots around the central arches) of the ‘old’ genovino and the first quartarola.⁴⁴

Compared to Genoa and Florence, the contours of the return to gold in Lucca are certainly more blurred. Unlike its counterparts, no known civic chronicles or written sources of any kind narrate the first minting of the grosso d’oro. This has sparked a lively and ongoing debate among scholars as to whether or not Lucca was the first of the three cities to strike gold. Drawing on the works of nineteenth-century Italian numismatists such as Giulio Cordero di San Quintino and Domenico Massagli, Luciano Lenzi dated the introduction of the grosso d’oro to 1246, six years before the traditional chronology of the return to gold.⁴⁵ However, this early start is not reflected in the archival documentation available today. Lenzi obtained that information from Cordero di San Quintino, who had simply indicated that year in one of the plates with images of Lucchese coins at the end of his work without specifying its provenance.⁴⁶ Massagli, who also agreed with that chronology, cited the seventeenth-century Lucchese nobleman Daniello de Nobili as a possible source. Yet, he referred to a notarial deed from 1264 instead of 1246 in support of his claim.⁴⁷ There is no way of knowing whether this was a typo in Massagli’s work, but Lenzi’s search for the 1246 document did not yield the desired results. Details in favour of an early minting of the grosso d’oro, closer to 1250 and thus only a couple of years before the gold genovino and the florin, eventually emerged from an analysis of a list of gold coins in the abacus manual known as the Liber habaci of c. 1310, which Gino Arrighi attributed to the Florentine master Paolo Gherardi.⁴⁸

Abacus manuals were manuscripts of practical arithmetic written and used by lay ‘abacus masters’ to teach the forms and methods of Hindu–Arabic mathematics to pupils aged eleven to thirteen. They covered a whole range of topics, usually organised in thematic sections, ranging from operations with Arabic numerals and fractions to mercantile problems concerning monetary systems, weights and measures, interest rates, and so on.⁴⁹ To assist pupils with their calculations, abacus manuals might also include lists of coins sorted by metal (gold, silver, and billon, usually in that order) and their relative fineness expressed in carats for gold and in ounces or denarii for silver and billon specimens. These works, however, are ‘shifting quicksand as far as the dating of their information is concerned’.⁵⁰

Abacus masters often incorporated parts of previous manuals into theirs – the most popular being Leonardo Fibonacci’s Liber Abaci of 1202 – with occasional updates and annotations. Moreover, as they were ‘teaching aids’ during lessons, manuals were often handed down from one generation of abacus masters to the next, enabling them to reach a vast plethora of students. It was therefore not uncommon for those volumes to contain data and information that had been circulating for decades. Consequently, the end date of the original compilation rarely corresponded to the dating of the material in the various parts of the same manual. This is also the case with the coin list in Gherardi’s Liber habaci.

As Lucia Travaini illustrates, the information it contains can be divided into two distinct parts composed at different times – one for gold and one for silver coins. The former offers a snapshot of the circulation of gold coinage in the Mediterranean around 1250, even if the manual was only completed around 1310, as noted. It includes Byzantine hyperpyra, morabitinos, doblas, and Sicilian augustales and taris, but there is no mention of either the genovino or the florin. The only western European gold coin in the list is the ‘lucchese d’oro’ – another name for the grosso d’oro of Lucca – of 23½ carats. On the basis of these elements and considering what has been said about the preparation of abacus manuals, Travaini left open the possibility that Lucca’s first gold coin was minted only a couple of years before the return to gold in 1252.⁵¹ The latest studies on its iconography and gold content further corroborate this view.

According to Monica Baldassarri, both the Holy Face of Christ depicted on its obverse ‘in an unprecedented and never repeated fashion’, that is, with a left profile and draped bust, and the arrangement of the inscription all around it, would strongly recall the imperial bust on the gold augustalis of Frederick II, minted from 1231 on. If this was a deliberate choice, the grosso d’oro would have represented not only Lucca’s political response to the imperial yoke of the Hohenstaufen, who in the 1240s was waging a strenuous battle against the Guelph party in the Italian peninsula, but also a challenge to his authority, considered inferior to that of Christ. To make sense, such a propaganda operation would have to have taken place before or shortly after the emperor’s death in 1250.⁵²

The choice of minting the grosso d’oro with a fineness of 97.1 per cent detected by XRF analysis and equivalent to the 23½ carats on Gherardi’s list – thus not quite 24 – would also reinforce the hypothesis of an early birth for this coin, either before the florin or, in any case, before Florentine standards became the benchmark in the monetary scene of the time.⁵³ More specifically, the production of the grosso d’oro would have started on the autonomous initiative of the city of Lucca that, just like Genoa with its genovino, was then forced to adapt the fineness of its gold coinage to Florentine standards in order to keep up with the competition. As narrated by the fourteenth-century chronicler Giovanni Sercambi, it was only from around 1269 that the local mint began to strike a new gold coin with a fineness practically equal to that of the florin of Florence, i.e., ‘carats 24 minus ⅛’ in an almost contemporary coin list; it is no accident this coin was called the ‘fiorino’ or Lucchese florin.⁵⁴

However convincing, all these chronologies are characterised by considerable uncertainty, especially in the absence of overwhelming evidence in support of one or the other. In fact, the first written reference to Lucchese grossi d’oro spent together with other local silver coins dates back only to 1257. On 19 January, Master Benencasa, canon of the urban cathedral, contributed £200 ‘denariorum lucensium in denariis grossis de auro et argento tante valentie ad parvos denarios’ to the commercial partnership created with Gottifredo of the late Conetti Bonostri and Bartolomeo of the late Orlando Bettori.⁵⁵ Thomas W. Blomquist, who also found this document, referred to it to date the birth of the Lucchese grosso d’oro to 1256, four years after Genoa and Florence had introduced their gold coinage. In light of the above, this year should instead be regarded as the terminus ante quem of the return to gold in Lucca, which would therefore have occurred sometime between about 1250 and 1256.

However, none of these brand-new gold coins could have been produced without a series of favourable economic and historical conditions that, from a macroeconomic perspective, constitute the driving factors for the western European ‘back to gold’ phenomenon.

The decay of the ‘old’ gold coins

A primary factor that led to the minting of the new gold coins was the contemporary demand for a reliable and stable gold monetary standard to suit the peak of the so-called ‘Commercial Revolution’ of western Europe. Originally coined by Raymond de Roover in the early 1940s, this expression was adopted some thirty years later by Roberto Sabatino Lopez to refer to a period of socio-economic expansion that started in the late tenth century when, following the acceleration of agricultural and craft production, the resumption of population growth, the revival of towns and urban life, and the rapid development of trade and markets, the Old Continent evolved into a dynamic trading region.⁵⁶ As part of this transformation, a new economic system heavily based on monetary exchange was established: payments in kind became rarer, while money developed into the habitual medium of exchange of a rapidly commercialising society.⁵⁷ The opening of new (silver) mining centres at Freiberg (Meissen), Friesach (Carinthia), and Montieri (Tuscany), as well as the contemporary rise of new trading centres like fairs, ports, and towns acting as central hubs of expanding commercial networks in Europe and the Mediterranean, enhanced the volume of money in circulation and thus the frequency of money payments and transactions.⁵⁸ At the heart of all these changes, there was an unprecedented demand for money that could barely be met by the contemporary money supply when the ‘Commercial Revolution’ reached its apex in the thirteenth century.⁵⁹ In the attempt to increase the volume of money in circulation, new and lighter silver denarii of only 0.20 g, 0.10 g, or even 0.08 g, thus with a reduced content of precious metal compared to the original Carolingian denarius of 1.70 g, were produced in the northern Italian mints of Pavia, Verona, and Venice.⁶⁰ These became such a weak and unsuitable means of payment for the monetary and financial needs of an ever-growing economy that merchants were soon forced to use silver bars or ingots, uncoined gold dust or paiola gold, foreign gold coins and, later, silver grossi for large payments within and outside Europe.⁶¹ Due to their higher value and stability, these alternative means of payment were more convenient and portable than the circulating denarii, as they did not need to be counted out as thousands of individual coins to pay large sums of money.

However, by the middle of the thirteenth century, many of the gold coins in circulation underwent significant transformations as they either suffered from debasement in their fineness, which never thereafter recovered the high standards of their earlier issues, or else they stopped being minted altogether. The Almoravid dinars, although in use until the end of the twelfth century or shortly after, ceased to be issued between 1147 and 1172, when the Almohads succeeded in conquering the Almoravid territories and introduced their own gold dinars.⁶² The maravedis alfonsis suffered reductions in their gold content, dropping from 87 to 83 per cent until 1217, when their production stopped.⁶³ No Christian morabitinos are known to have been minted either in the Kingdom of Leon or in Portugal after 1230 and 1248, respectively.⁶⁴ The gold augustalis of Frederick II only lasted two decades, until the death of the emperor in 1250 or at the latest up to 1266 if minted by his successors, although no pieces in their names have ever been found.⁶⁵ In the East, the production of Byzantine hyperpyra came to an end in 1204, but their fineness had already fallen from the original 20½ to 19 carats in the final years of the twelfth century, as noted. Among the Byzantine successor states that emerged after 1204, gold was coined only in Nicaea, but its production was very limited at first.⁶⁶ Under Emperor John III Vatatzes (1222–54), new and significant quantities of hyperpyra were minted at Magnesia in western Anatolia, but with only an average fineness of 16–17.6 carats (66.6–73.3 per cent).⁶⁷ Latin imitations of John III Vatatzes’ hyperpyra, called perperi latini d’oro, of only 16½ carats (68.75 per cent), were in circulation at least from the 1230s onwards.⁶⁸ Saracen bezants continued to be produced in the Crusader states with the same fineness of 16.27 carats (67.8 per cent) up to c. 1270, but that was already the consequence of a twelfth-century decline.⁶⁹ Except for the Almohad massamutini of almost pure gold, the majority of gold coins in circulation in the first half of the thirteenth century did not surpass 21 carats in fineness.⁷⁰

This decline and the restricted availability of existing gold coins were also a result of the political turmoil affecting the territories where they were produced, such as the Christian Reconquista in the Iberian peninsula, the decline of the Almohad Empire and the rise of other dynasties in North Africa, the crisis and subsequent conquest of the Latin Empire of Byzantium in 1204, and the military campaigns of Frederick II in northern and central Italy followed by his death in 1250. Together, these events added crucial factors that intensified the need for new gold coins of better quality to assist long-distance trade. The retention of a stable and high-value currency must have been a matter of great concern, especially among the Italian merchants, given their significant economic involvement in the Mediterranean and the Levant at that time.⁷¹ Thus, the introduction of the new gold coins of Genoa, Florence, and Lucca met these needs in the first instance. However, such a significant change in the monetary landscape of western Europe would not have occurred had there not been changes in the gold supply.

Gold in motion: where and when

The gold for minting the new coins did not come from the direct exploitation of contemporary European mines, affected as they were by ‘the unluckiest poverty’.⁷² Western Europe had to rely mainly on imported gold, sources for which were located outside the Mediterranean region. The yellow metal was to be found primarily in West Africa, in the historical region of western Sudan, meaning ‘the Land of the Blacks’, a large plain south of the Sahara Desert stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to Lake Chad. The Muslim geographer Muhammad al-Idrīsī (1100–65), writing in the twelfth century, reported to Roger II, King of Sicily, that gold came from two major sources, ‘the town of Takrūr’ and the unspecified ‘island of Wangara’.⁷³ Geographers, archaeologists, and historians have long speculated about these places and their possible locations on the basis of often contradictory sources.⁷⁴ They have usually been associated with two of the most important gold-producing regions of the time, Bambouk, at the confluence of the Senegal River and its tributary Falémé, and Bure, on the upper Niger.⁷⁵ However, Susan K. McIntosh argued that Wangara might correspond to the Inland Niger Delta or refer to the ethnic group of Soninke merchants who traded in gold in West Africa in the first millennium.⁷⁶ According to Amar S. Baadj, other gold deposits could be found in the south-eastern regions of Lobi, on the upper Volta in Burkina Faso, and further east, in the tropical forests of present-day Nigeria.⁷⁷ Yet, strong doubts remain as to whether these sites were already being exploited.⁷⁸ Conversely, the East African gold mines in lower Nubia, in use since the time of the pharaohs, were unproductive by the twelfth century.⁷⁹

The precious metal was primarily obtained from auriferous quartz-gravel deposits transported downstream along rivers in periods of heavy rainfall. Once washed and pounded, it was ready for transit to Christian Europe in the form of specks, nuggets, and paiola gold.⁸⁰ By the tenth century, large quantities of gold began to flow northwards as a result of the trans-Saharan trade that had developed along three main axes stretching over three distinct commercial and cultural zones, namely western Sudan, the Sahara Desert, and the Maghreb. These consisted of a western route, passing through Aoudaghost (Mauritania) and Sijilmasa (Morocco); a central route, running through Tadmakka (Mali) and Ouargla (Algeria); and an eastern route, passing through Fezzan (Libya).⁸¹

Historical and political events determined their changing prosperity and importance throughout the centuries. A significant impetus to this trade certainly came from the eighth-century conquest of the Maghreb by the Arabs, attracted as they were by Sudanese gold to mint their own dinars and finance their military campaigns. Other incentives were the spread of the camel for the transportation of goods through the desert, the role of the Berbers as commercial intermediaries between north and sub-Saharan Africa, and the rise of powerful Sudanic empires such as the Kingdom of Ghana (c. 700–c. 1240) and the Kingdom of Mali (c. 1240–1670), which acquired gold through barter or tributes and traded it in their capitals with foreign merchants from the north under carefully regulated conditions.⁸²

At the core of the trans-Saharan trade, there stood the exchange of salt for gold.⁸³ Salt was such a rare commodity in western Sudan that the Sudanese people living close to the goldfields would exchange it for an equivalent weight of gold.⁸⁴ However, salt was quite abundant south of the Maghreb, where the salt-mining centre of Taghaza (Mali) was located. There, Arab and Berber merchants active mainly along the western routes supplied their caravans with salt, which was then transported south – with other goods – to be exchanged for Sudanese gold.⁸⁵ The consolidation of this gold-salt exchange ensured the supply of gold from the Sudanese goldfields to North Africa and beyond.

Once in the Maghreb, some of the metal went to North African and Iberian Muslim mints to be turned into Arabic dinars; another part reached Sicily and southern Italy for the production of local gold coins.⁸⁶ An extraordinary description of gold being taken to Sicilian mints survives today in one of the fatwās – judicial rulings on specific aspects of Islamic law issued in response to questions posed by private individuals – of the Muslim jurist Abū ‘Abd Allah al-Māzāri (d. 1141).⁸⁷ It is said that a group of Tunisian merchants formed a partnership in Mahdia to buy grain in Sicily, which they intended to pay for with Almoravid and Tripolitan gold dinars. After receiving the coins from the merchants, however, the head of the Sicilian mint melted them down, added a quarter of their weight in silver, and used the new alloy to strike Sicilian gold taris, which could then be used to purchase the grain.⁸⁸

From the main port cities located along the North African coast, such as Tangier and Ceuta (Morocco), Oran and Béjaïa (Algeria), Tunis and Mahdia (Tunisia), and Tripoli (Libya), gold was eventually bought as a commodity by Italian traders who extended their maritime hegemony from the quays of Amalfi in the tenth century, and from those of Pisa and Genoa in the early eleventh to the southern coasts of the Mediterranean by means of trade agreements with Islamic authorities.⁸⁹ They sold finished cloth, textiles, foodstuffs, glass, copper, and silver in return for raw materials such as hides, leather, and wool, goods like honey and ivory, as well as enslaved people and, of course, gold.⁹⁰

Economic historians have traditionally described the movement of gold from the Muslim world to Christian Europe as the result of changing balances of trade between these different economic areas.⁹¹ Since the value of European imports hardly matched the value of African exports, for the most part composed of bulk goods, the balance of trade from North Africa – excluding Egypt – to western Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was characterised by a constant deficit.⁹² The sale of gold was therefore intended to even things out. According to Watson, it was usually the metal with a lower value at home than abroad that would be chosen to redress the imbalance.⁹³ His analysis of gold–silver ratios between western Europe and the Muslim world, namely the quantity of silver required to buy a unit of gold, suggests that by the mid-thirteenth century, gold had a higher price in Europe than elsewhere.⁹⁴ This generated a constant flow of silver moving from Europe to North Africa, matched by a complementary shipment of gold and thus a direct exchange of one metal for the other.

However, this is essentially a modern economists’ formulation to describe what might have occurred, and quite an anachronistic one. The balance of payment is a statistical convention and thus assumes the existence of a ‘national economy’ and a fully developed money–goods/services dualism. It presupposes two defined and separate economic areas, which did not exist, and implies that late medieval traders dealt with each other along similar lines to today’s monetary and economic syntax, which does not match the historical evidence.⁹⁵ As Harry A. Miskimin rightly pointed out, the relative growth in the proportion of gold as a commodity in western Europe was made possible by trade and commerce rather than monetary arbitrage. The choice of the metal that the merchants brought with them, along with their commodities, depended on both the actual availability of gold or silver and the ‘utility’ of a given metal at the place of destination, i.e., not different from any other good.⁹⁶ From Iraq to southern Spain and the western part of North Africa, via Asia Minor and the Levant, it seems that it was silver that was most in demand. Indeed, a severe dearth in the eleventh and twelfth centuries put a stop to its minting.⁹⁷ This was probably triggered by the outflow of silver to neighbouring regions, including India and China to the east, and certainly Europe to the west, as well as by the simultaneous closure of some silver mines for technical or political reasons.⁹⁸ For about a century, gold and copper formed the main metals minted in those territories, with gold as the basis of any monetary system in place.

The striking of silver coins was resumed in the final quarter of the twelfth century when the Ayyubids began to mint new dirhams in Damascus in 1174–75. In the thirteenth century, a number of other centres in modern Turkey, Armenia, Georgia, Iraq, Uzbekistan, and Turkestan followed suit.⁹⁹ The necessary quantity of silver did not come from ‘local’ mines, but from abroad, in particular from western Europe and the Khwarazm and Khorasan regions in central Asia.¹⁰⁰ Silver also circulated in the Middle East in the form of western European coins used by the Crusaders or as counterfeited miliarenses – square Almohad dirhams or half-dirhams minted in a number of Christian mints in southern Spain, France, and Italy and exported by European merchants for trade purposes across the Mediterranean.¹⁰¹ The return to silver minting in the Muslim world generated such a new and significant demand for this metal that its value in commerce became higher there than in Europe. Hence, for the sake of profit, it made more sense for Western merchants to carry their silver to the Levant or North Africa rather than sell it in Europe, especially if prices were lower in silver than in gold in those territories.¹⁰²

Nevertheless, since medieval trade hardly followed a fixed pattern, it would be wrong to assume that gold completely ceased to flow from Europe to the Levant, even though it was silver that was most requested there. The Latins, for instance, needed it to strike their Saracen bezants up to c. 1270, as was seen.¹⁰³ Moreover, gold was not necessarily traded for silver in a direct and complementary exchange. In this regard, it cannot be ruled out that gold increased its value as a monetary metal in western Europe without actually being imported, but simply because more and more silver had been drained away.¹⁰⁴

Indeed, the large-scale trade in luxury goods and other commodities with the Mediterranean and the Islamic world imposed a strain on the European economy, facilitating the movement and exchange of precious metals. However, gold could also reach Europe through channels disconnected from long-distance commerce: for instance, some came as booty through the crusades and some by way of tributes to Christian rulers, such as the payment of 34,330 gold dinars from the Hafsid Emir of Tunis to Emperor Frederick II as King of Sicily.¹⁰⁵ Further gold might have entered Europe as part of the salaries of Christian mercenaries serving in the armies of African sultans in Marrakech, Béjaïa, and Tunis, regarded as a corps d’élite since the twelfth century.¹⁰⁶

Therefore, in light of all these considerations, the ‘overly subtle calculation of gold–silver ratios’ as an explanation for the monetary phenomena of the return to gold in western Europe carries less conviction. And yet, these ratios have also been used to explain the resumption of gold minting in Italy precisely in 1252.¹⁰⁷ Between the second half of the twelfth and the middle of the thirteenth century, gold–silver ratios in Genoa and Florence would have fallen from 1:10 to 1:8.16 and 1:8.451, respectively.¹⁰⁸ These values, the lowest ever recorded, and the unprecedented decline in gold prices of that year made it more convenient for Genoa and Florence to produce new currencies in gold rather than silver, thus relieving the strain placed on the latter in support of the western European ‘Commercial Revolution’.

Although possible, excessive emphasis has been placed on those numbers in recent years. The gold–silver ratios may indeed be of some help in understanding the general patterns and development of the medieval monetary economy, but caution must be exercised when dealing with these figures, as it is tricky to calculate them. First, different kinds of ratios existed at that time, e.g., market ratios for uncoined or coined metals, ratios used in account books or by tax collectors for official accounting purposes, and so on.¹⁰⁹ A comparative study is possible only between homogeneous data referring to the same type of transaction, although in many cases, one can only guess at the nature of the affair involved. Yet, scholars have too often failed to specify the nature of the ratios referred to in their analyses.¹¹⁰ Second, not only did those values fluctuate significantly over time and with respect to where they were recorded, but they may also have included a hidden rate of interest that is hard to discern. Third, Italian data are not sufficient ‘to draw even the roughest diagram’.¹¹¹ This is particularly true for Florence, given the significant lack of commercial documentation prior to the second half of the thirteenth century. Such calculations require a great deal of data, usually provided by a series of prices on a daily basis, but nothing like this survives for Florence in the years before the florin was issued. The current status of Florentine sources does not even allow us to be entirely sure that the introduction of the florin really took place in 1252, even though this chronology is generally accepted.¹¹²

At any rate, the return to gold was neither revolutionary nor unexpected. As was seen, foreign gold coins continued to circulate in western Europe, and people used them in their affairs. Genoa, Florence, and Lucca might have been the first cities to produce gold currencies with their own symbols and iconography, yet there are documented cases of many other western European cities with a strong economic background, including Genoa itself, that were already tinkering with gold and might have had the opportunity to produce their own specimens up to a century before the canonical year of 1252.

In 1149, for instance, in order to raise money for the repayment of debts incurred during the victorious siege of Tortosa, the Genoese authorities leased out the administration and collection of a whole series of revenues held by the commune to a consortium of twelve citizens, who would retain them for the next twenty-nine years for a lump sum of £1,200. Alongside tolls on goods loaded and unloaded in the port (redditus de ripa), on anchorage (redditus de scariis), and other customs duties, Genoa also ceded the revenues on ‘gold coinage’ (redditus de moneta auri).¹¹³ Yet, it would be a mistake to think that the Genoese issued gold coins at such an early date. This reference to moneta auri shows instead that Genoa treated minted gold as a commodity on which the commune collected tolls.¹¹⁴

In the case of Venice, Gustave L. Schlumberger referred to a lost treaty between the Venetian Podestà in Constantinople and Theodore Laskaris, Emperor of Nicaea, in 1219, in which both sides agreed not to mint gold hyperpyra – and other coins – by imitating each other.¹¹⁵ Instead, it was the city of Marseille that concluded a secret treaty with Thomas, Count of Savoy (1189–1233) and Imperial Vicar of Lombardy, for the proclamation of its autonomy as an independent commune on 8 November 1226.¹¹⁶ Although the agreement did not work out, the minting of new silver and gold coins under its name was among the rights the city claimed for itself. In 1237, counterfeited Almohad gold dinars were illegally produced in Lucca by certain members of the mercantile company of Ricciardi to be exchanged on the market.¹¹⁷ Archival sources from 1244–46 show that counterfeit ‘morabotinos et bisantios et masmutinos’ were also being minted in the city of Montpellier.¹¹⁸

Collectively, all those episodes downplay the role of the year 1252 as a major date for the return to gold. They suggest that a definite need for gold coins was clearly felt and widespread among Europeans and well before that date. Furthermore, the fact that Genoa, Venice, Marseille, Lucca, and Montpellier were among the major trading centres of the time, and all of them either had a chance to mint gold or managed to do this by illegally imitating other gold coins in circulation speaks volumes about the relevance of their gold supply.

Nevertheless, all the aspects, patterns, and dynamics described so far today form part of the grand narrative of the ‘back to gold’ event of western Europe. Despite some reservations, they provide a reasonable context for the introduction of the florin, but one that looks at the phenomenon mainly from a Europe- and Mediterranean-wide perspective. The decline of gold coins, the gold supply, and the gold–silver ratios all represent ‘macro’ phenomena occurring over a long period and across a large geographical scope, which do not say much about the situation in each city, especially in Florence. They answer, to an extent, why minting gold coins became a more attractive option and when this happened, but they do not provide strong clues as to where it would happen (i.e., why Florence) nor how (i.e., why a brand-new type of gold coin rather than an imitation, for instance). To answer these questions, I will adopt a ‘micro’ perspective that investigates the economic and political conditions of Florence in the years before the florin.

Economic Florence: from just agricultural to a more diversified economy

The city of Florence was a ‘latecomer’ to the economic revival of western Europe.¹¹⁹ In the twelfth century, it was arguably the least important of the major centres of Tuscany, overshadowed by the more prosperous cities of Pisa, Lucca, and Siena. Owing to its active port and extensive trade networks, Pisa had emerged as one of the leading maritime republics of the Italian peninsula by then, and was a direct competitor to Venice and Genoa for commercial supremacy from west to east of the Mediterranean.¹²⁰ Lucca, on the other hand, built its wealth and fame on its silk industry, becoming the major producer in Europe, with no equals in the sector until the fourteenth century. Lucchese merchants were also among the first Italians documented at the Champagne Fairs, and soon expanded into banking, serving monarchs and popes.¹²¹ The financial sector, however, was dominated by the merchant bankers of Siena. Their city’s close ties with the papacy enabled them to serve as the principal and official bankers to the popes, establishing a vast financial network that made them indispensable to clerics and rulers for the collection and transfer of money to the Holy See. Siena’s economic growth was further bolstered by the activities of its mercantile companies along the trade routes to the Champagne Fairs and beyond to northern Europe.¹²²

Nevertheless, from the last decades of the twelfth century, Florence joined these three cities at the forefront of the ‘Commercial Revolution’, to become the largest of them by the end of the thirteenth century. This was possible thanks to a comprehensive structural transformation of the Florentine social and economic fabric, fuelled by a significant demographic expansion buttressing an abrupt and intense economic development. The florin came into being in this context, but providing a quantitative study of Florence’s growth and an uncontroversial chronology proves very problematic due to the inadequacy of the surviving documentation. I will therefore limit myself to a more qualitative analysis of the economic conditions that paved the way for the new gold coin.

An extraordinary increase in population stimulated the economic development of Florence between the last decades of the twelfth and the mid-fourteenth century. In 1172–75, the Florentine government ordered the construction of a new circuit of walls intended to enclose c. 10,000 inhabitants, but the population must have been at least 15,000 by the end of the twelfth century. Due to the ever-increasing number of residents, the walls necessitated the first extension in 1258, when the so-called Oltrarno, the southern suburbs of today’s Florence, became part of the urban enclosure. In 1284, less than thirty years later, the walls were expanded a second time to include an area of approximately 630 hectares, which hosted c. 105,000 residents by 1300. The Florentine urban population increased almost sevenfold throughout the thirteenth century.¹²³

This rapid and considerable demographic expansion was the effect of intense immigration of people from the surrounding contado or countryside, although the reasons for this remain unclear.¹²⁴ Johan Plesner argued that most of those immigrants were wealthy landowners because of their predominance within the surviving documentation, but this suggestion is problematic.¹²⁵ More recent studies convincingly show that the vast majority were undocumented landless peasants and poor farmers in search of new sources of profits no longer related to the exploitation of the land.¹²⁶ However, it is hard to say what Florence had to offer to them or when the migration began.

It can be assumed that Florence attracted so many immigrants because of significant industrial development within the city. Those people constituted a major source of manpower in emerging labour sectors such as construction, urban manufacture, and eventually the woollen industry.¹²⁷ Enrico Faini has dated this economic upturn back to the 1120s–30s when more and more immigrants began to leave the Florentine contado to work in the nascent cloth industry.¹²⁸ However, it is only from the last quarter of the twelfth century that the first clear signs of an emerging textile industry in Florence appear in the surviving documentation. Details become more frequent in the early decades of the thirteenth century when the contours of the Florentine economic take-off seem more precise.¹²⁹

References to Arti or guilds in the extant sources provide an initial confirmation of the economic dynamism of Florence in those years. These were associations of artisans and merchants controlling various sectors of urban economic life. The Arte di Calimala is the first guild to be documented, appearing in 1192.¹³⁰ It consisted of merchants involved in the import of unfinished northern textiles from Brabant, Flanders, and France, which were dyed and refined in Florence before being sold abroad. They also provided textile workers with foreign models to be imitated.¹³¹ The presence of a guild with similar activities not only means that Florentine textile production began in this context but also that Florentine merchants were already actively participating in the contemporary cloth trade. Other guilds appear for the first time in the subsequent years. The judges’ and notaries’ guild, or Arte dei giudici e notai, is documented in 1212,¹³² as is the wool guild or the Arte della Lana, although there may be archival evidence of its activity as early as 1193.¹³³ The Arte di Por Santa Maria, the guild that brought together the urban goldsmiths and the Florentines involved in the production and trade of silk cloth, is recorded a few years later, in 1218 – about the same time that the guild of bankers and moneychangers or Arte del Cambio came into existence.¹³⁴ Their appearance in such a short time span further corroborates Florence’s economic vitality and positive trend. This is also supported by a series of trading arrangements between Florence and other neighbouring centres, which expanded the Florentine commercial network.

In the final decades of the twelfth century, for example, Florence signed treaties with Pisa (1171), San Miniato (1172), Siena (1176), Lucca (1184), Colle Val d’Elsa (1201), and San Gimignano (1201).¹³⁵ Among these, the forty-year agreement with Pisa of 1171 played a key role, as it allowed the merchants of Florence to access Mediterranean trade and expand their commerce far beyond the local framework.¹³⁶ On that occasion, the Florentines were granted free movement and protection within Pisan territory, as well as official permission to use the Pisan port and its sea routes for only half the tax on the exploitation of waterways (ripaticum). They could also trade in the Mediterranean as ‘Pisans’, thus under a flag of convenience, meaning they would benefit from all the commercial privileges usually granted to Pisan merchants in foreign ports. For their stay in Pisa, the Florentines obtained a hostel (domus) and two workshops (bottega), which together formed the Florentine fondaco there. The treaty also included specific military and monetary requirements: Florence would receive 400 horsemen from Pisa as military aid in the event of an attack, as well as half of the Pisan logorie monete or debased coins, which would form the local currency of Florence in the absence of Florentine coin production at that time.¹³⁷

In the early decades of the thirteenth century, new treaties were signed with many other centres, most of them located outside the Tuscan region and presumably corresponding to the early destinations of the Florentine inter-regional trade. Those were the cities of Bologna (1203), Faenza (1204), Prato (1212), Perugia (1218 and 1235), Imola (1228), and Orvieto (1229).¹³⁸ These agreements bear witness to the growing involvement of Florence and its merchants in many marketplaces and to the contemporary expansion of Florentine business on the mainland. The majority of them, however, merely formalised previously existing commercial relations without offering any specific details on the goods involved. Only the cases of Faenza and Perugia provide useful information in this regard. According to William R. Day Jr., the language adopted in the treaty with Faenza strongly implies that as early as 1204, woollen textiles were among the main articles purchased by the Faentini merchants in their commercial travels to Florence, and vice versa.¹³⁹ A vibrant trade in textiles is also attested to in the city of Perugia a few years later. The 1218 commercial agreement set custom duties to be paid by the merchants of each city upon the export of cloths and furs of different qualities from the respective centres.¹⁴⁰ The variety of textiles documented (panni lane, panni lini, selvaticume, torscia cuniculorum, etc.) is a clear outcome of the productivity of the Florentine industry and its diversified production.

From the mid-1220s, Florentine cloth circulated widely in Italy and beyond. Hidetoshi Hoshino has collected references to Florentine cloth purchased in Venice (1225), Palermo (1237), Macerata (1245), Lucca (1246), Genoa (1253), and Dubrovnik (1253) during the first half of the century, but the contemporary spread of Florentine merchants into northern Europe and the Mediterranean discussed below points to a broader market.¹⁴¹ At this stage, however, it seems that Florentine textile products were not of the highest quality. In Lucca, where transport costs from Florence would be lower than to other more distant destinations, they were sold at a much lower price than the luxury cloth from northern Europe known as the panni franceschi of Arras and Ypres.¹⁴² Yet, there is little doubt that the Florentine wool industry already enjoyed some popularity, considering that Florentine workers were lured to towns intending to start up their textile production. In 1231, for example, the commune of Bologna hired forty-nine foreign workers to build there an export industry in woollen textiles: a quarter of them came from Florence.¹⁴³ The fact that the Bolognese government decided to rely on Florentine workers as skilled labour to develop their cloth industry is an indicator of the positive reputation of the Florentine textile sector by that time, likely the result of a long tradition of production and trade.

As anticipated, such widespread distribution of Florentine cloth was fostered by the concomitant diffusion of the merchants of Florence in all the major trading centres of the period, at least from the second half of the twelfth century onwards. In 1169, for example, a certain Ugolino the Florentine was negotiating a maritime loan for some business in Constantinople at the port of Armiro, on the north-west coast of the peninsula of Mani in the Peloponnese, where the Venetians might have had a funduq by then.¹⁴⁴ In 1193, a street in Messina was recorded as the Ruga Florentinorum, ‘the street of the Florentines’.¹⁴⁵ Although already significant in terms of expansion, little more can be said about Florentine merchants at this early stage. The picture becomes clearer in the first decades of the thirteenth century, when Florentines emerge in a greater number of cities and marketplaces, engaging in commercial and financial activities within and beyond the Italian peninsula. They appear in Genoa (1200), Bologna (1211), Milan (1211), Rome (1219), and Lucca (1248). In Rome, in particular, they acted mainly as money lenders for clerics from all over Europe, as will be seen in Chapter 4. At the Champagne Fairs, they carried out commercial and exchange operations, negotiating an insurance policy in Provence for the dispatch of wool cloth (1215), lending money to King Henry III in England (1223), and purchasing leather in Marseille (1248). They were also active in the Mediterranean, selling clothes in Acre (1224), trading in Tunis on behalf of certain Genoese citizens (1225), and lending money to the French army fighting in Damietta during the Seventh Crusade (1249).¹⁴⁶ The genuine contribution of such a network to the rise and success of the gold florin will be illustrated in the next chapter. For now, what is clear from all these references is that trade and banking represented key activities for the Florentines in the decades before the florin and were often interrelated.

Two major forces pushed the merchants of Florence beyond the city walls: the urge to feed an ever-growing population and the needs of the nascent cloth industry.¹⁴⁷ We have already mentioned the dramatic demographic expansion of the Florentine population from the late twelfth century onwards. In his memoirs, written in a much later period between 1320 and 1335, the Florentine grain merchant Domenico Lenzi reported that the city of Florence could only feed its inhabitants for five months per year if it had to rely exclusively on the limited grain supply coming from its countryside.¹⁴⁸ Florentine merchants were therefore compelled to venture outside the region to provide the necessary quantity of grain for such a vast mass of people. Supply problems might have existed even before then since there is evidence of grain coming from the Pisan Maremma, an agricultural region in south-western Tuscany and northern Lazio, as early as 1182.¹⁴⁹ Large grain reserves were also to be found in Sicily, Sardinia, and southern Italy, in the cities of Barletta (Apulia), Manfredonia (Apulia), and Naples, where the Florentines had had a fondaco since 1243.¹⁵⁰ Moreover, according to Day, many of the aforementioned cities that entered into commercial agreements with Florence, including Bologna, Faenza, Orvieto, and Perugia, were ‘net exporters of grain’, although precise figures are unobtainable today.¹⁵¹

Despite the lack of data, however, there is little doubt that grain represented one of the major imported products of Florence during the thirteenth century. As illustrated by Edwin S. Hunt, the so-called Florentine ‘super-companies’ of Bardi, Peruzzi, and Acciaiuoli were able to build their economic and financial empires in late thirteenth-century southern Italy thanks to a ‘two-way trade of grain and cloth’.¹⁵²

Merchants of Florence venturing abroad were also motivated by contemporary developments in textile production. The Florentine industry needed to import large quantities of wool to work properly. To this end, raw material and semi-finished cloth were purchased at the Champagne Fairs by the Calimala merchants, manufactured in Florence, and traded northwards at the Fairs or southwards in the Mediterranean. Wool also came to Florence from southern Spain and North Africa.

Taken together, these two dynamics and the concomitant activities of Florentine merchants described above helped to form the economic prerequisites for the minting of the florin and its further success. As illustrated in the next chapter, they gave Florence an international dimension, familiarity with the international circuits of money, finance, and commerce, an awareness of its monetary needs, and all the necessary resources (i.e., gold, expertise in minting, etc.) that were crucial to the introduction of its brand-new gold coinage. The opening of the civic mint around 1236 marked a further and fundamental step toward that goal.¹⁵³

Until the mid-twelfth century, Tuscany had only one mint, that of Lucca, which had been operating almost uninterruptedly since the Lombard rule of the seventh–eighth centuries.¹⁵⁴ Starting in the 1150s, due to the increasing demand for money and the progressive debasement of the circulating denari, other Tuscan centres began to produce their own coinage: new mints were opened first in Pisa in 1155, followed by Siena and Volterra between 1186 and 1189, and eventually Arezzo and Florence in the second and third decades of the thirteenth century.¹⁵⁵ Except for Florence, which never received such a privilege, these cities had all previously been granted the right to mint coins (ius cudendi) by the emperors.¹⁵⁶ The Florentine delay in operating a mint, however, should not be regarded as a sign of weakness in the urban economy of the time, but rather the opposite.¹⁵⁷ Before 1236, the city depended on the output of other mints to satisfy its demand for money. Between the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, in particular, it was the Pisan denaro that dominated the Florentine currency, as attested by the above-mentioned treaty with Pisa of 1171 and by later evidence from the Florentine archives.¹⁵⁸ If, on the one hand, Florence waited until c. 1236 to build its mint and produce its own coinage, this could imply that the contemporary supply of Pisan money was enough to meet the local demand. On the other hand, if one considers the rapid and significant economic growth described so far, the opening of the urban mint in the 1230s could also be an effect of the ever-expanding economy of Florence, by then in need of additional money to sustain its thriving business.

The lack of consistent evidence makes it impossible to verify these or other hypotheses. However, one fact is certain and worthy of note: by the time Florence began minting coins, its relations with Pisa had soured, leading to open warfare in 1220–22 and again in the early 1230s. The Florentine coinage thus originated on the autonomous initiative of its city as a gesture of rupture from the hitherto ‘friendly’ Pisa – as well as from imperial authority, as will be discussed below.

This political situation, which likely played a crucial role in the opening of the Florentine mint, offers the opportunity for us to question whether the political context of the time was also decisive for the minting of the gold florin. The analysis carried out so far has addressed the ‘where’ of the origin of the florin, showing that by the mid-thirteenth century, Florence had emerged as a flourishing economic centre with the potential and resources to strike gold, including a mint. However, many of these features were also common to the Tuscan cities of Siena and Pisa, which had a longer minting tradition than Florence but never issued gold coins in the thirteenth century. It therefore remains unclear why it was the latter that minted gold coinage and why the Florentine government opted for a new gold specimen rather than a silver one or an imitation.

Political Florence: from ‘imperial town’ to ‘city commune’

Roberto S. Lopez was probably the first to stress the political dimension of the minting of the florin, embodying the ‘municipal pride’ of the city that took its ‘last and most fateful step’ in its political and economic emancipation from Pisa, given the long-term rivalry between the two centres.¹⁵⁹ Other historians, such as Marco Tangheroni and Monica Baldassarri, agreed on the importance of the political context to explain the minting of the florin but placed much more emphasis on the contemporary weakness of imperial authority, especially after the death of Emperor Frederick II in 1250 and the conflict between the Guelph and the Ghibelline parties.¹⁶⁰ Both of these interpretations constitute complementary aspects of the more general process of affirmation of autonomy and power undertaken by the city of Florence in those years. Specifically, the main political factors that prepared the ground for the florin were (i) the antagonism with Pisa, (ii) the imperial weakness/void, and (iii) the building of civic identity.¹⁶¹

Between the last quarter of the twelfth and the early years of the thirteenth century, Florence was involved in a growing number of military conflicts, first with rural nobles to establish its control over the nearby contado, then with other Tuscan cities such as Siena and Pistoia to expand its power and authority. A period of peace followed in the 1210s, during which no external conflicts seem to have occurred.¹⁶² Around the 1220s, the situation worsened again, with Florence becoming involved in three successive wars against Pisa (1222), Pistoia (1228), and Siena (1228–35). It was in Rome in 1220, during the coronation ceremony of Frederick II as Holy Roman Emperor, that the conflict between the Florentines and the Pisans erupted. On that occasion, the latter obtained important commercial privileges from the emperor, including total exemption from taxes in the empire’s territories, thus becoming Frederick’s first allies.¹⁶³ This was a severe blow to Florence and its thriving economy, now overshadowed by the dominant power of Pisa. A military reprisal of the Florentines against the Pisans in Rome followed soon after and had serious implications for Florence’s business, as many of its merchants trading in Pisa were imprisoned, their goods confiscated, and all the previous commercial treaties between the two cities were revoked. This marked a clear break in relations between the two centres, precipitating a new war a couple of years later (1222).

A new pattern of alliances among Tuscan cities came into existence during this and the following conflicts against Pistoia and Siena: on the one side were Florence, Lucca, and Arezzo, and on the other side, Pisa, Siena, and Pistoia. At this early stage, however, these two sets of allies had not yet aligned with the later antagonism between Guelphs and Ghibellines, the supporters of the pope and the emperor, respectively, which affected many regions of the Italian peninsula. On the contrary, these wars generated a progressive decline in stability and an atmosphere of intense violence and civic discord in Tuscany that turned into a ‘general confrontation’ between the two parties only after the ‘increasing interference’ of Emperor Frederick II in northern Italian affairs following his victory over the Milanese army at Cortenuova (1237).¹⁶⁴

The escalation of the conflict between Guelphs and Ghibellines forced Frederick II to appoint his illegitimate son Frederick of Antioch imperial vicar of Tuscany and Podestà of Florence in 1246 to restore peace. Initially, Frederick was relatively tolerant towards the Guelphs in the town. Yet, his decision to abolish local institutions dominated by papal supporters, such as the Capitani del Popolo, marked an outbreak of hostilities that culminated in February 1248, when the Guelphs were exiled and their possessions confiscated.¹⁶⁵ A few years before the return to gold, Florence therefore appeared as a Ghibelline centre ruled by Frederick of Antioch, vicar of the Holy Roman emperor. But this did not last long.

The year 1250 was a turning point for the political situation of Florence, Italy, and western Europe in general. On 21 September, Frederick of Antioch and his Ghibelline troops were defeated near Figline by the exiled Guelphs. This episode marked the end of Frederick’s power as Podestà of Florence and imperial vicar of Tuscany. On 20 October, the Florentine Popolo rose up against the Ghibelline regime, expelled Frederick’s representatives, and took control of the city.¹⁶⁶

In addition, on 13 December, the emperor died in Castel Fiorentino (Apulia). Conrad, the second-born son of Frederick II, who succeeded him with the title Conrad IV, never managed to reassert imperial power over Tuscany and Florence. The Holy Roman Empire entered a period of political uncertainty, also known as the ‘interregnum’, marked by the absence of a strong and powerful figure to take the lead.¹⁶⁷ In the wake of these events, Florence embarked on a process of affirming its power, authority, and independence inside and outside its walls.

As regards its external policy, it was soon involved in new wars against its Ghibelline neighbours to take possession of the contado and establish its power in Tuscany. The conclusion of a new military alliance between Pisa, Siena, and Pistoia in 1251, also secretly signed by Ghibelline families in Florence, led to the temporary resumption of the clash between the Guelph and Ghibelline parties in Tuscany. Once discovered, the Florentine government forced the Ghibelline families into exile and, on 20 October, established a three-party agreement with Genoa and Lucca to create a ten-year league with the sole purpose of destroying the rival city of Pisa through a war ‘by sea and land’.¹⁶⁸ To them, Pisa represented the last imperial Ghibelline threat after Frederick’s death, as well as a strong competitor in the market. Hence, the widespread anti-Ghibelline and anti-imperial sentiments common to these three cities, together with their economic interests, eventually shaped the nature of this successful alliance. The peace agreement of 1254 between Florence and the cities of Pistoia, Siena, and Pisa, following a series of successful wars in 1252–54, marked the temporary victory of Florence and its leading role in the political landscape of Tuscany at that time.

Within the Florentine walls, meanwhile, the above-mentioned uprising against the Ghibellines in 1250 coincided with the rise of a new government known as the Primo Popolo.¹⁶⁹ This consisted mainly of members of classes that had recently become wealthy through their economic and financial transactions, such as merchants, bankers, craftsmen, notaries, and judges, and thus were not related to the previously dominant aristocratic families.¹⁷⁰ This new leading group maintained the peace between the Guelphs and Ghibellines and introduced important reforms in several areas of public life. The city provided itself with new constructions such as bridges and churches, new institutions such as the Consiglio degli Anziani, a new military organisation, a new fiscal administration, and a new identity.¹⁷¹ In this context, the florin can be regarded as a propaganda device for Florence, which was now determined to assert its autonomy and authority independent of any external power. Specifically, the florin was the product of a ‘double’ appropriation of the imperial authority. First, it was minted without any formal authorisation. In the twelfth century, the right to open a mint and strike coins (ius cudendi) was usually part of the privileges or regalia dispensed by the emperor. Unlike many other Tuscan cities of the time, Florence did not hold any imperially granted right of coinage when its mint went into operation, as already noted. That occurred around 1236, during the war against Siena and Pisa, following the conviction of the imperial court in 1232, which banned Florence for its refusal to pay for any damage caused to the latter. It was therefore in such a condition of open rebellion against the emperor and Pisa that Florence decided to open its mint and produce coins in its own name. The iconography of the new silver grosso of Florence, first struck on that occasion with the images of the lily on one side and the bust of the patron saint John the Baptist on the other, and with no reference to any imperial authority in its inscriptions, is a clear statement of the Tuscan city’s independence (see Figure 1.2).

Figure 1.2The silver grosso of Florence, c. 1235, scale 2:1.

According to Robert Davidsohn, however, this was only the first step in the process of self-determination since the same message and iconography – but with the saint standing – were re-proposed a few years later on the gold florin.¹⁷² A second appropriation occurred on that occasion.

Until then, gold had traditionally been associated with the idea of sovereignty.¹⁷³ In the first half of the thirteenth century, as illustrated, foreign gold coins in circulation belonged only to kings and emperors, while minor authorities or communes produced silver or billon coins. The gold augustalis minted by Emperor Frederick II in Sicily in 1231, for example, was an imperial creation in all respects: with the laureate bust of the emperor on one side and the classical eagle on the other, this coin was issued to accommodate contemporary monetary needs while also celebrating Frederick’s imperium through its symbols.¹⁷⁴ Against this background, the decision of a ‘simple’ commune like Florence to adopt gold for its new coin constituted something extraordinary, yet in line with the political situation of the period. This appropriation must be seen as an act of power by Florence in the process of political affirmation that the city undertook in the 1240s–50s. Specifically, by taking over an imperial task like the minting of gold coins to produce the florin, not only was Florence reclaiming its new political status as an autonomous city free from the imperial overlordship, but it was also acting as a ‘civitas sibi princeps’, or ‘an emperor in its own territory’ that recognised no superior, as theorised by the fourteenth-century jurist Bartolus of Sassoferrato (1314–57).¹⁷⁵ This was possible only in the absence of a strong and intrusive authority like the Holy Roman Emperor, who would quite possibly have prevented the new minting. On this basis, the florin was a powerful instrument supporting the contemporary sovereignty of Florence and a carrier of a new political image of the city, now free from the imperial yoke.

All these implications therefore explain why Florence opted for a new and original coin made of gold rather than striking another silver denomination or imitating foreign currencies in circulation. None of these solutions were as powerful as the gold florin in conveying its new political message. This also could clarify why other Tuscan cities such as Pisa or Siena never tried to mint their own gold coins before Florence, subjected as they were to the political authority of the emperor and his allies. For this very reason, moreover, the Florentine florin differed from the other contemporary gold coins of Genoa and Lucca, which still retained references in their iconography to the imperial power that granted them the ius cudendi. With the gold florin, Florence marked instead a total break with its political past and the beginning of a new era.

Conclusions

The florin was the result of favourable economic and political conditions converging at both macro and micro levels. At a macro level, its minting was made possible by a combination of factors, ranging from the thirteenth-century decline of other gold coins in circulation, also associated with the political instability of the regions where they were minted, to the need for a new and stable gold currency coming from merchants involved in long-distance trade. Commerce and trade, rather than monetary arbitrage, led to a greater concentration of gold in Europe, to the point that striking gold – in addition to silver – became cheaper and more convenient, although the reasons for the European return to gold are still debated, as is its chronology. If, for Genoa, the annals of the city government report that the gold genovino was produced in 1252, the same cannot be said with certainty for Florence, and even less so for Lucca, for which there is no documentation contemporary with the introduction of their gold specimens. However, while the minting of the Genoese, Florentine, and Lucchese gold coins would have occurred almost simultaneously, both the introduction of the genovino and the grosso d’oro were soon followed by political and financial crises that hindered the innovative impact of these currencies, resulting in less successful and widespread coinages than the florin.¹⁷⁶ At any rate, the year 1252 should not be considered a revolutionary date since other cities in Italy and Europe more generally were minting gold, or at least had the right to do so.

On a micro level, the florin came into being in a period of economic revival and political renewal. Unlike other Tuscan cities such as Pisa, Lucca, and Siena, Florence was a latecomer in the ‘Commercial Revolution’, as it began to grow into an important trading centre in the Italian peninsula only at the turn of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Driven by swift population growth that led to the creation of new urban walls in the late twelfth century, Florence developed its commercial network by concluding treaties with other Italian marketplaces. Florentine merchants thus began to venture abroad, driven by the need for grain for their fellow citizens and the trade in textiles and wool between northern Europe and the Mediterranean, where they also provided financial services. The late opening of the Florentine mint around 1236 represented a direct consequence of the need for additional money due to the expansion of Florentine business. Besides economic purposes, however, political reasons also contributed to the minting of the florin: these included anti-Ghibelline and anti-imperial sentiments, which were common to Genoa and Lucca but were not reflected in the iconography of their own gold coins. Both the death of Emperor Frederick II in 1250 and the weakness of Conrad IV, his successor, offered the perfect occasion for Florence to claim quasi-imperial authority and independence. From this perspective, the minting of gold represented a political opportunity to redefine the Florentine commune led by the Primo Popolo as an autonomous proto-state in the absence of the emperor. The story of the florin was therefore, essentially, also a political one, highlighting (usurped) Florentine autonomy and sovereignty and the rise to power of a new mercantile class, whose fundamental contribution to the origin and early life of the coin will be illustrated in the next chapter.