A similar depreciation, more gradual but never rectified, is seen in the value of French money. The standard of reckoning was the livre tournois, which varied intrinsically in value of the silver put into it as follows:
Years Intrinsic value of silver
1500 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 cents
1512-40 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 cents
1541-60 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 cents
1561-72 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 cents
{463}
1573-79 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 cents
1580-1600 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 cents
[Sidenote: Value of Spanish coins]
The standard Spanish gold coin after 1497 was the ducat, which had 3.485 grammes of gold (value in our money $2.40). This was divided into 375 maravedis, which therefore had a value of about two-thirds of a cent each. A Castilian marc of gold had 230 grammes or a value of about $16. After 1537 a handsome silver coin, known as the peso fuerte or "piece of eight" because each contained eight reals, was minted in America. Its value was about $1.06 of our money, it being the predecessor of our dollar.
The great difficulty with the coinage of Germany and Italy is not so much in its fluctuation as in the number of mints. The name gulden [Sidenote: Gulden a general term] was given to almost any coin, originally, as its etymology signifies, a gold piece, but later also to a silver piece. Among gold guldens there was the Rhenish gulden intrinsically worth $1.34; the Philip's gulden in the Netherlands of 96 cents and the Carolus gulden coined after 1520 and worth $1.14. But the coin commonly used in reckoning was the silver gulden, worth intrinsically 56 cents. This was divided into 20 groschen. Other coins quite ordinarily met with in the literature of the times are pounds (7.5 cents), pfennigs (various values), stivers, crowns, nobles, angels ($2), and Hungarians ducats ($1.75). Since 1518 the chief silver coin was the thaler, at first considered the equal of a silver gulden. The law of 1559, however, made them two different coins, restoring the thaler to what had probably been its former value of 72 cents, and leaving the imperial gulden in law, what it had commonly become in fact, a lesser amount of silver.
The coinage of Italy was dominated by the gold gulden or florin of Florence and the ducat of Venice, {464} each worth not far from $2.25 of our money. Both these coins, partly on account of their beauty, partly because of the simple honesty with which they were kept at the nominal standard, attained just fame throughout the Middle Ages and thereafter, and became widely used in other lands.
[Sidenote: Wheat]
The standard of value determined, it is now possible to compare the prices of some staple articles. First in importance comes wheat, which fluctuated enormously within short periods at the same place and in terms of the same amounts of silver. From Luther's letters we learn that wheat sold at Wittenberg for one gulden a scheffel in 1539 and for three groschen a scheffel in 1542, the latter price being considered "so cheap as never before," the former reached in a time almost of famine and calling for intervention on the part of the government. However we interpret these figures (and I believe them to mean that wheat sold at from twelve cents to eighty cents a bushel) they certainly indicate a tremendous instability in prices, due to the poor communications and backward methods of agriculture, making years of plenty alternate with years of hunger. In the case of Wittenberg, the lower level was nearer the normal, for in 1527 wheat was there sold at twenty cents a bushel. In other parts of Germany it was dearer; at Strassburg from 1526-50 it averaged 30 cents a bushel; from 1551-75 it went up to an average of 58 cents, and from 1576-1600 the average again rose to 80 cents a bushel.
Prices also rose in England throughout the century even in terms of silver. Of course part of the rise in the middle years was due to the debasement of the coinage. Reduced to bushels and dollars, the following table shows the tendency of prices:
1530 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 cents a bushel
1537 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 cents
{465}
1544 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 cents
1546 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 cents
1547 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 cents
1548 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 cents
1549 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 cents
1550 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 cents
1572 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 cents
1595 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $1.14