been again reduced to under 26 lire 10 soldi di piccioli. The result was a second melting down and disappearance of the silver coins of the state, a second agitation on the part of the Florentine woollen merchants, and renewed legislation.
By the Mint regulation of 1347, a new-named money was introduced called Guelfi Grossi, coined at a tale of 117 to the libbra (111 3⁄5 being rendered cash to the merchants, and 5 2⁄5 retained by the Mint for the state), at the same standard as before (11 1⁄2 oz.), but at an equivalence of 5 instead of, as previously, 4 piccioli per piece.
117 x 5 = 585 piccioli.
(= 29 lire 5 soldi di piccioli);
a figure which is considerably above the 27 lire 14 soldi piccioli, which Villani gives as the price of foreign silver at the time. Even taking the lower tale of 111 3⁄5 pieces, which the importer of silver to the Mint got for his bullion, there is a distinct margin of profit.
111 3⁄5 = 558 piccioli.
(= 27 lire 18 soldi di piccioli.)
Indeed, in its entirety, this operation of 1347 has a sinister look. At home the woollen merchants of Florence were obliged to pay wages in silver, abroad to receive payment in gold. It was to their interest to cry down the equivalence of silver; they paid less and received more. The means by which they brought the state to put upon silver a price so far removed from the market price could only be the bribe
contained in the relinquishing of 5 2⁄3 pieces in each libbra. But such a process is in reality the beginning of debasement.
If this is not the true import of the Act of 1347, it testifies all the more to the only other possible motive—the monetary straits of Florence, her want of silver for currency, and the violent effort she was prepared to make to get it.
Whether by way of effect or cause it is hard to say, but certainly silver in the middle of the succeeding century had so far disappeared in the Italian peninsula, or gold so far increased during the fifteenth century, that the commercial ratio remained persistently low—1: 9.25, both in Milan and Florence; and the Mint regulations of 1460 adopted by the latter state (see under [table of Florentine silver coins], Appendix), can only be looked upon as a simple repetition of the measures of 1345 and 1347.