 Money is a thing: coins and bills in late medieval EuropeColin Drumm Chapter 15 in Research Handbook on Law and Political Economy, 2025, pp 244-259 from Edward Elgar Publishing Abstract: Recent scholarship in monetary theory emphasizing the centrality of law and the state to monetary phenomena has seriously misrepresented the institutional and operational details of monetary systems based on precious metal coinage. This essay corrects that misunderstanding by presenting an analysis of the medieval European monetary system based on three institutional pillars: the Mint, the Exchange, and the legal prohibition of usurious contracts under Canon Law. The interaction between these three institutions defined the operation space of the medieval and early modern European monetary order. A more rigorous and historically grounded understanding of the operations of this system can provide monetary theorists with a better appreciation of the political stakes of a “modern” monetary order in which precious metal coinage has been eliminated, with the result that holders of the monetary instrument no longer have direct access to foreign exchange embodied in the option to melt the coin for its metal value. Keywords: Numismatics; Bills of Exchange; Usury; Coinage; Money; Institutions (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:21466_15 Ordering information: This item can be ordered from Access Statistics for this chapter More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing |
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