How did foreign currency work in medieval Europe?
Monica Tandy, Windsor
The medieval traveller A
from England – whether unaccompanied or among the many groups of pilgrims on their way to holy sites abroad – faced many difficulties. However, changing money was probably not one of them.
England, with just pound sterling in circulation, was the exception rather than the rule. Elsewhere in Europe, there were as many different coinages as there were emperors, kings, counts, archbishops and city states. Society had learnt to cope with this. In nearly all major towns and cities, travellers would have found licensed moneychangers and innkeepers, who provided banking and exchange services as well as a night’s lodging. Regional currencies that were acceptable over wide geographical areas (such as the Rhenish florin or guilder, and the Venetian ducat) also emerged in the later Middle Ages. The traveller would have been able to use Rhine guilders all the way from Bruges to Basel, for example.
Carrying money with you could be dangerous, however. In order to avoid theft, funds were increasingly transferred by written letters of credit or exchange. These were of no value in themselves but guaranteed future payment in a local currency at a specified place en route. So, in 1439– 40 two English noblemen who were preparing for a pilgrimage to the Holy Land paid more than £1,000 in sterling to the Borromei Bank in London which they were to collect three months later in Venice in ducats. It was almost like buying traveller’s cheques.