As some of you know, one of my side areas of research over the past couple of years has been trying to figure out the puzzle of day to day coinage in circulation in the Burgundian Netherlands. After ploughing through Peter Spuffords "Money and it's use in Medieval Europe" on and off over the past year or so, I finally came across this information.

The day to day coinage on the contiunent was silver, or nominaly so, divided into two classifications - Monnaie blanche (silver) and monnaie Noir (black money - mostly copper with a nominal silver content).

The main silver coinage of the Burgundian Netherlands was the Patard or Stuiver, made of a billion that was half silver and half copper alloy, and weighing 3.44 grams. It was also known as a 'vierlander, as it was struck in four different principalities (Flanders, Brabant, Hainault, and Holland). To give some idea of what it was worth (always a chancey proposition, as the relative value of items change over time) at Antwerp the daily wages of carpenters and masons ranged between 4 1/2 gros (groats) and 8 gros. In Flanders in the middle of the 15th c., the Patard was worth 2 gros.

The gros or groat itself would be the smallest denomination of 'white money' in the Burgundian states - two to a patard/stuiver.

Underneath this is the "Monnaie Noir" , the small change of everyday life. In the Burgundian states this was called the mite, the mite of Flanders was the 24th part of a groat, while the mite of Brabant was the 36th part of it. They were theoreticaly one part silver to 95 parts copper, and so were considered a silver coin.

This is a bit confusing to me, as I am most familiar with English Medieval coinage, which was a strong currency that held it's value over long periods of time. Compared to pence, a mite is indeed small change, as there is, I believe 4 pence to an English Groat - compare that to 24 mites to the Flemish Groot.

As a side note, most mintmasters in the Burgundian Netherlands struck comparitively few of the 'monnaie noir', as it they stuck them honestly, with the appropriate silver, they would lose money on the bargain. As an example, in 1433 Phillip the Goods mints at Ghent, Brussels, Valenciennes, and Dordrecht coined just over 2 million mites. In the same timeframe they produced over 30 million patards who's value was 150 times greater. Small change was a necessity of urban life, and as a result city dwellers circulated 'hedge money' or tokens struck out of pure copper by minor noblemen in the Duchey of Limburg and the Bishopric of Liege - despite prohibitions against their use.

If I can find out any more information on the subject of use (like comparative prices), I will post it.

Hope this is useful.

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Bob R.

I should add that the Burgundian coinage was a long term stable coinage of middling value (connected to a booming economy), which was why Spufford used it as an example. English coinage was a high value long term stable coinage, attached to a middling economy, and to look at a unstable coinage of low value, I believe he turns to Castile, and France in varying stages of the Hundred years war.

If you have any good clear pics of any of these low denomination coinage please let me know. I am going to be doing some prep work/drawings for Jeff for a line of affordable repro coins.

I happen to have a mite of Phillip the Good. It is too dark to photograph with any clarity. Jeff & Gwen have seen it. I could make a rubbing possibly.