Currencies in the Age of St. Vincent
The Mediterranean world of St. Vincent was an economic engine. Trade, licit and illicit, in agricultural goods, resources, manufactured goods and even people flowed east to west and north to south. Greasing this engine was a vast supply of circulating coinages.
These coins came from the Catholic and Protestant powers of Europe, and from the Islamic states of the southern Mediterranean. Unlike today, when the circulation of money is tightly controlled and certain currencies issued in specific years are used only in specified areas, monetary circulation in the 17th century was far more complex. While no one today could use a Deutschmark from 1975 in the now Euro-using Germany, a French merchant in Marseilles in 1650 would have encountered two-hundred year old base-silver French deniers, Moroccan dirhams, Spanish maravedis, and recently struck Ecus from Paris, to mention only a few.
Coins were produced in many metals—typically gold, silver and copper—and not only came from the many mints of the numerous political entities bordering the sea, but remained in circulation for many years. Differences in metallic content, purity, weight, wear, mint of origin and place of use as well as other factors would and could affect the relative value of any one coin against any other.
Keeping track of the different values could be a full-time job, and underscores why every port city of the Mediterranean had its quarter of money changers.
