[Sca-cooks] OT- 15th century economic and prices

[Terry Decker]

Dear Professor Andrade,

In 1402, there were two different currency livres in use in France, the 
"livre tournois" and the "livre parisis."  Both livres consisted of 20 sous, 
with the "sou tournois" having 12 deniers and the "sou parisis" having 20 
deniers.  The 'livre tournois" was the preferred monetary pound.  The 
currency changed value based on a complex formula using the "mark of 
Troyes," 4608 grains of pure silver, as the mint weight which was not 
debased.  As a mark is 1/2 pound by definition, a livre of silver by weight 
would be 9216 grains or, given the French grain of 53.115 milligrams, 489.5 
grams of pure silver.  489.5 grams is equivalent to the "Livre de Paris" or 
the "livre poids de marc" that became the standard measure of weight in 
France in 1350.

Kibler, William Westcott, Medieval France: an Encyclopedia

Rowlett, Russ, A Dictionary of Units of Measure 
http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/units/

Between 1400 and 1450, a "mark of Troyes" was equivalent to 8 "livres 
tournois" thus the livre was equal to 30.6 grams of pure silver.

Mulhall, Michael George, The Dictionary of Statistics

Assuming the livres that Jean de Bethancourt had were currency rather than 
silver ingots, he had the equivalent of 214.2 kilograms of silver or a 
little over 573 troy pounds which, at today's value of $14 per troy ounce, 
is a little more than $96,000.  I'm not sure what the inflation rate is for 
six centuries, but I would hazard a rough guess that Ol' Jean had himself 
around half a million dollars in purchasing power.  You might check with 
John Munro at the University of Toronto for a better guess as to the 
purchasing power.

Good luck with the research,

Terry Decker (Bear)



> From:   tandrad at emory.edu
> Subject: Medieval Economies -- Query from a Historian
> Date: December 11, 2007 10:26:33 AM CST
> To:   stefan at florilegium.org
>
> Dear Mr. Harris,
>
> In doing some research on the medieval conquest of the Canary Islands
> of 1402, I came across your wonderful website. I have had considerable
> difficulty trying to imagine what 7000 French livres must have been
> worth in the early fifteenth century and found extremely little in the
> scholarly literature. Your site seemed to me to be one of the few
> places where people were thinking about what the medieval economy
> _felt_ like, or how it might have been experienced.
>
> (The reason I'm interested in the sum of 7000 livres is because that's
> how much the French Norman Knight Jean de Bethencourt had available
> (by selling his feudal domaines and a pirated ship) to fund his
> conquest of the Canaries. It must have been a very large sum, but it
> wasn't enough to finish the job, and he had to ask for help from the
> King of Spain, which is why the Canaries became Spanish and why so
> much of the New World is Spanish-speaking.)
>
> Do you have any advice about how one might gain this kind of
> understanding? Any articles or publications that might shed light on
> this issue would be most appreciated.
>
> Thank you!
>
> Tonio
> -- 
> Tonio Andrade
> Assistant Professor of History
> Emory University