14th Century
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1300

Gold price: £1.39 (£1.7s.9½d) per troy ounce fine

Gold/silver ratio: 1:14

Annual production: ± 125,000 ounces


A great century for gold

Quite suddenly in the 14th century gold came into its own; mining boomed, more gold was coined than at any time in history, and Venice blossomed as the gold market of the international trade.


1311-18 In eight years of gold recoinage the Paris mint used almost 400,000 ounces.
1317 Gold/silver ratio in Bruges (Flanders), now the exchange centre of north-west Europe, was 1:16.6 and in some German cities was reported as 1:20. This was the peak of a turbulent period for the ratio in the first half of the 14th century, caused initially by large silver supplies, while gold production at mines in Germany and Hungary was temporarily disrupted. Even in Florence and Venice, the ratio was up to 1:14.6 at times in the 1320s, and still over 1:14 in Paris in 1330. Thereafter, the ratio rapidly narrowed as major gold discoveries in Hungary virtually doubled gold production. By the mid 1340s, London was at 1:11 and Florence at 1:10; in the early 1350s the ratio in Venice went to 1:9.6, amounting to a significant drop in the gold price. By 1360 the ratio stabilised around 1:11, as the mining boom declined, thus raising the price slightly.
1323 Hungary opened new gold mines and minted a gulden coin, modelled on the florin from Florence, at 0.11 oz/3.52 grams (see box).
Hungary goes for gold

Although Hungary had been a modest producer of gold and silver for decades, the new gold mines opened in 1323 added quite a new dimension. Located in the Garam region north of Budapest, they were worked by itinerant German miners under the watchful direction of a Hungarian named Demetrius Nekcsei who sought to monopolise the mines, refining, minting and marketing on behalf of the King. In 1327 the Kings of Hungary and neighbouring Bohemia (Czech Republic), which was the major silver producer with a little gold, met to co-ordinate the relationship between Hungary's gold gulden and Bohemia's silver groschen, agreeing on a bimetallic exchange ratio of 1:14.5 between the coins. The groschen became the trading currency of central Europe, but the gulden seems to have gone west to Bruges, Paris and London (an exchange table was set up at Dover at this time for incoming foreign gold coin), and south to Venice and Florence. Output reached over 30,000 ounces (some estimates go to 100,000) annually by the 1330s. Louis I of Hungary was rumoured to have sent over 150,000 ounces of gulden to Italy in 1343 for expenses in securing a dynastic claim to the kingdom of Naples; this coincides with high levels of coining in Florence. Hungarian output eased before 1380, when the oxidised upper layers of ore were worked out, but remained around 45,000 ounces a year.

1324 Sultan Mansa Mas of Mali in West Africa on a pilgrimage to Mecca via Egypt took so much gold for expenses that the gold/ silver ratio in Egypt fell to 1:8.5.
1327 The Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths in London received its first royal charter from Edward III.
1337 In France, Philip VI issued a new ecu gold coin which gained large circulation. Total production by French mints in 1338/1339 has been put at 350,000 ounces, but this must include considerable recoinage.
1343 England launched the gold florin of 0.225oz (7.02 grams) valued at £0.30 (6s.0d), equal to a gold price of £1.33 (£1.6s.8d) per ounce, which overvalued it.
1344 Learning that lesson, the English minted the noble of 0.28 oz (8.7 grams) at 990 fine, valued at £0.33 (6s.8d), a lower gold price of £1.16 (£1.3s.2½d) per ounce. It was a success; the mint used 36,500 ounces of gold in just 18 months. Florence minted 39,600 ounces into florins that year, and averaged 22,000 ounces each year from 1344-51. Venice is estimated to have equalled or exceeded Florence (but no mint statistics exist). In total in 1344, London, Bruges, Florence, Venice and Genoa coined 170,000 ounces of gold, a record since Roman times, if not for all previous history.
1346 Peter IV of Aragon issued gold florins, modelled on those of Florence, at the mint in Perpignan and later at mints in Barcelona and Valencia. The gold came primarily from North Africa, to which the Spanish kingdoms had direct access. Valencia did much trade with Africa, so the gold arrived directly in the city. The quantities of coin minted, however, were modest; the Valencia mint usually handled 4,000-9,000 ounces annually.
1350 Annual gold production at mid-century was up to 200,000 ounces, with Hungary as the foremost European producer, followed by Bohemia and Silesia (Germany). Supplies from Africa had also increased significantly, especially from Mali. Western Sudan became a major source in the later 14th century. Africa probably provided over 100,000 ounces annually. The gold came through North African ports to Spain (the Barcelona mint made gold florins for the Catalan trade), Sicily, Naples, Genoa, Florence and Venice. Venice also sent convoys to the Black Sea with silver coin to be exchanged for gold coming down the Volga river from central Asia.
1351 England reduced the gold content of the noble to 0.25 oz (8 grams), raising the gold price to £1.17 (£1.3s.5d) per ounce. The mint in London required an average 55,000 ounces a year throughout the 1350s; this came mostly from melted foreign coin.
1363 The English established a mint in Calais which they controlled and where only English money was current. Merchants coming to buy English wool exports had to change money. Most recoining was of gold. In its first year, the Calais mint handled over 39,000 ounces, and then between 20,000 and 55,000 ounces annually until the early 1370s.
1370 Venice had further consolidated its position as the crossroads of gold for southern Europe and the Mediterranean. The prices quoted on the Rialto for gold and silver were almost universally accepted. The mint had increased its capacity with as much as 10,000 ounces going through at any one time. The annual output of gold ducats had reached around 600,000 which required over 65,000 ounces.
1376 Genoa also handled good amounts, importing almost 15,000 ounces from African sources and exporting over 3,000 ounces to the Levant in 1376-7.
1380 The gold mines in Hungary had passed their peak and the next forty years until 1420 is often known as "the great bullion famine". Coin production fell everywhere; while Venice and other Italian mints had access to African gold, the supply into Germany, France and England declined. By the late 1370s the London and Calais mints handled only a few thousand ounces annually; between 1380 and 1399, just 250,000 ounces went through the two mints - an average of under 13,000 ounces a year, a quarter of what they used a few decades earlier. The Paris mint showed a similar fall, using only one-sixth the quantity of gold it had required in the initial gold boom of the 1330s, while the mint at Bruges was idle by 1402.
1399 Despite the 'famine' at least 15-16 million ounces of gold was produced during the 14th century, and most of it went into coin produced in western Europe. Therefore by the end of the century a significant gold coinage was in circulation there for the first time since the Roman era over a thousand years earlier.