Gold coins 1252-1535 : Gold Italian coins and their imitations in the world. A research project under the auspices of Icomon

This paper presents a research project which I proposed to ICOMON in 2005 (International committee of Money and Banking Museums) which accepted it under its auspices. The importance of Italian gold coins in medieval Europe from 1252 to the early 16th century is certainly relevant, but no consistent research has ever been done in order to understand their role, their flows of circulation together with other European gold coins. One of the main topic of this research is especially the florin of Florence: from the 14th century we can exactly date to as short a time as a semester each gold florin thanks to the mark of the mint magistrates who were in charge for only 6 months (marks known and dated thanks to archival documents). Such extreme precision of dating has never been put to use: the project aims at recording hoards and finds in Italy and across Europe of such coins and other ones associated, and understanding the flows of gold coins from Florence, the replacement by local gold coins across Europe, and so on. From written records we also know exactly how many specimens of gold florins were struck in a number of semesters: if we could check these figures against number of finds and die-studies, we could offer a contribution to quantifying mint production in cases where actual output is unknown. This project implies ample European collaboration, researches in museum collections, study of finds, and setting up of a data-base.