Sacra Moneta : Mints and divinity: purity, miracles and powers

Mints were a vital and almost sacred body in the State administration: the place of transformation of metal into coins. The paper explores the link between justice, coins and divine power including reflections on St Augustine’s metaphor of man as ‘nummus Dei’ and thus product of a God-moneyer. The status of the mint within the State is illustrated by various medieval examples (emperors, kings, and the republics of Florence and Venice). Finally, the author describes sacred events and miracles within mints as reported by vaious accounts. The English kings in the 14th century consecrated gold florins of Florence on the altar of the Good Friday Mass before using that gold to produce the miraculous ‘cramp rings’. The Duke of Milan Francis II Sforza had new gold coins struck and some of these were stained with the blood of St John the Baptist (two of these are still kept in the Milan Duoomo today). Good and bad government practices leave good or bad signs on the coins: the stories told here show how coins, especially when they were of pure gold or silver, were not trivial objects but they had a complex personality and biography.