During the Reformation, what kind of money did European people use?

Question

In the US we use dollars. Today in Europe people use euros. So during the Reformation, did people use a special type of currency, or did they just trade?

Answer 1

By the time of the Reformation, money (instead of barter) was being used throughout most of Europe to pay for goods and services.

But there was no single "European" currency (nothing like a Euro). Each major country minted its own coins from precious (or at least fairly rare) metals, like gold, silver, copper. Because every mint produced many different types and values of coins, there were hundreds of different types of coins in circulation around Europe (far too many different types to list here).

Some coins issued by different countries were intended to have a similar value to one another. For example, France, England and some of the Italian states (such as Florence) all issued gold coins that were supposed to be worth one pound weight of silver. The different names for these gold coins all translated to "pound" in English.

Paper money (banknotes) came into use when merchants wanting to buy goods overseas did not want to take the risk of traveling with bags full of gold coins. A merchant in Italy wanting to buy wool from England would go to his banker in Milan and say: "I have 500 Lira in your bank. Please give me a note to a banker in London, so that he will let me have 500 Pounds to use there." So the Milan banker wrote a short letter saying that the bearer of the note should be given the equivalent of 500 Lira. And that was "a banknote".

Answer 2

The vast majority of the population was rural and agrarian, and saw little ready money. Most of their production went for barter, and most of their consumption consisted of goods they provided for themselves (from gardens, fields, or animals) or acquired by bartering what they had.

Among those who did deal with money were the town dwellers, in trade, commerce, or specialty production, and the landowners and aristocracy. Their coins were generally minted by the state (or duchy or principality) and placed in circulation by the ruler of that jurisdiction. This meant that, in general, coins did not circulate outside their state of origin. However, if the quality of a coin could easily be assayed, then it might circulate at its nominal value, or even higher, in very distant areas, based on its value as a piece of metal (gold, silver, whatever) of measurable weight.