Speaker
Description
Over the course of several decades between the middle of the 16th and the start of the 17th century, several types of Swiss silver coins became a very important part of the money circulation in Bohemia. The influx of Swiss coins into this territory was considered by the then economists and politicians of the day as one of the reasons for the rapidly rising prices. However, the real reasons were different, related to the important role of the European financial center, such as was the Imperial Court in Prague. In this paper, the author clarifies the role of Swiss coins in the Bohemian money circulation pool of the time. On the basis of surviving written and material sources we set out to reconstruct the exact procedures used in Prague to verify the metrological quality of circulating Swiss coins.
