Or rather, enough information existed to allow at least somewhat accurate pricing of the risks associated with the issuance of credit.
They renovated the bathrooms in 1795, though, and personally I think they lost some of that old-time charm.
Prices always subject to haggling of course, but presumably a well-bred and fully trained warhorse in the prime of its life was pretty expensive. Ditto a high quality sword or set of armor made by a respected master. Also, anything that had made its way to Europe all the way from eastern Asia, like spices or silk.
Warhorses and weaponry could be worked out somehow, armed men wouldn’t have to worry so much about carrying a lot of gold with them. The traders though, that’s an interesting aspect. Anyone traveling far with goods to trade must be expecting a decent return, and getting that money home without getting waylaid must have been difficult. I assume they’d need to be well armed to do it.
Speaking of gold coins I recall Rick on Pawn Stars saying the ridges we have on quarters are style going far back to prevent the shaving of silver and gold coins. You can easily tell if anyone tried to shave down the edges when there are ridges but a smooth edged coin could be cleanly shaved. I wonder if that’s still a problem in the gold trade.
As Muffin mentioned, the Knights Templar played a role. They are largely credited with creating the early version of our modern banking system. Think of it as the first ATM system. They are also believed by many to be the founders of Freemasonry (there’s too much in the story to post, but you have google).
Essentially, pilgrims and crusaders going to the Holy Land were under constant attack - often robbed and/or slaughtered. So, to minimize risk, you could stop in at the Templar spot in France (for example) and give them your money and receive a statement of credit. As you moved along the pilgrimage/crusade trail, you could withdraw money be visiting other Templar locations and giving them your chit. Another would be drafted to reflect your standing balance (with an “ATM fee” associated). The Templars amassed such a vast fortune in currency and land that practically all of the potentates in Europe (including the Vatican) were in their debt, so they were same Church that created them excommunicated them and allowed Phillip the Fair of France to launch an inquisition against them.
An interesting source by a vetted historian is “Born in Blood.”
Damnit! I knew 6 pence was too much for that axe.
The concepts of banking, loans, debts, reparations, etc. goes back to literally the oldest writing we have. There were Sumerian accounting tablets that look a lot like a cuneiform version of a spreadsheet. There were laws that we know of governing debts, interest limits, and punishments for non-payment. In fact, the oldest written laws we know of explicitly set rates of exchange and reparations for various crimes. Coinage obviously goes back even farther than formal accounting.
I don’t know a lot about details for specific places, but with those ancient city-states (Sumer up to pre-Roman Greece) banking was usually tied up with the temples, as was literacy and numeracy to some extent. Within the territory, instruments that functioned a lot like letters of credit or bills of exchange were honored. Often you would have to become a citizen of the city-state to be able to use any of the banking/temple services, though. Extra-territorial travel was typically via caravan, with strongboxes, guards, etc. There was trade between city-states, so it wasn’t impossible to have financial instruments in lieu of cash or goods in other places, but just like now, you’d have to make an initial deposit.
Transactions along the way from one city to another would probably be cash, trade, or barter. You might be able to convince some people to take the equivalent of an IOU, but I’m pretty sure you’d have to have recognizable status to make that work. Coinage had variable rates of exchange based on lots of different factors, including of course the person’s faith in the legitimacy of the coin. State debasement could destroy that faith. Like with any medium of exchange that has inherent value, there were also unofficial methods of tampering with coins.
Commodities were the basis for the majority of the pre-modern banking systems. You deposited grain, you got cash or financial instruments in exchange. This had the benefit for the state of concentrating food within cities, under the control and protection of the ruler and military in fortified buildings with big-assed walls around it. It’s a good bet that the relationship between the banks and farmers were every bit as contentious then as they are now.
For example, in most of the pre-Meiji history of Japan, income from territory was measured in koku 石 (about 150kg of rice) which was supposed to be a year’s supply for one person. The money was basically a token for how much rice was on deposit. Retainers (samurai 侍) were either paid directly in rice or received a salary which could in theory be exchanged for the rice if needed. While the coins themselves were made of the typical metals (copper or tin alloys, silver, gold) they were actually backed by the commodities they represented and so functioned more as tokens in some ways rather than having intrinsic value. Historical gold coins (ryô 両) were considered equal in value to 1 koku, though the actual value might fluctuate a bit according to crop yeilds.
What’s kind of interesting is how little banking has changed from ancient times to now. US Silver Certificates were honored until the 1960s; you could exchange paper for coins or bullion (looked the actual date up: 1968!) There might even be other financial instruments I’m unfamiliar with that can be directly exchanged for the actual goods they represent.
While there were fairly strong guest customs in many places, it was very culturally-dependent, and so not something I think anyone would have actually counted on in traveling. In the ancient world in particular, you could encounter several different cultures in a trip from one city-state to another, and some of them might be hostile to your own. The biblical good Samaritan parable was a parable about how you should help even your enemies, but it was a pretty provocative story. Samaritans and Jews despised each other, and Jesus was shown as relating it to a group of Jews. Couching it in more modern terms, you could re-cast it as the story of how a former slave helped a Klansman he found beaten and lying in a ditch, as told to a group of white people; that’s how anti-establishment this dude was.
Within more inter-connected medieval societies, monetary systems were already well established and had been for hundreds or thousands of years, depending on when and where you’re talking about. There was little to no need to rely on guest rights or customs.
You could pawn your jewelry – one of the reasons for carrying around expensive jewelry – or you could wait for someone you know to turn up and pay your bill, or you could write home and get them to send credit/money.
Rome as well, the mint was at the temple of Juno Moneta.
Does anybody know if The Travels of Benjamin goes into details about how he handled money? The prices I find for that book are on the painful side, sadly, but that may be my local market.
That’s how money worked for the longest time, even for commoners - reputation was everything. Barring actual letters of credit and suchlike (which were popularized around the time of the First Crusade because pilgrims getting robbed for their Jerusalem money got very old), you would ask a known money-having person to send letters ahead of you saying “I, Mr. Moneybags, can vouch that this guy is good for X ducats, so you can give him as much and I’ll repay you later 'cause he’ll repay me later”. Then such I.O.Us could, in turn, be traded between folks - you do a favour for me, I pay Mr. Moneybags on your behalf. Or I pay somebody Mr. Moneybags owes moolah to and he’ll hear about it. With any number of such intermediaries as necessary or practical.
Needless to say it must have been quite complicated to keep track of who owed what to whom in practice. Credit cards are much simpler :D.
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The Templars amassed such a vast fortune in currency and land that practically all of the potentates in Europe (including the Vatican) were in their debt, so they were same Church that created them excommunicated them and allowed Phillip the Fair of France to launch an inquisition against them.
An interesting source by a vetted historian is “Born in Blood.”
[/QUOTE]
Other way around. Phillip IV needed a spot of cash on short notice and figured he could mess with the Templars on trumped up charges. He happened to have the Pope in his pocket (the new Pope was the first French pope and unabashedly pro-French) so getting permission was a formality. In fact, he didn’t even *ask *the Pope - he just arrested them en masse as soon as Clement V was elected, and the latter was kinda forced to follow suit or be seen as a non-entity… and not profit from the trials, either 
[QUOTE=msmith537]
But how do they validate your identity? I can’t imagine that they would know every lord and baron by sight.
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Well if you’re anybody worth anything, you’ll have respectable contacts in Paris who can say you are who you say you are. That or you’ll bear insignias proving your identity (seals, official papers and so on).
And if you don’t have either ID or backers, well, you, sir… are a Vagabond, a lout of the basest sort and I’ll have my manservants give you a good thrashing at once ! And be thankful you are not hanged for your idleness, miscreant !
(but note that, again, it wasn’t solely a nobles, burghers and aristocrat thing. Every layer of society had its own criteria for “respectable” or “trustworthy”. A penniless Huguenot refugee who knew a respected rat-catcher or was the second cousin of a reliable fishmonger could expect *some *credit at the local fleabitten inn for example.)
I am not a historian, but it seems that this practice lasted quite late. I remember reading “The Kings Speech” about Mr. Lionel Logue, a speech therapist from Australia who came to England to help out the new King in the late 1920s. the Logue family traveled through the US on the way to England and made arrangements to stay with a series of people in the US of a similar class. That is, they didn’t know them, but they had letters of introduction from people in Australia that did know them. Apparently this form of travel was the norm. One decided where one was going, found a friend able to write a letter to a friend at the destination, and off you went. Friend by friend. Presumably, you reciprocated when someone showed up at your door with a letter from one of your friends. And I assume that letters were sent in advance to help. So traveling with letters of recommendation and with letters of credit from your local bank lasted quite late in history.
Nm
The memoirs of European explorer Heinrich Barth are some of my favorite things to read, and it’s fascinating how he deals with money along his journeys into remote (to him, at least) areas of Africa.
He had planned to have quite a bit of funding for his travels, and to meet up with new travel companions fresh from Europe who could replenish his funds along the way. This didn’t work out well as people bailed or just didn’t make their planned connection, and he didn’t end up with the cash he was expecting.
The other plan was to start with a stash of trade goods, and barter with them along the way, hopefully turning enough of a profit to keep going. This also didn’t work out particularly well, particularly since he’d be expected to present gifts and “gifts” to people he met along the way, both friendly and hostile.
His final tool, and the one he had to rely on most often, was to hopscotch between friendly kingdoms, using letters of recommendation or escorts from the previous kingdom to secure safe passage and basic hospitality in the next. It was precarious, as he ended up square in the middle of local political situations that he didn’t have enough context for to understand, not every kingdom could or would present a clear path forward, and sometimes patience for uninvited guests wore thin. There were times he found himself destitute and surrounded by people who wanted him to leave. But it mostly worked.
It’s still done by immigrants, more from more traditional societies but I’ve had people giving me the contact information for their relative who was “close” (by different definitions of “close”) to where I was going. I never stayed with them but I did contact them for information about the area, where to look for housing, etc. My brother Jay has stayed at friend’s houses and friends’ of friends’ houses while on vacation, started by someone who heard they were thinking of visiting the area where she lives and exclaimed “don’t you dare stay in a hotel!” Ma’am, yes ma’am… (thee shalt not offend a Basque woman’s hospitality). The brother of a Mexican coworker of mine had just gotten married in the area where we worked (the sister was there temporarily): when his in-laws heard she was staying in a hotel they promptly hooked her up with three possible shared homes to choose from; I had to explain that yes, they meant it and would in fact be terribly offended if she refused (thee shalt definitely not offend the hospitality of multiple Basque women).
The threat of having your head severed from your body if you didn’t honour the agreement would probably be enough to make you think twice about ripping somebody off, especially if they were or new people in high places. A little different to moving address and dodging the bailiffs like in today’s world.
It will be interesting to see in GoT how the IBoB deals with the TON of debt that the Lannisters owe it and can’t pay back…
It makes me wonder given the Faceless and what is going on with Arya Stark and her list of which includes several Lannisters…
In “A Distant Mirror: the Calamitous 14th Century” by Barbara Tuchman
( A Distant Mirror - Wikipedia )
the author often describe the riches in material goods which would be sent off with nobles on their foreign military adventures. The valuable plates and silverware, etc was usually pawned when the expedition “hit the rocks”, as it almost always did. IIRC she expressed the opinion that this was in fact a secondary purpose for hauling this stuff along.
Diner’s Club.
You eat at an inn and when they ask for payment, club them.
The letter of introduction still exists in some circles. There is still a network of gentleman’s clubs around the world where people from a club in London can stay in a reciprocal New York club, say. In order to prove you are who you say you are, there is often a requirement of the home club to provide a letter of introduction. Of course the accommodation in the foreign club is not free. The letter just serves to demonstrate that you are currently in good stead with the home club (ie, not a deadbeat who will run out on the bill), and as a further check to demonstrate you have not forged or stolen your ID. If you have forged or stolen the ID of a member, you still won’t be able to get the necessary letter.
Was it not more a case of Christians being forbidden to lend money and charge interest?
“Put not thy coin to usury” and all that …