Carolingian Pound
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The Carolingian pound (, ), also called Charlemagne's pound or the Charlemagne pound, was a
unit of weight A unit of measurement, or unit of measure, is a definite magnitude (mathematics), magnitude of a quantity, defined and adopted by convention or by law, that is used as a standard for measurement of the same kind of quantity. Any other qua ...
that emerged during the reign of
Charlemagne Charlemagne ( ; 2 April 748 – 28 January 814) was List of Frankish kings, King of the Franks from 768, List of kings of the Lombards, King of the Lombards from 774, and Holy Roman Emperor, Emperor of what is now known as the Carolingian ...
. It served both as a trading weight and a coinage weight. It had a mass of about 408 g and was introduced in as part of Charlemagne's monetary reform around AD 793/94. This stipulated that 240 ''denarii'' (= ''pfennigs'') were to be minted from one pound weight of
silver Silver is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Ag () and atomic number 47. A soft, whitish-gray, lustrous transition metal, it exhibits the highest electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity, and reflectivity of any metal. ...
. The units of weight that emerged over time as a result of the Carolingian monetary system and its associated pound or ''Karlspfund'', were of great importance for large parts of Europe. The basic features of this monetary system, which was based on the Carolingian pound, continued to exist in England until 1971. Initially, the Carolingian pound was valid across the whole of the
Carolingian Empire The Carolingian Empire (800–887) was a Franks, Frankish-dominated empire in Western and Central Europe during the Early Middle Ages. It was ruled by the Carolingian dynasty, which had ruled as List of Frankish kings, kings of the Franks since ...
and, to a lesser extent, in the
Holy Roman Empire The Holy Roman Empire, also known as the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation after 1512, was a polity in Central and Western Europe, usually headed by the Holy Roman Emperor. It developed in the Early Middle Ages, and lasted for a millennium ...
under the Ottonian dynasty that followed. Under the Salians, who ruled from 1024, the Cologne Mark was introduced. This amounted to 576 thousandths of the Carolingian pound and became the dominant coinage weight. Similar modifications were made to trading weights at the same time.


Origin

The ''Karlspfund'' is first attested by a contemporary manuscript, as well as reports from the Council of Frankfurt in 794. These say that new coins, new ''deniers'' or ''denars'', were now to be minted in the Empire. These ''deniers'' later became known as '' pfennigs''. The exact derivation of the target weight of the Charlemagne pound itself has yet to be clarified. Today, the original weight of the Charlemagne pound can be determined primarily by weighing surviving Carolingian coins from the early period, although a variation of several per cent occurs. In the literature, the ''Karlspfund'' is often given 408.25 g or approximately as 408 g, The latter is the equivalent of one ''denier'' of exactly 1.7 g in weight.


Derivatives


France

From the middle of the 12th century, several variants of the Carolingian pound emerged in France which were legal tender at different times. * Paris pound (''Libra parisi''). The Paris pound, at almost 460 g, had been around since the time Louis the Fat and was of the Carolingian pound. * Tours pound. At the beginning of the 13th century, the ''livre tournois'', the pound of the city of
Tours Tours ( ; ) is the largest city in the region of Centre-Val de Loire, France. It is the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the Departments of France, department of Indre-et-Loire. The Communes of France, commune of Tours had 136,463 inhabita ...
, was used in France. This was identical to the "earlier" ''livre de Troyes'' in use at the same time in Troyes. The ''Livre tournois'' was exactly of the ''Karlspfund''. * Troy pound. At the same time, a new system was created in Troyes, the "later" ''livre de Troyes''. This was legal throughout France from 1266 at the latest, until 1 August 1793. It was officially and unambiguously also called the "''livre des poids-de-marc''" ( Mark pound weight). It was of the ''Karlspfund''. The English pound weight, which was adopted very early and directly from France, shows that the value of the Carolingian pound was a little lower in France for a long time. The weight of the ''livre des poids-de-marc'' also corresponds very closely to one seventieth of the mass of a French cubic foot of water. So it is likely that this is why there was a slight increase in the weight measure in France. The ratio of the two is about 3136 : 3125, so only there is only a +0.35% difference.


England

The English system of Troy weights probably originates in the French market town of Troyes where English merchants traded at least as early as the early 9th century. The name ''troy'' is first attested in 1390, describing the weight of a platter, in an account of the travels in Europe of the Earl of Derby. The English weights were based on the older value of the ''livre de Troyes'' which was of the Carolingian pound. Thus it is easy to compare them directly to the ''Karlspfund'': The metrological numerical values only differed from their official values (1958) by about 0.0017 %. The former corresponded to an English
grain A grain is a small, hard, dry fruit (caryopsis) – with or without an attached husk, hull layer – harvested for human or animal consumption. A grain crop is a grain-producing plant. The two main types of commercial grain crops are cereals and ...
of exactly 64.8 mg.


Holy Roman Empire

Many of the important weights in the German
Holy Roman Empire The Holy Roman Empire, also known as the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation after 1512, was a polity in Central and Western Europe, usually headed by the Holy Roman Emperor. It developed in the Early Middle Ages, and lasted for a millennium ...
, such as the Vienna pound, the Cologne mark and the Nuremberg apothecary's pound were derived from the Charlemagne pound. For example, the ratio of the Cologne mark to the ''Karlspfund'' is exactly 576:1000. The relatively large deviation of the empirical ''Karlspfund'' of almost 0.4% - which is still within the coefficient of variation determined for old weights is due to the later French, slightly larger version. The so-called Custom Union mark of the German Customs Union was set at 233.8555 g in 1838, i.e. only around 0.105% less than its numerical value. Cologne and Vienna marks maintained their ratio of 10 : 12. Thus in creating their derivatives, the leading metrologists of the
Holy Roman Empire The Holy Roman Empire, also known as the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation after 1512, was a polity in Central and Western Europe, usually headed by the Holy Roman Emperor. It developed in the Early Middle Ages, and lasted for a millennium ...
preserved the Carolingian pound with outstanding precision for over a thousand years.


Carolingian ''pfennig''

After the Carolingian monetary reform, the '' schilling'' (lat. ''solidus'') was initially only a coin of account, the unminted gold equivalent of 12 silver ''denarii'' (''denarius'' = ''pfennig''). A ''schilling'' was the equivalent of 1/20th of a Carolingian pound in silver weight. At 12 ''pfennigs'' to the ''schilling'', Carolingian silver ''pfennigs'' were actually minted from a pound of
silver Silver is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Ag () and atomic number 47. A soft, whitish-gray, lustrous transition metal, it exhibits the highest electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity, and reflectivity of any metal. ...
240. For historical units of length, the coefficient of variation is generally accurate to within ± 0.2%. In ancient and medieval units of weight, a range of about (1.0023 −1) = 3/500 can be used. The ratio 126 : 125 and its reciprocal value represents the higher metrological precision requirements of medieval weights. Coefficients of variation become considerably smaller from around the Renaissance period. In addition, a distinction must be made between the actual and known values of the dimensions themselves and the tolerances that inevitably occur in "mass production". At that time, purely for technical reasons, the variation was no better than, for a ''pfennig'', 1.6 to 1.8 g.


Weight of the Carolingian Pound

The weight given for the Carolingian pound varies slightly in the literature for the following reasons: * 406 ½ grams is a good approximation of the weight of the Carolingian pound. Its only disadvantage is that the ''denarius'' with a value of 1.69375 g has a five-digit number after the decimal point. * 405 g equates to four digits on the right side of the denarius. This value is based on the English weight system. * 406 g would give a period value for the denarius and is based on the German Customs Union mark. * 408 g is slightly high and equates to of the old French pound. It equates to a single digit decimal point for the denarius. * 408.24g is sometimes used and may also be rounded to 408.25 g. * 406.4256 grams is an average that represents a modern overall rounding of all weights, including those derived from the Carolingian pound. However, it does not mean that Carolingian metrologists could determine their pound value to a precision of mg nor that modern research has determine the historical value to that level of precision.


Footnotes


References

{{Reflist Charlemagne Units of mass Obsolete units of measurement Units of measurement of the Holy Roman Empire