Tag: silver

How Wedding Ceremonies Worked Within Europe During the Medieval Period

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Medieval weddings were carried out much the same as they are during the modern day with any witnesses present being provided 3 distinct opportunities to object to the marriage with the most common objections being that the parties involved were too close in relation by blood and/or the age of the bride was too young to accept the concept of marriage and/or bare a child. A ring and a piece of gold or silver was placed upon the Christian Bible held by the priest conducting the ceremony, in an effort to have the ring blessed, after which the priest would take the brides right hand and in Latin say “In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen” which means “in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. With truth” in Latin. The priest would touch each finger, starting with the thumb, after saying each part of the Holy Trinity, ending upon the 4th finger when saying “amen”, which became the finger which the wedding ring was placed upon. It was not uncommon for both men and women to wear their wedding rings on their thumbs or middle fingers until the 17th century as any finger was considered acceptable. After undertaking vows, both the husband and wife would lay down to be covered in a shroud, afterwhich they would arise as a newly married couple. This practice was symbolic of a marriage transforming 2 unique individuals into a single person married to Jesus Christ. Finally, the priest would then kiss both the bride and groom upon their face, typically the cheek, and put the couple to bed to ensure consummation of the marriage, at which point, the marriage ceremony was considered complete

City States Minting Currency and the System That Replaced This

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Throughout history, city states were permitted the legal status to design and manufacture their own unique currency which inevitably led to tens of thousands of different designs on both the fronts and backs of coins, throughout the ancient world. Surprisingly this chaotic monetary system was not an issue for commerce as each coin manufactured was approximately the same size and weight with the same amount of silver or gold smelted into it, making trade relatively straightforward as values rarely fluctuated and could be traded at their intended face value regardless of the geographic location they were manufactured in. This system eventually gave way to the modern day system developed during the 18th century in the United States of America which stated that only the government of a nation was legally permitted to mint currency, with the size and metals being utilized deemed irrelevant as the currency depended solely upon how valuable the currency was in comparison to the world market, a counter balance which is heavily influenced by the gross domestic product of both the import and export of every country involved in trade alongside many other smaller yet equally important intrinsic factors (e.g. political climate or instability)

The Most Targeted Areas of the Vikings

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Vikings most often targeted monasteries occupied by communities of monks living under strict religious vows, because these sites were often full of silver and gold chalices used for drinking wine, plates, bowls, and crucifixes

The Advent of Coins With Ridges

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In the early age of coin currency, after coins were struck, opportunistic people would excise small pieces from the edge of the coin. After doing so over and over, these people would eventually amalgamate large quantities of silver. It was such a large problem that the British government became involved in an attempt to put an end to it. Sir Isaac Newton is credited with inventing the the ridged coin as a solution, which is why to this day coins have ridges. The British government made it law that if any of the ridges were missing from any coin, the coin was no longer constituted as legal tendered currency. This solution stopped the practice of coin excision all together