Zecca: The Mint of Venice in the Middle Ages. (Reviews).

Alan M. Stahl, Zecca: The Mint of Venice in the Middle Ages

Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press (with the American Numismatic Association), 2000. xviii + 497 pp. $68. ISBN: 0-8018-6383-X.

At its height in the fourteenth century, the mint was second in size only to the Arsenal as a single place of employment for Venetians. As one of the largest industrial enterprises in medieval Europe it merits a full study; as the source of the finest and most stable coinage in Europe and the Levant it merits a full study; as provider of the steady lifeblood of Venice's commercial empire it merits a full study. Marshalling previous research, archived legal, political and civic materials, merchant records, and numismatic and statistical data from excavations and coin hoards, author Alan Stahl presents a study worthy of its subject. For twenty years the curator of medieval coins at the American Numismatic society, Stahl's specific interest in Venetian coinage began shortly after assuming the position and culminates in this thorough -- if at times repetitious -- monograph.

In three thematic sections he outlines the operation of the mint, the policies that drove it, and the output that made it so vital a part of the Venetian state. He covers the period from the earliest Carolingian-style issues in the ninth century and ends on Doge Tomaso Mocenigo's deathbed in 1423. His first part explores the progression of coin types (pennies, grossi, ducats, soldini, colonial torneselli), including their models and the specific purposes they served. Part Two lays out the various aspects of the mint's external relations: who made policy, the nature of the market for bullion, the ranges of circulation for each major coin type, and the "cullers, clippers and counterfeiters" who sought to hoard, shave or copy the mint's products. The nuts and bolts of mint operation are outlined in Part Three. Here he says what he can about the physical structure of the mint and the tasks involved in minting, and presents something of a prosopography of the staff, from the mintmasters of the lower nobility to pi ece-work craftsmen. He also attempts to delineate the mint's annual output, a brief exercise that underlines the many variables that determined the actual figures, whatever they were.

Stahl's very intelligent organization allows one to dip into this nearly encyclopedic work for material on a wide range of matters in economic, social, political and numismatic history. His command of secondary studies allows for a reliable (though tacit) synthesis of these, while his extensive archival research provides him both a critical stance and ample material for exploring his own interests.