I recently finished a study of pre-modern weight metrology, and came to the
conclusion that the problem of Charlemagne’s monetary weight standards was
solved by Grierson in 1965 (although few people ever noticed this).  The
solution was neat and simple.  Charlemagne had a commodity pound of 16 Roman
ounces (c. 435g)  He made 256 pennies out of such a pound, retained 16 as
seigniorage-by-weight, and paid out 240 x 1.7g pennies as a monetary pound,
which thus weighed c. 408g.  In 1965 Grierson saw that a mathematically
parallel system was in place in medieval England.  Today we can see that
both very probably derived from a very similar system imposed by Abd’ al
Malik in Damascus in 700 AD.

However, if we turn to the recent accounts of monetary history given in
books by economists, we find accounts of Carolingian and subsequent monetary
philosophies which widely differ, and which seem almost entirely ahistorical.

The somewhat chartalist writers associated with Hudson and Wray promote the
views of A. Mitchell Innes:

“The fact is that the official values were purely arbitrary and had nothing
to do with the intrinsic value of the coins.”   

(‘Credit and State Theories of Money’  L. Randall Wray, 2004, p 386)

Meanwhile, concerning exactly the same series of coins, commodity money
theorists like Sargent and Velde present a supposedly official view that:

“coins of all denominations should be full-bodied, and rates of exchange of
coins of different denominations should reflect their relative metal contents.”

(‘The Big Problem of Small Change’ Thomas J. Sargent, François R. Velde,
2003, p. 5)

I find this situation troubling.  If biology were on the same footing as
monetary history, it seems we might find ourselves wandering into museum
galleries today where all the fossil skulls on display were Piltdown hoaxes.

Rob Tye