Monetae cudendae ratio

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Nicolaus Copernicus

"Monetae cudendae ratio" (also spelled "Monetæ cudendæ ratio"; English: "On the Minting of Coin" or "On the Striking of Coin"; sometimes, "Treatise on Money") is a paper on

King of Poland,[1][2] and presented to the Prussian Diet
.

History

Click on image to read the German version.

Copernicus' earliest draft of his essay in 1517 was entitled "De aestimatione monetae" ("On the Value of Coin"). He revised his original notes, while at

defended against the Teutonic Knights), as "Tractatus de monetis" ("Treatise on Coin") and "Modus cudendi monetam" ("The Way to Strike Coin"). He made these the basis of a report which he presented to the Prussian Diet at Grudziądz (Graudenz) in 1522; Copernicus' friend Tiedemann Giese accompanied him on the trip to Graudenz.[3] For the 1528 Prussian Diet
, Copernicus wrote an expanded version of this paper, "Monetae cudendae ratio", setting forth a general theory of money.

In the paper, Copernicus postulated the principle that "bad money drives out good",

Gresham's Law after a later describer, Sir Thomas Gresham. This phenomenon had been noted earlier by Nicole Oresme, but Copernicus rediscovered it independently. Gresham's Law is still known in Poland and Central and Eastern Europe as the Copernicus-Gresham Law.[5]

In the same work, Copernicus also formulated an early version of the

classical economists of the 18th and 19th centuries, he focused on the connection between increased money supply and inflation.[6]

"Monetae cudendae ratio" also draws a distinction between the

commodities, anticipating by some 250 years the use of these concepts by Adam Smith—although it, too, had antecedents in earlier writers, including Aristotle
.

Copernicus' essay was republished in 1816 in the Polish capital, Warsaw, as Dissertatio de optima monetae cudendae ratione (Dissertation on the Optimal Minting of Coin), few copies of which survive.[7]

See also

References

  1. ^ Macleod, Henry Dunning (1896). The History of Economics. Bliss, Sands and Company. p. 451. Copernicus Moneta.
  2. ^
    ISBN 9780822309734
    .
  3. ^ Armitage, Angus (1963). "24" [The Diseases of Money]. The World of Copernicus. New American Library. pp. 89–91.
  4. ISBN 9780262263306
    .
  5. ^ Numismatic Literature. American Numismatic Society. 1972. p. 83.
  6. ISSN 0013-0117
    .
  7. ^ The American Historical Review. American Historical Association. 1926.

Journal

  • GIGLIOTTI, JOSEPH (2009). "The Role of High Inflation in the Decline of Sixteenth Century Poland-Lithuania's Economy". The Polish Review. 54 (1): 61–76.
    JSTOR 25779788
    .

External links

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