Money, measures and credit

The Carolingian system and the Milanese mint

The monetary system of the medieval Ticino was the system of Milan, itself a local variant of the Carolingian order. Charlemagne's reforms at the end of the eighth century fixed the relation that governed European accounting for a thousand years: one pound (libra, lira) equalled twenty shillings (solidi, soldi), while one shilling equalled twelve pence (denarii, denari), so that a lira contained 240 denari.¹ Only the denaro was actually struck as a coin for several centuries. The lira and the soldo were units of account, used to express larger sums in contracts, tax registers and account books, while payments were made in denari counted out by the hundred or weighed in bulk.

Milan had one of the oldest and most productive mints of northern Italy. Twelfthcentury Milanese documents already mention two kinds of denari side by side: the denaro imperiale and the lighter denaro terzolo (terciolus), whose origin some scholars connect with Frederick Barbarossa's siege of Milan in 1158. Although its name suggests a third, the terzolo was reckoned at half the imperial denaro. The two coins gave rise to two parallel units of account, the lira imperiale of 240 imperial denari and the lira di terzoli of 240 terzoli, the former worth twice the latter. The terzolo long survived as a unit of account.² Contracts, statutes and fiscal registers in the Ticinese districts specify which lira they mean. A document that speaks of libras tertiolorum and one that speaks of libras imperialium are referring to sums that differ by a factor of two. A historian who confuses them will misread every price and every debt.

Grossi, gold and the testone

From the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries the Lombard mints began to strike heavier silver coins, the grossi, worth several denari each. In Milan the silver coins struck by the commune from the middle of the thirteenth century to the middle of the fourteenth were called ambrosini after the city's patron saint, whose image they bore. The small ambrosino was worth one soldo and the grosso one and a half soldi.³ Gold coinage followed the example of the Florentine florin (1252, dated 1253 in some reference works) and of the ducat struck at Venice by Doge Giovanni Dandolo in 1284, which became the international currencies of Italian trade. The Visconti struck gold coins of their own in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The short-lived Ambrosian Republic of 1447 to 1450 issued a gold ambrosino that proclaimed the city's freedom.⁴ Florins and ducats nevertheless remained the usual standards for large sums, for dowries of noble families and for payments between states, including the pensions and subsidies that Milan paid to the Confederate cantons in the later fifteenth century.

The most famous Milanese coin of the century was the testone, a large silver coin bearing the portrait of the duke, first struck under Galeazzo Maria Sforza in 1474.⁵ The testone was worth twenty soldi, which meant that for the first time the lira existed as a physical coin. Coins of this type were also struck in the name of Galeazzo Maria's son Gian Galeazzo Maria Sforza, including at the Genoese mint during the Sforza lordship over Genoa.⁶ The testone spread quickly across Italy and beyond. It was imitated by the Confederate cantons after 1500, when Uri, Schwyz and Nidwalden briefly struck coins at Bellinzona.⁷

Notes

1. DSS, art. "Lira", https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/it/articles/013670/ (Carolingian reform of 793/794: 1 lira = 20 soldi = 240 denari; the lira as a unit of account). ↩
2. Giuseppe Castellani, "Terzarolo", in Enciclopedia Italiana (Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1937), https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/terzarolo_(Enciclopedia-Italiana)/ (the denari tercioli in twelfth-century documents, the attribution to Barbarossa's siege of 1158, and the reckoning "alla metà della lira imperiale e non a un terzo come parrebbe indicare il nome"); Treccani, art. "Lira", https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/lira/ (the lira imperiale of 240 denari imperiali and the lira terzola of 240 denari terzaroli). ↩
3. Treccani, art. "Ambrosino", https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/ambrosino/ ("Moneta del comune di Milano coniata dalla metà del 13° sec. alla metà del 14°", with the silver denominations); Treccani, Vocabolario , "ambrosino", https://www.treccani.it/vocabolario/ambrosino/ ("con l'effigie di sant'Ambrogio, patrono della città"). For the wider history see Carlo M. Cipolla, Le avventure della lira (Milano 1958; later editions Bologna: Il Mulino). ↩
4. Treccani, art. "Fiorino", https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/fiorino/ (gold florin of 3.54 g, dated there to 1253); Treccani, Vocabolario, "ducato", https://www.treccani.it/vocabolario/ducato2/ ("la moneta d'oro coniata dal doge Giovanni Dandolo nel 1284"); Treccani, art. "Ambrosino" (above) ("la Repubblica ambrosiana coniò un a. d'oro"). See also Cipolla (above). ↩
5. Treccani, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, art. "Galeazzo Maria Sforza" (above), on the testone of the monetary reform of 1474; Treccani, Enciclopedia Italiana, art. "Testone", https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/testone_(Enciclopedia-Italiana)/, on its spread to the Italian mints. ↩
6. Lamoneta, Numismatica italiana, catalogue entry "Repubblica di Genova - Dogi a vita e Signorie -Gian Galeazzo Maria Sforza Testone da 20 soldi", https://numismatica-italiana.lamoneta.it/moneta/W-GEV37/10 (title only consulted, 27 September 2026). ↩
7. Source as cited in the printed edition. ↩

For general information only. This article does not constitute legal or tax advice, does not replace advice on an individual case and creates no lawyer-client relationship. It reflects the legal position as of October 2026.