The movements of the precious metals in Germany--which, as far as the ratio of the two metals is concerned, may be held to include the Netherlands up to 1552, when Flanders withdrew from the monetary system of the Holy Roman Empire--is a record of exactly the same process of natural and gradual appreciation of the _metal_ (i.e. depreciation of the weight and fineness of the _coin_) as in Spain, France, and England. In the accompanying tables the movement of silver is illustrated by means of the groschen, and that of gold by the Rhenish gulden. These coins, it need hardly be said, were not unit coins, nor sole prevailing. They are chosen from the bewildering variety with which the numerous independent Mints of Germany have succeeded in perplexing posterity, as being of relatively greater repute and wider acceptance, and because it is a simply impossible task to combine all the denominations of these coins, in order to deduce an average.
Up to 1375 the German gold coin was minted in close imitation of the Florentine florin. The weight was 53 grs., as was that of the Florentine piece; and the lily and St. John, the guardian saint of Florence, were both employed in the two coins, the German piece being indeed issued at first under the denomination, _Florin d'or_.
From the above-named date, however, and onwards, each succeeding and various power altered type, weight, or alloy, with more or less arbitrariness, but always to the increasing of the confusion of the system as a whole. And it was to remedy this confusion, or to reduce it somewhat, that the monetary union of the four electoral princes of the Rhine was established (8th June 1386), under the lead of the three towns, Frankfort, Speyer, and Worms; under which the four princes, Frederick, Archbishop of Cologne, Carl, Archbishop of Treves, Adolf, Archbishop of Mainz, and Rupert, Count Palatine of the Rhine, agreed upon a common minting of gold gulden. According to the treaty, 66 such gulden were to be minted from the Cologne mark of gold, each of the alloy of 22 carats 6 grs. gold, and 1 carat 6 grs. silver. In 1402 this coinage was confirmed at Mainz by the Mint edict of Rupert II.[4]
Seven years later, 1409, the three spiritual electors, Frederick, Archbishop of Cologne, John, Archbishop of Mainz, and Werner, Archbishop of Treves, made a new and slightly different treaty, for the purpose of again reducing the alloy of the gulden from 22-1/2 to 22 carats.