Monetae cudendae ratio

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Monetae cudendae ratio (also spelled Monetæ cudendæ ratio) is a treatise on money by Nicolaus Copernicus written in 1526, published in 1816, of which remaining copies are rare.^[1]

Copernicus was aware of the practice of exchanging bad coins for good and melting down the latter or sending them abroad. This tendency of bad money to drive good money out of circulation came to be called Gresham's Law after a later discoverer, Sir Thomas Gresham, who was born in 1519. Copernicus seems to have drawn up some notes on these lines while he was at Olsztyn (Allenstein) in 1519. He made them the basis of a report on the matter written in German,^[2] which was used as lingua franca among the representatives of multi-ethnic cities of the trading association Hanseatic League that belonged to separate states. He presented the report to the Prussian Diet held in 1522 at Grudziądz (Graudenz); Copernicus's friend Tiedemann Giese accompanied him on this trip.^[3] Copernicus wrote an enlarged version of his treatise in Latin, Monetae cudendae ratio, setting forth a general theory of money, for the 1528 Prussian Diet.

[edit] References

^ The American Historical Review, [1]
^ Muncze wyrdtt genennett, geczeichennt goldtt, adir Sylber do mit die geldunge der kouffliche adir verkoufflichen dinge, geczahlet werden ... (reproduced in Nicolaus Copernicus Gesamtausgabe, Heribert Maria Nobis et al., [2]
^ Angus Armitage, The World of Copernicus, pp. 89-91 (Chapter 24: The Diseases of Money) [3]