History of Coins in Romania - Middle Ages

Middle Ages

Further information: Romania in the Middle Ages

Soon after their founding, the principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia each minted their own silver coins. Wallachia minted their first coins during the rule of Vlaicu Vodă (1364–1377) and Moldavia during the rule of Petru I (1375–1391).

In Moldavia, coins used the size and weight of the Grosh, while Wallachia minted both Grosh and Hungarian Denarii. In both countries, early coins had alternately Latin and Cyrillic inscriptions. Early Wallachian coins bear the coat of arms of the Basarab dynasty and have written with Latin script Transalpina (an alternative name of Wallachia).

The minting of silver coins being known as aspri, a name derived from Greek áspron, increased in the first half of the 15th century, but then ceased completely in Wallachia during the rule of Vladislav II (1447–1456) and in Moldavia during the rule of Ştefăniţă Vodă (1517–1527). Apparently, a major reason in this was the lack of a steady supply of silver (neither Wallachia nor Moldavia have their own silver resources), as well as increasing trade, which brought coins that replaced the local ones. The only city that continued to mint coins was Cetatea Albă, in Moldavia.

In contracts and other documents, the numbers written were not actual numbers of the coins, but their value in a standard system: for example, the standard often used the gold system, but the payments were done with the local silver coins.

The earliest standard in Wallachia was the perper, derived from the Byzantine gold coin hipérpyron, which was replaced in the 15th century Italian system of the ducat and the florin.

In Moldavia, the Lithuanian Grosh was replaced with the Zlot Tătăresc (Tatar Zlot), which, despite its name, was not minted by the Tatars, but it was a coin minted in the Genoese colony of Caffa.

Many different coins circulated in the Romanian lands over the course of centuries: Turkish thalers, Hungarian and Austrian guilders (known in Romania as galbeni), zloti, Russian carboave, Venerian zecchini, over 100 currencies in all.

Toward the end of the 16th century, a new coin began to be used in Wallachia and Moldavia, as well as in other parts of the Ottoman Empire: the Dutch Thaler. These coins bear a lion on them (hence Dutch leeuwendaalder, German löwenthaler) and the name of the coin became known as leu (plural lei), which is still the name of the Romanian and Moldovan currencies. The Ottomans minted coins imitating the Dutch silver Thalers and these coins were known as piaştri, Piastre.