Chaucer's Merchants and the Foreign Exchange: An Introduction to Medieval Finance
- Author / Editor
- Cahn, Kenneth S.
Chaucer's Merchants and the Foreign Exchange: An Introduction to Medieval Finance
- Published
- Studies in the Age of Chaucer 2 (1980): 81-119.
- Description
- Demonstrates that the Merchant engages neither in usury nor in illegal speculation. Selling "sheeldes" (imaginary coins "of accounts" employed in Flanders) is simply a means of "borrowing" English sterling through foreign exchange. The Merchant is a borrower ("he was in dette"), not a lender. As such, the odds against his making a profit from the exchange were enormous.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Merchant and His Tale.