Sealed Coin Purses

Sealed Coin Purses

During the Roman and Byzantine Empires sealed purses of coins circulated as money in larger transactions. Early coinage was primitive, and gold coins changing hands needed to be first weighed and counted—a time-consuming process for large monetary transactions. Sealed purses contained a quantity of metallic coinage, mainly gold and silver, already counted and weighed, thus expediting the process of handling large transactions.

Evidence of sealed purses of coins first appears in legal documents during the third century a.d. The precipitous debasement in the second half of the third century may have accelerated the practice of substituting sealed purses for loose coins. On the one hand, debasement encouraged hoarding of full-bodied coins, and sealed purses were a convenient form for holding large quantities of coins. On the other hand, debasement substantially increased the number of debased coins involved in individual transactions, adding a further incentive to bunch coins in purses. Debased coins as well as full-bodied coins were put in sealed purses. The number of coins in these purses ranged from 20 up to 2,000. At first, officials of the state reserved the right to count, weigh, and seal up purses of coins. Later, private bankers enjoyed the privilege of sealing up purses of coins with an official inscription stating the number and weight of the enclosed coins.

Sealed purses of money also protected coins from the natural loss of wear and tear. Moneychangers often applied a discount to a quantity of coins as an allowance for loss of weight from such wear, and sealing money in purses, with an official inscription vouching for the weight of the coins, was a means of avoiding payment of such a discount.

The process of sealing purses of coins lent itself to a certain amount of corruption, because the main objective was to enable the exchange of sealed purses of money without having to recount the contents of the sealed purses at each transaction. Individuals engaged in sealing purses would skim off a bit of the precious metal for themselves before sealing the purse. Edict XI of Justinian, dated 559, addressed various abuses attributable to those engaged in sealing purses of money. The edict required that gold coins sealed in Egypt be reckoned on the same measures current in Constantinople. The edict mentioned that some individuals were sealing purses marked with higher sums than were actually contained in the purse. The edict required that the amount inscribed on the purse be no more than the true weight of the gold sealed up, and that anyone marking a sum greater than the enclosed gold faced the death penalty. Government officials who were a knowing party to the corrupt sealing of purses also faced the death penalty.

Evidence of sealed purses exists for as late as the eleventh century. The use of sealed purses of coins became a boon to future archeologists in search of numerous specimens of coins from the same time period.