That means, in terms of its raw metal value, one nomisma would be worth about $217.32 in today’s money.ĪBOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a gold nomisma of Emperor Anastasios I Dikoros (ruled 491 – 518 AD) According to this website, the current price for one gram of gold in the United States is $49.39. The preeminent gold coin in medieval Europe was the Byzantine nomisma, which, when it was first introduced by Constantine I (ruled 306 – 337 AD), was a round coin made of almost pure gold with a mass of 4.4 grams and a diameter of between twenty-two and twenty-three millimeters. Furthermore, as we shall see in a moment, because people’s lives in the Middle Ages were so different from our lives today, it is hard to make comparisons in terms of purchasing power. It is extremely difficult to calculate how much a certain amount of money in the past would be worth in contemporary terms because people in the past obviously didn’t keep track of how much their money was worth in terms of contemporary dollars or pounds or euros. The raw metal value of a Byzantine nomisma in modern United States dollars In fact, most ordinary people during the Middle Ages probably rarely even saw gold coins. Daily commerce in Europe during the Middle Ages was conducted not with gold coins, but rather with silver and bronze coins. People in Europe during the Middle Ages really did use gold coins, but gold coins were much rarer and much more valuable than they are often portrayed in modern fantasy games and novels. Trading in “gold pieces” is also a common trope in many fantasy novels. In Dungeons & Dragons, for instance, players collect generic “gold coins” and use these coins to buy just about everything, including supplies for their quests and drinks at the local tavern. In modern fantasy games set in worlds based loosely on medieval Europe, gold coins are portrayed as the normal medium of everyday exchange.
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