Chapter IV: , VII (179)

_J. Timbs,
Clubs and Club Life in London,
pages 33-38._

MOIRA, Lord (Marquis of Hastings), The Indian administration of.

See INDIA: A. D. 1805-1816.

MOJOS, MOXOS, The.

See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: ANDESIANS;
also, BOLIVIA: ABORIGINAL INHABITANTS.

MÖKERN, Battle of (1813).

See GERMANY: A. D. 1812-1813.

MOLAI, Jacques de, and the fall of the Templars.

See TEMPLARS: A. D. 1307-1314;
and FRANCE: A. D. 1285-1314.

MOLASSES ACT, The.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1763-1764.

MOLDAVIA. MOLDO-WALLACHIA.

See BALKAN AND DANUBIAN STATES.

MOLEMES, The Abbey of.

See CISTERCIAN ORDER.

MOLINISTS, The.

See MYSTICISM.

MOLINO DEL REY, Battle of.

See MEXICO: A. D. 1847 (MARCH-SEPTEMBER).

MOLINOS DEL REY, Battle of (1808).

See SPAIN: A. D. 1808-1809 (DECEMBER-MARCH).

MOLLWITZ, Battle of (1741).

See AUSTRIA: A. D. 1740-1741.

MOLOSSIANS, The.

See HELLAS;
and EPIRUS.

MOLTKE'S CAMPAIGNS.

See TURKS: A. D. 1831-1840;
GERMANY: A. D. 1866;
FRANCE: A. D. 1870, and 1870-1871.

MOLUCCAS: Secured by Spain (1524).

See AMERICA: A. D. 1519-1524.

MONA.

The ancient name of the island of Anglesea. It was the final
seat of the Druidical religion in Britain. Taken by the Romans
under Suetonius, A. D. 61, the priests were slain, the sacred
groves destroyed and Druidism practically exterminated.

_C. Merivale,
History of the Romans,
chapter 51._

See MONAPIA.

MONACANS, The.

See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: POWHATAN CONFEDERACY,
and IROQUOIS TRIBES OF THE SOUTH.

MONAPIA.

"The name of Monapia first occurs in Pliny, and must be
unquestionably identified with the Isle of Man; though the
name of the latter would dispose us at first to consider it as
representing Mona. But the Mona of the Romans, which was
attacked by Suetonius Paulinus and Agricola, was certainly
Anglesea."

_E. H. Bunbury,
History of Ancient Geography.,
chapter 24, section 2, foot-note._

MONASTERY. MONASTICISM. CONVENT. ABBEY. PRIORY.

"Monasticism was not the product of Christianity; it was the
inheritance of the Church, not its invention; not the
offspring, but the adopted child. The old antagonism between
mind and matter, flesh and spirit, self and the world has
asserted itself in all ages, especially among the nations of
the East. The Essenes, the Therapeutæ, and other Oriental
mystics, were as truly the precursors of Christian asceticism
in the desert or in the cloister, as Elijah and St. John the
Baptist. The Neoplatonism of Alexandria, extolling the
passionless man above him who regulates his passions,
sanctioned and systematized this craving after a life of utter
abstraction from external things, this abhorrence of all
contact with what is material as a defilement. Doubtless the
cherished remembrance of the martyrs and confessors, who in
the preceding centuries of the Christian era had triumphed
over many a sanguinary persecution, gave a fresh impulse in
the fourth century to this propensity to asceticism,
stimulating the devout to vie with their forefathers in the
faith by their voluntary endurance of self-inflicted
austerities. … The terms monastery, originally the cell or
eave of a solitary, laura, an irregular cluster of cells, and
cœnobium, an association of monks, few or many, under one roof
and under one control, mark the three earliest stages in the
development of monasticism.
{2196}
In Syria and Palestine each monk originally had a separate
cell; in Lower Egypt two were together in one cell, whence the
term 'syncellita,' or sharer of the cell, came to express this
sort of comradeship; in the Thebaid, under Pachomius of
Tabenna, each cell contained three monks. At a later period
the monks arrogated to themselves by general consent the title
of 'the religious,' and admission into a monastery was termed
'conversion' to God. … The history of monasticism, like the
history of states and institutions in general, divides itself
broadly into three great periods, of growth, of glory, and of
decay. … From the beginning of the fourth century to the
close of the fifth, from Antony the hermit to Benedict of
Monte Casino, is the age of undisciplined impulse of
enthusiasm not as yet regulated by experience. … Everything
is on a scale of illogical exaggeration, is wanting in
balance, in proportion, in symmetry. Because purity,
unworldliness, charity, are virtues, therefore a woman is to
be regarded as a venomous reptile, gold as a worthless pebble;
the deadliest foe and the dearest friend are to be esteemed
just alike. Because it is right to be humble, therefore the
monk cuts off hand, ear, or tongue, to avoid being made
bishop, and feigns idiocy, in order not to be accounted wise.
Because it is well to teach people to be patient, therefore a
sick monk never speaks a kind word for years to the brother
monk who nursed him. Because it is right to keep the lips from
idle words, therefore a monk holds a large stone in his mouth
for three years. Every precept is to be taken literally, and
obeyed unreasoningly. Therefore monks who have been plundered
by a robber run after him to give him a something which has
escaped his notice. Self-denial is enjoined in the gospel.
Therefore the austerities of asceticism are to be simply
endless. One ascetic makes his dwelling in a hollow tree,
another in a cave, another in a tomb, another on the top of a
pillar, another has so lost the very appearance of a man, that
he is shot at by shepherds, who mistake him for a wolf. The
natural instincts, instead of being trained and cultivated,
are to be killed outright, in this abhorrence of things
material. … The period which follows, from the first
Benedict to Charlemagne, exhibits monasticism in a more mature
stage of activity. The social intercourse of the monastery,
duly harmonized by a traditional routine, with its
subordination of rank and offices, its division of duties, its
mutual dependence of all on each other, and on their head,
civilized the monastic life; and, as the monk himself became
subject to the refining influences of civilization, he went
forth into the world to civilize others. … Had it not been
for monks and monasteries, the barbarian deluge might have
swept away utterly the traces of Roman civilization. The
Benedictine monk was the pioneer of civilization and
Christianity in England, Germany, Poland, Bohemia, Sweden,
Denmark. The schools attached to the Lerinensian monasteries
were the precursors of the Benedictine seminaries in France
and of the professional chairs filled by learned Benedictines
in the universities of mediæval Christendom. With the
incessant din of arms around him, it was the monk in his
cloister, even in regions beyond the immediate sphere of
Benedict's legislation, even in the remote fastnesses, for
instance of Mount Athos, who, by preserving and transcribing
ancient manuscripts, both Christian and pagan, as well as by
recording his observations of contemporaneous events, was
handing down the torch of knowledge unquenched to future
generations, and hoarding up stores of erudition for the
researches of a more enlightened age. The first musicians,
painters, farmers, statesmen, in Europe, after the downfall of
Imperial Rome under the onslaught of the barbarians, were
monks."

_I. Gregory Smith,
Christian Monasticism,
introduction._

"The monastic stream, which had been born in the deserts of
Egypt, divided itself into two great arms. The one spread in
the East, at first inundated everything, then concentrated and
lost itself there. The other escaped into the West, and spread
itself by a thousand channels over an entire world which had
to be covered and fertilised." Athanasius, who was driven
twice by persecution to take refuge among the hermits in the
Thebaid, Egypt, and who was three times exiled by an imperial
order to the West, "became thus the natural link between the
Fathers of the desert and those vast regions which their
successors were to conquer and transform. … It was in 340
that he came for the first time to Rome, in order to escape
the violence of the Arians, and invoke the protection of Pope
Julius. … He spread in Rome the first report of the life led
by the monks in the Thebaid, of the marvellous exploits of
Anthony, who was still alive, of the immense foundations which
Pacome was at that time forming upon the banks of the higher
Nile. He had brought with him two of the most austere of these
monks. … The narratives of Athanasius … roused the hearts
and imaginations of the Romans, and especially of the Roman
women. The name of monk, to which popular prejudice seems
already to have attached a kind of ignominy, became
immediately an honoured and envied title. The impression
produced at first by the exhortations of the illustrious
exile, was extended and strengthened during the two other
visits which he made to the Eternal City. Some time
afterwards, on the death of St. Anthony, Athanasius, at the
request of his disciples, wrote the life of the patriarch of
the Thebaid; and this biography, circulating through all the
West, immediately acquired there the popularity of a legend,
and the authority of a confession of faith. … Under this
narrative form, says St. Gregory of Nazianzus, he promulgated
the laws of monastic life. The town and environs of Rome were
soon full of monasteries, rapidly occupied by men
distinguished alike by birth, fortune and knowledge, who lived
there in charity, sanctity, and freedom. From Rome the new
institution, already distinguished by the name of religion, or
religious life, par excellence, extended itself over all
Italy. It was planted at the foot of the Alps by the influence
of a great bishop, Eusebius of Vercelli. … From the
continent the new institution rapidly gained the isles of the
Mediterranean, and even the rugged rocks of the Gargon and of
Capraja, where the monks, voluntarily exiled from the world,
went to take the place of the criminals and political victims
whom the emperors had been accustomed to banish thither. …
Most of the great leaders of the cenobitical institution had,
since St. Pacome, made out, under the name of Rule,
instructions and constitutions for the use of their immediate
disciples; but none of these works had acquired an extensive
or lasting sway. In the East, it is true, the rule of St.
Basil had prevailed in a multitude of monasteries, yet
notwithstanding Cassianus, in visiting Egypt, Palestine, and
Mesopotamia, found there almost as many different rules as
there were monasteries.
{2197}
In the West the diversity was still more strange. Each man
made for himself his own rule and discipline, taking his
authority from the writings or example of the Eastern Fathers.
The Gauls especially exclaimed against the extreme rigour of
the fasts and abstinences, which might be suitable under a
fervid sky like that of Egypt or Syria, but which could not be
endured by what they already called Gallican weakness; and
even in the initial fervour of the monasteries of the Jura,
they had succeeded in imposing a necessary medium upon their
chiefs. Here it was the changing will of an abbot; there a
written rule; elsewhere, the traditions of the elders, which
determined the order of conventual life. In some houses
various rules were practised at the same time, according to
the inclination of the inhabitants of each cell, and were
changed according to the times and places. They passed thus
from excessive austerity to laxness, and conversely, according
to the liking of each. Uncertainty and instability were
everywhere. … A general arrangement was precisely what was
most wanting in monastic life. There were an immense number of
monks; there had been among them saints and illustrious men;
but to speak truly, the monastic order had still no existence.
Even where the rule of St. Basil had acquired the necessary
degree of establishment and authority—that is to say, in a
considerable portion of the East—the gift of fertility was
denied to it. … In the West also, towards the end of the
fifth century, the cenobitical institution seemed to have
fallen into the torpor and sterility of the East. After St.
Jerome, who died in 420, and St. Augustine, who died in 430,
after the Fathers of Lerins, whose splendour paled towards
450, there was a kind of eclipse. … Except in Ireland and
Gaul, where, in most of the provinces, some new foundations
rose, a general interruption was observable in the extension
of the institution. … If this eclipse had lasted, the
history of the monks of the West would only have been, like
that of the Eastern monks, a sublime but brief passage in the
annals of the Church, instead of being their longest and
best-filled page. This was not to be: but to keep the promises
which the monastic order had made to the Church and to the
new-born Christendom, it needed, at the beginning of the sixth
century, a new and energetic impulse, such as would
concentrate and discipline so many scattered, irregular, and
intermittent forces; a uniform and universally accepted rule;
a legislator inspired by the fertile and glorious past, to
establish and govern the future. God provided for that
necessity by sending St. Benedict into the world."

_Count de Montalembert,
The Monks of the West,
volume 1, pages 381-387 and 512-515._

"The very word monastery is a misnomer: the word is a Greek
word, and means the dwelling-place of a solitary person,
living in seclusion. … In the 13th century … a monastery
meant what we now understand it to mean—viz., the abode of a
society of men or women who lived together in common—who were
supposed to partake of common meals; to sleep together in one
common dormitory; to attend certain services together in their
common church; to transact certain business or pursue certain
employments in the sight and hearing of each other in the
common cloister; and, when the end came, to be laid side by
side in the common graveyard, where in theory none but members
of the order could find a resting-place for their bones. When
I say 'societies of men and women' I am again reminded that
the other term, 'convent,' has somehow got to be used commonly
in a mistaken sense. People use the word as if it signified a
religious house tenanted exclusively by women. The truth is
that a convent is nothing more than a Latin name for an
association of persons who have come together with a view to
live for a common object and to submit to certain rules in the
ordering of their daily lives. The monastery was the common
dwelling-place; the convent was the society of persons
inhabiting it; and the ordinary formula used when a body of
monks or nuns execute any corporate act—such as buying or
selling land—by any legal instrument is, 'The Prior and
Convent of the Monastery of the Holy Trinity at Norwich;' 'the
Abbot and Convent of the Monastery of St. Peter's,
Westminster;' 'the Abbess and Convent of the Monastery of St.
Mary and St. Bernard at Lacock,' and so on. … A monastery in
theory then was, as it was called, a Religious House. It was
supposed to be the home of people whose lives were passed in
the worship of God, and in taking care of their own souls, and
making themselves fit for a better world than this hereafter.
… The church of a monastery was the heart of the place. It
was not that the church was built for the monastery, but the
monastery existed for the church. … Almost as essential to
the idea of a monastery as the church was the cloister or
great quadrangle, inclosed on all sides by the high walls of
the monastic buildings. … All round this quadrangle ran a
covered arcade, whose roof, leaning against the high walls,
was supported on the inner side by an open trellis work in
stone—often exhibiting great beauty of design and
workmanship—through which light and air was admitted into
the arcade. … The cloister was really the living place of
the monks. Here they pursued their daily avocations, here they
taught their school. … 'But surely a monk always lived in a
cell, didn't he?' The sooner we get rid of that delusion the
better. Be it understood that until Henry II. founded the
Carthusian Abbey of Witham, in 1178, there was no such thing
known in England as a monk's cell, as we understand the term.
It was a peculiarity of the Carthusian order, and when it was
first introduced it was regarded as a startling novelty for
any privacy or anything approaching solitude to be tolerated
in a monastery. The Carthusian system never found much favour
in England. … At the time of the Norman Conquest it may be
said that all English monks were professedly under one and the
same Rule—the famous Benedictine Rule. The Rule of a
monastery was the constitution or code of laws, which
regulated the discipline of the house, and the Rule of St.
Benedict dates back as far as the 6th century, though it was
not introduced into England for more than 100 years after it
had been adopted elsewhere. … About 150 years before the
Conquest, a great reformation had been attempted of the French
monasteries, … the reformers breaking away from the old
Benedictines and subjecting themselves to a new and improved
Rule.
{2198}
These first reformers were called Cluniac monks, from the
great Abbey of Clugni, in Burgundy, in which the new order of
things had begun. The first English house of reformed or
Cluniac monks was founded at Lewes, in Sussex, 11 years after
the Conquest. … The constitution of every convent, great or
small, was monarchical. The head of the house was almost an
absolute sovereign, and was called the Abbot. His dominions
often extended, even in England, over a very wide tract of
country, and sometimes over several minor monasteries which
were called Cells. … The heads of these cells or subject
houses were called Priors. An Abbey was a monastery which was
independent. A priory was a monastery which in theory or in
fact was subject to an abbey. All the Cluniac monasteries in
England were thus said to be alien priories, because they were
mere cells of the great Abbey of Clugni in France, to which
each priory paid heavy tribute."

_A. Jessopp,
The Coming of the Friars,
chapter 3._

ALSO IN:
_E. L. Cutts,
Scenes and Characters of the Middle Ages,
chapter 6._

_J. Bingham,
Antiquity of the Christ. Ch.,
book 7, chapter 3, sections 11-14._

_I. G. Smith,
Christian Monasticism, 4-9th Centuries._

See, also,
CŒNOBIUM;
LAURAS;
MENDICANT ORDERS;
BENEDICTINE;
CISTERCIAN;
CARMELITE,
and AUSTIN CANONS.

MONASTERIES, The English, Suppression of.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1535-1539.

MONASTIC LIBRARIES.

See LIBRARIES, MEDIÆVAL.

MONASTIC ORDERS.

See AUSTIN CANONS;
BENEDICTINE ORDERS;
CAPUCHINS;
CARMELITE FRIARS;
CARTHUSIAN;
CISTERCIAN;
CLAIRVAUX;
CLUGNY;
MENDICANT ORDERS;
RECOLLECTS;
SERVITES;
THEATINES;
TRAPPISTS.

MONÇON, MONZON, Treaty of (1626).

See FRANCE: A. D. 1624-1626.

MONCONTOUR, Battle of (1569).

See FRANCE: A. D. 1563-1570.

----------MONEY AND BANKING: Start--------

MONEY AND BANKING:
Nature and Origin of Money.

"When the division of labour has been once thoroughly
established, it is but a very small part of a man's wants
which the produce of his own labour can supply. He supplies
the far greater part of them by exchanging that surplus part
of the produce of his own labour, which is over and above his
own consumption, for such parts of the produce of other men's
labour us he has occasion for. Every man thus lives by
exchanging, or becomes in some measure a merchant, and the
society itself grows to be what is properly a commercial
society. But when the division of labour first began to take
place, this power of exchanging must frequently have been very
much clogged and embarrassed in its operations. One man, we
shall suppose, has more of a certain commodity than he himself
has occasion for, while another has less. The former
consequently would be glad to dispose of, and the latter to
purchase, a part of this superfluity. But if this latter
should chance to have nothing that the former stands in need
of, no exchange can be made between them. The butcher has more
meat in his shop than he himself can consume, and the brewer
and the baker would each of them be willing to purchase a part
of it. But they have nothing to offer in exchange, except the
different productions of their respective trades, and the
butcher is already provided with all the bread and beer which
he has immediate occasion for. No exchange can, in this case,
be made between them. … In order to avoid the inconveniency
of such situations, every prudent man in every period of
society, after the first establishment of the division of
labour, must naturally have endeavoured to manage his affairs
in such a manner, as to have at all times by him, besides the
peculiar produce of his own industry, a certain quantity of
some one commodity or other, such as he imagined few people
would be likely to refuse in exchange for the produce of their
industry. Many different commodities, it is probable, were
successively both thought of and employed for this purpose. In
the rude ages of society, cattle are said to have been the
common instrument of commerce; and, though they must have been
a most inconvenient one, yet in old times we find things were
frequently valued according to the number of cattle which had
been given in exchange for them. The armour of Diomede, says
Homer, cost only nine oxen; but that of Glaucus cost an
hundred oxen. Salt is said to be the common instrument of
commerce and exchange in Abyssinia; a species of shells in
some parts of the coasts of India; dried cod at Newfoundland;
tobacco in Virginia; sugar in some of our West India colonies;
hides or dressed leather in some other countries; and there is
at this day [1775] a village in Scotland where it is not
uncommon, I am told, for a workman to carry nails instead of
money to the baker's shop or the alehouse. In all countries,
however, men seem at last to have been determined by
irresistible reasons to give the preference, for this
employment, to metals above every other commodity."

_Adam Smith,
Wealth of Nations,
chapter 4, book 1 (volume 1)._

"There is … no machine which has saved as much labor as
money. … The invention of money has been rightly compared to
the invention of writing with letters. We may, however, call
the introduction of money as the universal medium of exchange
… one of the greatest and most beneficent of advances ever
made by the race. … Very different kinds of commodities
have, according to circumstances, been used as money; but
uniformly only such as possess a universally recognized
economic value. On the whole, people in a low stage of
civilization are wont to employ, mainly, only ordinary
commodities, such as are calculated to satisfy a vulgar and
urgent want, as an instrument of exchange. As they advance in
civilization, they, at each step, choose a more and more
costly object, for this purpose, and one which ministers to
the more elevated wants. Races of hunters, at least in
non-tropical countries, usually use skins as money; that is
the almost exclusive product of their labor, one which can be
preserved for a long period of time, which constitutes their
principal article of clothing and their principal export in
the more highly developed regions. Nomadic races and the lower
agricultural races, pass, by a natural gradation, to the use of
cattle as money; which supposes rich pasturages at the
disposal of all.
{2199}
If it were otherwise, there would be a great many to whom
payments of this kind had been made, who would not know what
to do with the cattle given them, on account of the charges
for their maintenance. … That metals were used for the
purpose of money much later than the commodities above
mentioned, and the precious metals in turn later than the
non-precious metals, cannot by any means be shown to be
universally true. Rather is gold in some countries to be
obtained by the exercise of so little skill, and both gold and
silver satisfy a want so live and general, and one so early
felt, that they are to be met with as an instrument of
exchange in very early times. In the case of isolated races,
much depends on the nature of the metals with which the
geologic constitution of the country has furnished them. In
general, however, the above law is found to prevail here. The
higher the development of a people becomes, the more frequent
is the occurrence of large payments; and to effect these, the
more costly a metal is, the better, of course, it is adapted
to effect such payments. Besides, only rich nations are able
to possess the costly metals in a quantity absolutely great.
Among the Jews, gold as money dates only from the time of
David. King Pheidon, of Argos, it is said, introduced silver
money into Greece, about the middle of the eighth century
before Christ. Gold came into use at a much later period. The
Romans struck silver money, for the first time, in 209 before
Christ, and, in 207, the first gold coins. Among modern
nations, Venice (1285) and Florence seem to have been the
first to have coined gold in any quantity."

_W. Roscher,
Principles of Political Economy,
book 2, chapter 3, sections 117-119 (volume 1)._

MONEY AND BANKING:
Ancient Egypt and Babylonia.

"Money seems to us now so obvious a convenience, and so much a
necessity of commerce, that it appears almost inconceivable
that a people who created the Sphinx and the Pyramids, the
temples of Ipsamboul and Karnac, should have been entirely
ignorant of coins. Yet it appears from the statements of
Herodotus, and the evidence of the monuments themselves, that
this was really the case. As regards the commercial and
banking systems of ancient Egypt, we are almost entirely
without information. Their standard of value seems to have
been the 'outen' or 'ten' of copper (94-96 grammes), which
circulated like the æs rude of the Romans by weight, and in
the form of bricks, being measured by the balance. It was
obtained from the mines of Mount Sinai, which were worked as
early as the fourth dynasty. Gold and silver appear to have
been also used, though less frequently. Like copper, they were
sometimes in the form of bricks, but generally in rings,
resembling the ring money of the ancient Celts, which is said
to have been employed in Ireland down to the 12th century, and
still holds its own in the interior of Africa. This
approximated very nearly to the possession of money, but it
wanted what the Roman lawyers called 'the law' and 'the form.'
Neither the weight nor the pureness was guaranteed by any
public authority. Such a state of things seems to us very
inconvenient, but after all It is not very different from that
which prevails in China even at the present day. The first
money struck in Egypt, and that for the use rather of the
Greek and Phœnician merchants than of the natives, was by the
Satrap Aryandes. In ancient Babylonia and Assyria, as in
Egypt, the precious metals, and especially silver, circulated
as uncoined ingots. They were readily taken indeed, but taken
by weight and verified by the balance like any other
merchandise. The excavations in Assyria and Babylon, which
have thrown so much light upon ancient history, have afforded
us some interesting information as to the commercial
arrangements of these countries, and we now possess a
considerable number of receipts, contracts, and other records
relating to loans of silver on personal securities at fixed
rates of interest; loans on landed or house property; sales of
land, in one case with a plan; sales of slaves, &c. These were
engraved on tablets of clay, which were then burnt. M.
Lenormant divides these most interesting documents into five
principal types:

1. Simple obligations.
2. Obligations with a penal clause in case of non-fulfilment.
One he gives which had 79 days to run.
3. Obligations with the guarantee of a third party.
4. Obligations payable to a third person.
5. Drafts drawn upon one place, payable in another. …

These Assyrian drafts were negotiable, but from the nature of
things could not pass by endorsement, because, when the clay
was once baked, nothing new could be added, and under these
circumstances the name of the payee was frequently omitted. It
seems to follow that they must have been regularly advised. It
is certainly remarkable that such instruments, and especially
letters of credit, should have preceded the use of coins. The
earliest banking firm of which we have any account is said to
be that of Egibi and Company, for our knowledge of whom we are
indebted to Mr. Boscawen, Mr. Pinches, and Mr. Hilton Price.
Several documents and records belonging to this family are in
the British Museum. They are on clay tablets, and were
discovered in an earthenware jar found in the neighbourhood of
Hillah, a few miles from Babylon. The house is said to have
acted as a sort of national bank of Babylon: the founder of
the house, Egibi, probably lived in the reign of Sennacherib,
about 700 B. C. This family has been traced during a century
and a half, and through five generations, down to the reign of
Darius. At the same time, the tablets hitherto translated
scarcely seem to me to prove that the firm acted as bankers,
in our sense of the word."

_Sir J. Lubbock,
The History of Money
(Nineteenth Century, November, 1879)._

"We have an enormous number of the documents of this firm,
beginning with Nebuchadnezzar the Great, and going on for some
five generations or so to the time of Darius. The tablets are
dated month after month and year after year, and thus they
afford us a sure method of fixing the chronology of that very
uncertain period of history. There is a small contract tablet
in the Museum at Zürich, discovered by Dr. Oppert, dated in
the 5th year of Pacorus, king of Persia, who reigned about the
time of Domitian. There is a little doubt about the reading of
one of the characters in the name, but if it is correct, it
will prove that the use of cuneiform did not fall into disuse
until after the Christian Era. … Some have tried to show
that Egibi is the Babylonian form of Jacob, which would lead
one to suspect the family to have been Jews; but this is not
certain at present."

_E. A. W. Budge,
Babylonian Life and History,
page 115._

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"It is in the development of trade, and especially of banking,
rather than in manufactures, that Babylonia and Chaldæa were
in advance of all the rest of the world. The most cautious
Assyriologists are the least confident in their renderings of
the numerous contract tablets from which, if they were
accurately interpreted, we should certainly be able to
reconstruct the laws and usages of the world's first great
market place. … The following account of Babylonian usages
is derived from the text of M. Revillout's work. … It is
confirmed in essentials by the later work of Meissner, who has
translated over one hundred deeds of the age of Hammurabi and
his successors. In Chaldæa every kind of commodity, from land
to money, circulated with a freedom that is unknown to modern
commerce; every value was negotiable, and there was no limit
to the number and variety of the agreements that might be
entered into. … Brick tablets did not lend themselves
readily to 'bookkeeping,' as no further entry could be made
after baking, while the first entry was not secure unless
baked at once. Each brick recorded one transaction, and was
kept by the party interested till the contract was completed,
and the destruction of the tablet was equivalent to a receipt.
Babylonian law allowed debts to be paid by assigning another
person's debt to the creditor; a debt was property, and could
be assigned without reference to the debtor, so that any
formal acknowledgment of indebtedness could be treated like a
negotiable bill—a fact which speaks volumes for the
commercial honesty of the people. A separate tablet was, of
course, required to record the original debt, or rather to say
that So-and-so's debt to Such-an-one has been by him sold to a
third party. Such third party could again either assign his
claim to a bank for a consideration, or if the last debtor had
a credit at the bank, the creditor could be paid out of that,
a sort of forecast of the modern clearing-house system. The
debtor who pays before the term agreed on has to receive a
formal surrender of the creditor's claim, or a transfer of it
to himself. The Babylonian regarded money and credit as
synonymous, and the phrase, 'Money of Such-an-one upon
So-and-so,' is used as equivalent to A's credit with B. … In
ancient Babylonia, as in modern China, the normal effect of a
loan was supposed to be beneficial to the borrower. In Egypt,
judging from the form of the deeds, the idea was that the
creditor asserted a claim upon the debtor, or the debtor
acknowledged a liability to the man from whom he had borrowed.
In Babylonia the personal question is scarcely considered; one
person owes money to another—that is the commonest thing in
the world—such loans are in a chronic state of being incurred
and paid off; one man's debt is another man's credit, and
credit being the soul of commerce, the loan is considered
rather as a part of the floating negotiable capital of the
country than as a burden on the shoulders of one particular
debtor."

_E. J. Simcox,
Primitive Civilizations,
volume 1, pages 320-322._

MONEY AND BANKING:
China.

"Not only did the Chinese possess coins at a very early
period, but they were also the inventors of bank notes. Some
writers regard bank notes as having originated about 119 B.
C., in the reign of the Emperor Ou-ti. At this time the Court
was in want of money, and to raise it Klaproth tells us that
the prime minister hit upon the following device. When any
princess or courtiers entered the imperial presence, it was
customary to cover the face with a piece of skin. It was first
decreed then, that for this purpose the skin of certain white
deer kept in one of the royal parks should alone be permitted,
and then these pieces of skin were sold for a high price. But
although they appear to have passed from one noble to another,
they do not seem ever to have entered into general
circulation. It was therefore very different from the Russian
skin money. In this case the notes were 'used instead of the
skins from which they were cut, the skins themselves being too
bulky and heavy to be constantly carried backward and forward.
Only a little piece was cut off to figure as a token of
possession of the whole skin. The ownership was proved when
the piece fitted in the hole.' True bank notes are said to
have been invented about 800 A. D., in the reign of
Hiantsoung, of the dynasty of Thang, and were called
'feytsien,' or flying money. It is curious, however, though
not surprising, to find that the temptation to over-issue led
to the same results in China as in the West. The value of the
notes fell, until at length it took 11,000 min, or £3,000, to
buy a cake of rice, and the use of notes appears to have been
abandoned. Subsequently the issue was revived, and Tchang-yang
(960-990 A. D.) seems to have been the first private person
who issued notes. Somewhat later, under the Emperor
'Tching-tsong (997-1022), this invention was largely extended.
Sixteen of the richest firms united to form a bank of issue
which emitted paper money in series, some payable every three
years. The earliest mention, in European literature, of paper,
or rather cotton, money appears to be by Rubruquis, a monk,
who was sent by St. Louis, in the year 1252, to the Court of
the Mongol Prince Mangu-Khan, but he merely mentions the fact
of its existence. Marco Polo, who resided from 1275 to 1284 at
the court of Kublai-Khan, … gives us a longer and
interesting account of the note system, which he greatly
admired, and he concludes by saying, 'Now you have heard the
ways and means whereby the great Khan may have, and, in fact,
has, more treasure than all the kings in the world. You know
all about it, and the reason why.' But this apparent facility
of creating money led, in the East, as it has elsewhere, to
great abuses. Sir John Mandeville, who was in Tartary shortly
afterwards, in 1322, tells us that the 'Emperour may dispenden
als moehe as he wile with outen estymacioum. For he despendeth
not, ne maketh no money, but of lether emprented, or of
papyre. … For there and beyonde hem thei make no money,
nouther of gold nor of sylver. And therefore he may despende
ynow and outrageously.' The great Khan seems to have been
himself of the same opinion. He appears to have 'despent
outrageously,' and the value of the paper money again fell to
a very small fraction of its nominal amount, causing great
discontent and misery, until about the middle of the sixteenth
century, under the Mandchu dynasty, it was abolished, and
appears to have been so completely forgotten, that the Jesuit
father, Gabriel de Magaillans, who resided at Pekin about
1668, observes that there is no recollection of paper money
having ever existed in the manner described by Marco Polo;
though two centuries later it was again in use. It must be
observed, however, that these Chinese bank notes differed from
ours in one essential—namely, they were not payable at sight.
{2201}
Western notes, even when not payable at all, have generally
purported to be exchangeable at the will of the holder, but
this principle the Chinese did not adopt, and their notes were
only payable at certain specified periods."

_Sir J. Lubbock,
The History of Money
(Nineteenth Century, November, 1879)._

ALSO IN:
_W. Vissering,
On Chinese Currency._

MONEY AND BANKING:
Coinage in its Beginnings.

"Many centuries before the invention of the art of coining,
gold and silver in the East, and bronze in the West, in
bullion form, had already supplanted barter, the most
primitive of all methods of buying and selling, when among
pastoral peoples the ox and the sheep were the ordinary
mediums of exchange. The very word 'pecunia' is an evidence of
this practice in Italy at a period which is probably recent in
comparison with the time when values were estimated in cattle
in Greece and the East. 'So far as we have any knowledge,'
says Herodotus, 'the Lydians were the first nation to
introduce the use of gold and silver coin.' This statement of
the father of history must not, however, be accepted as
finally settling the vexed question as to who were the
inventors of coined money, for Strabo, Aelian, and the Parian
Chronicle, all agree in adopting the more commonly received
tradition, that Pheidon, King of Argos, first struck silver
coins in the island of Aegina. These two apparently
contradictory assertions modern research tends to reconcile
with one another. The one embodies the Asiatic, the other the
European tradition; and the truth of the matter is that gold
was first coined by the Lydians in Asia Minor, in the seventh
century before our era; and that silver was first struck in
European Greece about the same time. The earliest coins are
simply bullets of metal, oval or bean-shaped, bearing on one
side the signet of the state or of the community responsible
for the purity of the metal and the exactness of the weight.
Coins were at first stamped on one side only, the reverse
showing merely the impress of the square-headed spike or anvil
on which, after being weighed, the bullet of hot metal was
placed with a pair of tongs and there held while a second
workman adjusted upon it the engraved die. This done, a third
man with a heavy hammer would come down upon it with all his
might, and the coin would be produced, bearing on its face or
obverse the seal of the issuer, and on the reverse only the
mark of the anvil spike, an incuse square. This simple process
was after a time improved upon by adding a second engraved die
beneath the metal bullet, so that a single blow of the
sledge-hammer would provide the coin with a type, as it is
called, in relief on both sides. The presence of the
unengraved incuse square may therefore be accepted as an
indication of high antiquity, and nearly all Greek coins which
are later than the age of the Persian wars bear a type on both
sides. … Greek coin-types may be divided into two distinct
classes:

(a) Mythological or religious representations, and
(b) portraits of historical persons.

From the earliest times down to the age of Alexander the Great
the types of Greek coins are almost exclusively religious.
However strange this may seem at first, it is not difficult to
explain. It must be borne in mind that when the enterprising
and commercial Lydians first lighted upon the happy idea of
stamping metal for general circulation, a guarantee of just
weight and purity of metal would be the one condition
required. … What more binding guarantee could be found than
the invocation of one or other of those divinities most
honoured and most dreaded in the district in which the coin
was intended to circulate. There is even good reason to think
that the earliest coins were actually struck within the
precincts of the temples, and under the direct auspices of the
priests; for in times of general insecurity by sea and land,
the temples alone remained sacred and inviolate."

_B. V. Head,
Greek Coins
Coins and Medals, edited by S. Lane-Poole, chapter 2._

MONEY AND BANKING:
Early Banking.

"The banker's calling is both new and old. As a distinct
branch of commerce, and a separate agent in the advancement of
civilisation, its history hardly extends over 300 years; but,
in a rude and undeveloped sort of way, it has existed during
some dozens of centuries. It began almost with the beginning
of society. No sooner had men learnt to adopt a portable and
artificial equivalent for their commodities, and thus to buy
and sell and get gain more easily, than the more careful of
them began to gather up their money in little heaps, or in
great heaps, if they were fortunate enough. These heaps were,
by the Romans, called montes—mounds, or banks,—and
henceforth every money-maker was a primitive banker. The
prudent farmers and shopkeepers in the out-of-the-way
villages, who now lock up their savings in strong boxes, or
conceal them in places where they are least likely to be found
by thieves, show us how the richest and most enterprising men
of far-off times, whether in Anglo-Saxon or mediæval Britain,
ancient Greece and Rome, China or Judæa, made banks for
themselves before the great advantages of joint-stock heaping
up of money were discovered. When and in what precise way that
discovery was made antiquarians have yet to decide. …
Perhaps Jews and Greeks set the example to the modern world.
Every rich Athenian had his treasurer or money-keeper, and
whenever any particular treasurer proved himself a good
accountant and safe banker, it is easy to understand how, from
having one master, he came to have several, until he was able
to change his condition of slavery for the humble rank of a
freedman, and then to use his freedom to such good purpose
that he became an influential member of the community. Having
many people's money, entrusted to his care, he received good
payment for his responsible duty, and he quickly learned to
increase his wealth by lending out his own savings, if not his
employers' capital, at the highest rate of interest that he
could obtain. The Greek bankers were chiefly famous as
money-lenders, and interest at thirty-six per cent. per annum
was not considered unusually exorbitant among them. For their
charges they were often blamed by spendthrifts, satirists, and
others. 'It is said,' complains Plutarch, 'that hares bring
forth and nourish their young at the same time that they
conceive again; but the debts of these scoundrels and savages
bring forth before they conceive, for they give and
immediately demand again; they take away their money at the
same time as they put it out; they place at interest what they
receive as interest. The Messenians have a proverb: "There is
a Pylos before Pylos, and yet another Pylos still."
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So of the usurers it may be said, "There is a profit before
profit, and yet another profit still;" and then, forsooth,
they laugh at philosophers, who say that nothing can come out
of nothing!' The Greek bankers and money-lenders, those of
Delos and Delphi especially, are reported to have used the
temples as treasure-houses, and to have taken the priests into
partnership in their money-making. Some arrangement of that
sort seems to have existed among the Jews, and to have aroused
the anger of Jesus when he went into the Temple of Jerusalem,
'and overthrew the tables of the money-changers, and said unto
them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of
prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.' Bankers' or
money-changers' tables were famous institutions all over the
civilised world of the ancients. Livy tells how, in 308 B. C.,
if not before, they were to be found in the Roman Forum, and
later Latin authors make frequent allusions to banking
transactions of all sorts. They talk of deposits and
securities, bills of exchange and drafts to order, cheques and
bankers' books, as glibly as a modern merchant. But these
things were nearly forgotten during the dark ages, until the
Jews, true to the money-making propensities that characterised
them while they still had a country of their own, set the
fashion of money-making and of banking in all the countries of
Europe through which they were dispersed."

_H. R. Fox Bourne,
Romance of Trade,
chapter 4._

MONEY AND BANKING:
Ancient Greece.

"Oriental contact first stirred the 'auri sacra fames' in the
Greek mind. That this was so the Greek language itself tells
plainly. For 'chrusos,' gold, is a Semitic loan-word, closely
related to the Hebrew 'charuz,' but taken immediately, there
can be no reasonable doubt, from the Phœnician. The restless
treasure-seekers from Tyre were, indeed, as the Græco-Semitic
term metal intimates, the original subterranean explorers of
the Balkan peninsula. As early, probably, as the 15th century
B. C. they 'digged out ribs of gold' on the islands of Thasos
and Siphnos, and on the Thracian mainland at Mount Pangæum;
and the fables of the Golden Fleece, and of Arimaspian wars
with gold-guarding griffins, prove the hold won by the
'precious bane' over the popular imagination. Asia Minor was,
however, the chief source of prehistoric supply, the native
mines lying long neglected after the Phœnicians had been
driven from the scene. Midas was a typical king in a land
where the mountains were gold-granulated, and the rivers ran
over sands of gold. And it was in fact from Phrygia that
Pelops was traditionally reported to have brought the
treasures which made Mycenæ the golden city of the Achæan
world. The Epic affluence in gold was not wholly fictitious.
From the sepulchres of Mycenæ alone about one hundred pounds
Troy weight of the metal have been disinterred; freely at
command even in the lowest stratum of the successive
habitations at Hissarlik, it was lavishly stored, and highly
wrought in the picturesquely-named 'treasure of Priam'; and
has been found, in plates and pearls, beneath twenty metres of
volcanic debris, in the Cyclatic islands Thera and Therapia.
This plentifulness contrasts strangely with the extreme
scarcity of gold in historic Greece. It persisted, however,
mainly owing to the vicinity of the auriferous Ural Mountains,
in the Milesian colony of Panticapæum, near Kertch, where
graves have been opened containing corpses shining 'like
images' in a complete clothing of gold-leaf, and equipped with
ample supplies of golden vessels and ornaments. Silver was, at
the outset, a still rarer substance than gold. Not that there
is really less of it. … But it occurs less obviously, and is
less easy to obtain pure. Accordingly, in some very early
Egyptian inscriptions, silver, by heading the list of metals,
claims a supremacy over them which proved short-lived. It
terminated for ever with the scarcity that had produced it,
when the Phœnicians began to pour the flood of Spanish silver
into the markets and treasure-chambers of the East. Armenia
constituted another tolerably copious source of supply; and it
was in this quarter that Homer located the 'birth-place of
silver.'"

_A. M. Clerke,
Familiar Studies in Homer,
chapter 10._

"Taken as a whole the Greek money is excellent; pure in metal
and exact in weight, its real corresponding to its nominal
value. Nothing better has been done in this way among the most
civilized and best governed nations of modern times. There is,
indeed, always a certain recognized limit, which keeps the
actual weight of the money slightly below its theoretical
weight; and this fact recurs with such regularity that it may
be regarded as a rule. We must conclude, therefore, that it
was under this form that Greek civilization allowed to the
coiner of money the right of seigniorage, or the benefit
legitimately due to him to cover the expenses of the coinage,
and in exchange for the service rendered by him to the public
in providing them with money, by which they were saved the
trouble of perpetual weighing. This allowance, however, is
always kept within very narrow limits, and is never more than
the excess of the natural value of the coined money over that
of the metal in ingots. … Of course, the general and
predominant fact of the excellence of the Greek money in the
time of Hellenic independence is subject, like all human
things, to some exceptions. There were a few cities which
yielded to the delusive bait of an unlawful advantage,
debasing the quality of their coins without foreseeing that
the consequences of this unfair operation would react against
themselves. But these exceptions are very rare."

_F. Lenormant,
Money in Ancient Greece and Rome
(Contemporary Review, February; 1879)._