Medieval silver bracteates and the hollow penny
Medieval silver bracteates were struck on one side, leaving a raised image on the face and a hollow impression behind it. Made from thin silver sheet, these coins had diameters ranging from 10 to 50 millimeters. That broad surface left room for artistic representations, even though the metal itself was thin. In German, these pieces are called Brakteat and also Hohlpfennige or Schüsselpfennige. Bracteate coins are known beyond central Europe, too: medieval kingdoms around the Bay of Bengal, including Harikela and the Mon city-states, used coins bearing that name.
The regional setting was German-speaking central Europe, where this coinage became predominant outside Rhineland, Westphalia, and the Middle Rhine region. Production began around 1130 in Saxony and Thuringia and continued well into the 14th century. From the standpoint of currency, the pieces were regional pennies. The Teutonic Order example dates from the 13th to 14th centuries, while the earliest pieces minted by the Burgraves of Dohna date from around 1200. A specimen bearing the Teutonic Order belongs among the examples, as do pieces associated with the Burgraves of Dohna and Louis II, Landgrave of Thuringia.
The usual denominations of silver bracteates offered different combinations of value and decoration. A two-pfennig piece, called a Blaffert, carried an elaborate image. A one-pfennig piece, or Hohlpfennig, had a coarser image, while the Scherf was a hollow coin worth half a pfennig. A silver pfennig or bracteate from Halberstadt, dated around 1200, weighs 0.89 grams. Other surviving groups include a hoard of 600 Magdeburg pieces from the early 13th century associated with the Bode Museum.
Holding this money involved a recurring exchange. Coins were generally called back once or twice a year and exchanged for new pieces in a process called Renovatio Monetae. In one example, four old coins brought three new coins. The withheld fourth piece was known as strike money and was often the mint-master's only tax revenue.
The renewal system shaped the use of silver bracteates beyond the mint. As the coins lost value, people were discouraged from hoarding them, making the currency more useful for exchange than for storing wealth. Because coins lost value at each recoinage, holding them was costly, which discouraged hoarding; historians still debate its effect on trade. Merchants involved in the money economy nevertheless found the disruption troublesome. Those merchants dominated the German city leagues, which introduced the Ewiger Pfennig, or "eternal penny."
The word bracteate also reaches beyond medieval money. It derives from the Latin bractea, meaning a thin piece of metal. Gold bracteates from the Migration Period were mainly jewelry made during the fifth through seventh centuries. Most had beaded rims and loops so they could hang from a string around the neck, supposedly serving as amulets. Their gold came from coins paid by the Roman Empire as peace money to Northern Germanic neighbors. These ornaments were produced in Northern Europe, including Sweden's Vendel era. The term also applies to thin metal discs sewn onto clothing in the ancient world, including gold examples from the Persian Oxus treasure.
Images on those gold ornaments included rulers with hair plaited back, human figures, and animals. Some designs reflected the influence of Roman coinage, while others introduced new motifs. A figure with a horse, birds, and sometimes a spear is interpreted by some scholars as the Germanic god Wodan. Lettered categories distinguish these images: A pieces show a human face modeled after antique imperial coins; B pieces show human figures standing, sitting, or kneeling, often with animals. C pieces feature a male head above a quadruped, and D pieces show stylized animals. E pieces carry an animal triskele beneath a circular feature. F pieces form a subgroup of D pieces and show an imaginary animal. M pieces are two-sided imitations of Roman imperial medallions. Many of these later E pieces were silver or bronze, and they were produced only on Gotland during the Vendel Period.
Later uses of the name take the story into travel and local coinage. The last bracteates were traveler medallions worn as pendants, serving as presence marks for pilgrims until the 17th century. In some Swiss cantons, bracteate-like rappen, heller, and angster were produced during the 18th century. Research into the earlier ornaments has brought together photographs and drawings in a German catalog. Karl Hauck, Morten Axboe, and Klaus Düwel worked on that corpus from the 1960s. Christian Jürgensen Thomsen introduced the lettered classification in 1855, and Oscar Montelius formally defined it in 1869. Among the jewelry types, inscriptions on the Tjurkö pieces include scaldic verse, while the Vadstena example lists the Elder Futhark. The medieval silver bracteates depicting Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor, come from Frankfurt am Main in the 12th century.