The Fuzzy Metrics of Money: The Finances of Travel and the Reception of Curiosities in Early Modern Europe

Summary

This article argues that commerce and the language of finance had an important influence over the interpretation of curiosities in the early modern period. It traces how learned travellers in the years around 1700 were constantly reminded to watch their purses and to limit their expenses while on the road. As a result, monetary matters also influenced their appreciation of artificialia and naturalia. They judged and compared the aesthetic value of curiosities by mentioning their price. Money offered an easy, telegraphic manner of signalling intrinsic worth. Visitors of cabinets paid attention to the financial value of the collector's books, paintings, and natural specimens, and kept mentioning it in their diaries and correspondence. The keen attention of students, scholars and amateur gentlemen to money suggests that, even if the Republic of Letters operated in a gift economy, its members were much aware of their gifts’ prices. Commercial values deeply infiltrated the erudite discourse of the period.

Acknowledgements

My interest in curiosities, and their financial value, dates back to a graduate seminar with Katy Park, to whom I am truly grateful. I would also like to thank Mario Biagioli, Elizabeth Blackmar, Daniel Carey, James Delbourgo, Gábor Gelléri, Elidor Mehilli, Justin Smith, Pamela Smith, Claudia Swan, Iryna Vushko and the audience at the Instructions, Questions and Directions conference at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. Edit Mikó and István Margócsy have provided essential research assistance. This article was written while I was the Birkelund Fellow at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers and the New York Public Library.

Notes

¹Krzysztof Pomian, Collectors and Curiosities: Paris and Venice, 1500–1800 (Cambridge, 1990), 1.

²William Shakespeare, ‘Hamlet’, in The Norton Shakespeare, 2^nd edition, edited by Stephen Greenblatt (New York, 2006), 1696–1784 (I.3, 1708).

³On instructions, see Daniel Carey, ‘Hakluyt's Instructions: The Principal Navigations and Sixteenth-Century Travel Advice’, Studies in Travel Writing 13 (2009), 167–85; Joan-Pau Rubies, ‘Instructions for Travellers: Teaching the Eye to See’, History of Anthropology 9 (1996), 139–90; Justin Stagl, A History of Curiosity; The Theory of Travel 1550–1800 (Chur, 1995).

⁴‘Távoztassa és fogadássalis, a mint a két felsöt, ugy harmadikot, a pénzben való koczkázást, kártyázást. Vajki sok szép Iffiuság veszett és vész el ez három gonosz miatt, néki ugyan az erszenyeis vékony ezekhez. Tudgya ennek az Hazának nyomorult voltát s maga állapottyát.’ Zsuzsa Font, Teleki Pál külföldi tanulmányútja. Levelek, számadások, iratok, 1695–1700 (Szeged, 1989), 7–8. In all probability, the text was originally composed by Teleki's teachers in Hungary, and not by the widow herself. All translations from foreign languages are by the author of this article, unless otherwise specified. When the original Hungarian source is interspersed with Latin phrases, the Latin is retained to illustrate the original style. On the voluminous Hungarian travel literature, see Iván Sándor Kovács, Magyar utazási irodalom 15–18. század (Budapest, 1990).

⁵Zs. Font (note 4), 33.

⁶Péter Ötvös, Széchenyi Zsigmond itáliai körútja (Szeged, 1988), 33. For similar instructions across Europe, see Mathis Leibetseder, Die Kavalierstour. Adelige Erziehungsreisen im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert (Böhlau, 2004), 68–9.

⁷For robbing Evelyn, see John Evelyn, Memoirs of John Evelyn, 5 vols (London, 1827), II, 55. On Pepys, see Old Bailey Proceedings Online, The Ordinary's Accounts (http://www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 7.0, 24 August 2012), December 1693, trial of Thomas Hoyle Samuel Gibbons (t16931206-24). On early modern travel, see Antoni Mączak, Travel in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 1995); Daniel Roche, Humeurs vagabondes. De la circulation des hommes et de l'utilité des voyages (Paris, 2003); and, on transportation, Jan de Vries. Barges and Capitalism: Passenger Transportation in the Dutch Economy, 1632–1839. Wageningen: A. A. G. Bijdragen, 1978.

⁸Zs. Font (note 4), 304–8.

⁹Allard de la Court, Aantekening ofte Giornaal van mijn reys (1707), University of Amsterdam Library, IV J 10. On the wealth of the de la Court family, see Benjamin Roberts, Through the Keyhole: Dutch Childrearing Practices in the 17 ^th and 18 ^th Century (Hilversum, 1998), 57. On de la Court's travels, and Dutch travelers’ account books, see the exhaustive and excellent Gerrit Verhoeven, Anders reizen. Evoluties in vroegmoderne reiservaringen van Hollandse en Brabantse elites (1600–1750) (Hilversum, 2009), 144–55.

¹⁰M. Leibetseder (note 6), 61.

¹¹Dániel Margócsy, ‘A Komáromi Csipkés Biblia Leidenben’, Magyar Könyvszemle, 124/1 (2008), 15–26 (18–9). For Miskolci Szigyártó's diary, see Sándor Dúzs, ‘Hogyan útazott 170 évvel ezelőtt a magyar calvinista candidatus’, Protestáns Képes Naptár (1884), 44–59.

¹²Zsuzsa Font and Péter Ötvös, ‘“Egy pár pisztolyt adott peregrinatiomra.” Epizódok a “peregrinatio academica” történetéből.’ Beszélő 8 (2003), http://beszelo.c3.hu/cikkek/,,egy-par-pisztolyt-adott-peregrinatiomra’.

¹³Writing under a pseudonym, Christian Henrik Erndl mentioned that he traveled with merchants from Braunschweig to Hamburg, then with two Silesian merchants from Hamburg to Amsterdam. C. H. E. D., De itinere suo Anglicano et Batavo (Amsterdam, 1711), 39 and 52.

¹⁴I take my inspiration on the intertwining of the material and the intellectual from Peter Galison, ‘Blacked-out Spaces: Freud, Censorship, and the Re-Territorialization of the Mind’, British Journal for the History of Science 45/2 (=States of Secrecy, edited by Koen Vermeir and Dániel Margócsy) (2012), 235–66; Peter Galison, Einstein's Clocks, Poincaré's Maps: Empires of Time (New York, 2003).

¹⁵Martin Lister, A Journey to Paris in the Year 1698, edited by Raymond Phineas Stearns (Urbana, 1967), 181.

¹⁶‘Es ist an ihme zu loben, daß er in seine Catalogos von seinen Büchern nicht allein die Grösse und Bögen, sondern auch die Preise setzet.’ Baron Zacharias Conrad von Uffenbach, Merckwürdige reisen durch Niedersachsen, Holland, und Engelland, 3 vols (Ulm, 1753–4), II, 164. For Uffenbach in the Netherlands, see also Kasper Risbjerg Eskildsen, 'Exploring the Republic of Letters: German Travellers in the Dutch Underground, 1690–1720’, in: Scientists and Scholars in the Field: Studies in the History of Fieldwork and Expeditions, edited by Kristian H. Ielsen, Michael Harbsmeier and Christopher J. Ries (Aarhus, 2012), 101–22. For Uffenbach in England, see James A. Bennett, ‘Shopping for Instruments in Paris and London’, in: Merchants and Marvels: Commerce, Science and Art in Early Modern Europe, edited by Pamela Smith & Paula Findlen (New York, 2002), 370–98.

¹⁷‘A Szent Erzsébet templomában nézzük a maga koporsóját, mely drága, …, a két oldalán a 12 apostolok, mindenfelől rakott drágakövekkel, amellyek közük kiváltképpen valók: egy gyöngy, egy diónyi, 8000 tallér, egy smaragd, szinte ollyan, 6000 tallér. Egy jáspis 2500 tallér. Topáz 7000 florenis. Zafír 8000 tallér.’ József Jankovics, Bethlen Mihály útinaplója (Budapest, 1981), 114.

¹⁸‘de Croon seer swaar van Goud en de steene die daar op vast gemaakt sijn met kooper draatjes, ende steene sijn extraordinair groot, de grooste steen die, voor anhang heeft de kooning van Engeland aan de croon vereert, kost 8000 pistolen.’ Allard de la Court, May 5, 1707.

¹⁹Samuel Pepys, The Diary of Samuel Pepys, online edition by Phil Gyford, http://www.pepysdiary.com, May 15, 1660. On English travelers in the Netherlands, see Kees van Strien, Touring the Low Countries: Accounts of British Travelers, 1660–1720 (Amsterdam, 1998).

²⁰‘Deese is seer groot en magnefiec, en staan daaar in verscheijde fraaije Boeken en alle seer fraaij in Bande gebonden, onder andre een Boek genaamt Rationale Divinorum officiorum gedruckt tot Mentz in't Jaar 1459 not staan Hier in vier Honderd manischripte die in Vrankryk gecost hebben, vier en twintig Duysent Daalders, nog een Boekje in quarto vyftien Blaade diek waar in met de pen getrokke en geschreeve staat seer curieus de zee en Land Caarte dit seyd men dat gecost hadde 200 Dukaten, nog sag ik op deese Biblioteecq een Leepel in glad die Doctor Lugter gebruykt hadde.’ Allard de la Court, June 2, 1707.

²¹‘Asservatur haec Bibliotheca in Collegio Universitatis, fundata ante hos centum et quod excurrit annos, a Thoma Bodley of Exeter, qui Casaubono teste Ep. 745. 200,000 libras Gallicas pro extruenda hac erogavit.’ C. H. E. D., 69.

²²‘Eines rechter Hand des Comins ist demselben weit vorzuziehen und war unvergleichlich. Auf diesem Stück verrichtet der berühmte Anatomicus Tulpius die section. Hievor soll ein noch lebender Burgermeister allhier tausend Thaler geboten haben, wie es dann gewiß gar schön.’ Z. C. von Uffenbach, 3, 546.

²³‘Sein Preis ist fünfzehen Reichsthaler. Er malt auch en mignature, davor man ihm zwanzig Thaler bezahlt, wenn er aber en buste mit den händen macht, vierzig.’ Z. C. von Uffenbach, 2, 118. On the financial aspects of painting, with somewhat different conclusions, see Elizabeth Honig, ‘Making Sense of Things: On the Motives of Dutch Still Life’, Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics 34 (1998), 166–83; as well as Elizabeth Honig, Painting and the Market in Early Modern Antwerp (New Haven, 1998); Michael North, Art and Commerce in the Dutch Golden Age (New Haven, 1999); and John Michael Montias, Artist and Artisans in Delft: A Socio-Economic Study of the Seventeenth Century (Princeton, 1982).

²⁴S. Pepys, May 19, 1660.

²⁵‘Ez ám jó kereset volna, ha valakinek elhányó pénze volna, és neki meg adná; … de abban bizony nem kap.’ J. Jankovics, 17.

²⁶J. Jankovics, 16 and 27.

²⁷Z. C. von Uffenbach, 3, 639-40. The text writes that Rau charged three students 500 guilders in total for a two-month course, which seems extraordinarily high, and suggests that it is a typographical error. 50 guilders for three students, in contrast, seem just the right price.

²⁸On the reception of curiosities, see Roelof van Gelder, ‘Liefhebbers en geleerde luiden. Nederlandse kabinetten en hun bezoekers, in: De wereld binnen handbereik. Nederlandse kunst- en rariteitenverzamelingen, 1585–1735, edited by Ellinoor Bergvelt and Renée Kistemaker (Zwolle, 1992), 259–92; and Rina Knoeff, ‘The Visitor's View: Early Modern Tourism and the Polyvalence of Anatomical Exhibits’, in: Centres and Cycles of Acccumulation in and around the Netherlands during the Early Modern Period, edited by Lissa Roberts (Berlin, 2011), 155–75, which also discusses Uffenbach in detail.

²⁹On early modern curiosity culture, see Oliver Impey and Arthur MacGregor, The Origins of Museums: The Cabinet of Curiosities in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth Century Europe (Oxford, 1983); Ellinor Bergvelt and Renée Kistemaker, De wereld binnen handbereik. Nederlandse kunst- en rariteitenverzamelingen, 1585–1735 (Zwolle, 1992); Horst Bredekamp, The Lure of Antiquity and the Cult of the Machine: The Kunstkammer, and the Evolution of Art, Nature, and Technology (Princeton, 1995); Robert Evans and Alexander Marr, eds., Curiosity and Wonder from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment (Aldershot, 2006); Andreas Grote, ed., Macrocosmos in Microcosmo: Die Welt in der Stube. Zur Geschichte des Sammelns 1450–1800 (Opladen, 1994); Robert Felfe and Angelika Lozar, eds., Frühneuzeitliche Sammlungspraxis und Literatur (Berlin, 2006); Dominik Collet, Die Welt in der Stube: Begegnungen mit Außereuropa in Kunstkammern der Frühen Neuzeit (Göttingen, 2007).

³⁰Barthélémy de Chasseneuz, Catalogus gloriae mundi (Lyon, 1546). See also E. M. W. Tillyard, The Elizabethan World Picture (New York, 1940).

³¹John Ray, The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation (London, 1722), 370–1; see also Bernard Nieuwentyt, Het regt gebruik der wereld beschouwingen (Amsterdam, 1720).

³²The Inquiry and Critique of Judgment are notable for having a united attention to natural and art objects, as in a curiosity cabinet. Francis Hutchison, An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue in Two Treatises, edited by Wolfgang Leidhold (Indianapolis, 2004); Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Judgment, translated by James Creed Meredith (Oxford, 2007). On the problems of making sense of cabinets of curiosity, see, next to K. Pomian, Claudia Swan, ‘Collecting Naturalia in the Shadow of the Early Modern Dutch Trade’, in: Colonial Botany: Science, Commerce, Plitics in the Early Modern World, edited by Londa Schiebinger and Claudia Swan (Philadelphia 2004), 223–36.

³³M. Lister (note 15), 59–60.

³⁴M. Lister (note 15), 83.

³⁵Anne Goldgar, Tulipmania: Money, Honor and Knowledge in the Dutch Golden Age (Chicago, 2007).

³⁶Paula Findlen, ‘Jokes of Nature and Jokes of Knowledge: The Playfulness of Scientific Knowledge in Early Modern Europe,’ Renaissance Quarterly 43 (1990), 292–331; Natascha Adamowsky, Hartmut Böhme and Robert Felfe, eds, Ludi naturae: Spiele der Natur in Kunst und Wissenschaft (Munich, 2011).

³⁷Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature 1150–1750 (New York, 1998).

³⁸‘Vasárnapon .. speculáltuk azt a scriniumot, amellyben vagyon egészen Kűnst Cammara, sok szép raritásokkal, mellyeket mind leírni sok foret.’ J. Jankovics, 59.

³⁹‘Vadnak más iskátulyákban sok külömb-külömbféle csigahajak, … oly szép virágosok, tarkák és külömb-külömb színűek, hogy az ember le nem tudná írni, sem megfesteni.’ J. Jankovics, 64.

⁴⁰On the je-be-sais-quoi, see Richard Scholar, The Je-ne-sais-quoi in Early Modern Europe: Encounters with a Certain Something (Oxford, 2005).

⁴¹G. Verhoeven (note 9), 179. See also Gerrit Verhoeven, ‘Mastering the Connoisseur's Eye: Paintings, Criticism, and the Canon in Dutch and Flemish Travel Culture, 1600–1750’, Eighteenth-Century Studies 46 (2012), 29–56.

⁴²M. Lister (note 15), 40–1.

⁴³On the professionalization of art appreciation, see Charlotte Guichard, Les amateurs d'art au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 2008); and Charlotte Guichard, ‘Taste Communities: The Rise of the Amateur in Eighteenth-Century Paris’, Eighteenth-Century Studies 45 (2012), 519–47.

⁴⁴Roger de Piles, ‘Balance des peintres’, in id., Cours de peinture par principes (Paris, 1708), 489–98. I am not aware of any actual travelers using such a scoring board on their trips.

⁴⁵The literature on these works is scarce, but, see for Marperger, John Jeremiah Sullivan, ‘The Princes: A Reconstruction’, The Paris Review 200 (2012), 35–88; for Major, Cornelius Steckner, ‘Das Museum Cimbricum von 1688 und die cartesianische “Perfection des Gemüthes.” Zur Museumswissenschaft des Kieler Universitätsprofessors Johann Daniel Major (1634–1693),’ in: Macrocosmos in Microcosmo: Die Welt in der Stube. Zur Geschichte des Sammelns 1450–1800, edited by Andreas Grote (Opladen, 1994), 603–28; and also Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (Berkeley, 1994).

⁴⁶R. Knoeff (note 28).

⁴⁷Arnout Vosmaer, Memorie van A. Vosmaar inhoudende de zaaken, met welken alle Reiziger en Kooplieden, …, my zouden konnen verplichten (The Hague, Nationaal Archief, Archief Vosmaer 548, inv. no. 2.21.271, bestanddeel 68).

⁴⁸Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, The Production of Presence: What Meaning Cannot Convey (Stanford, 2004); for an application of Gumbrecht to medical museums, see Thomas Söderqvist, Adam Bencard, and Camilla Mordhorst, ‘Between Meaning Culture and Presence Effects: Contemporary Biomedical Objects as a Challenge to Museums’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 40 (2009), 431–8.

⁴⁹On the aesthetic appreciation of curiosities, see James V. Mirollo, ‘The Aesthetics of the Marvelous: The Wondrous Work of Art in a Wondrous World’, in The Age of the Marvelous, edited by Joy Kenseth (Dartmouth, 1991), 61–80; and Delphine Trébosc, ‘Expérimenter les critères esthétiques: Le rôle des naturalia dans la collection d'Antoine Agard, orfèvre et antiquaire arlésien, à la fin de la Renaissance‘, in: Curiosité et cabinets de curiosités, edited by Pierre Martin and Dominique Moncond'huy (Neuilly, 2004), 65–76.

⁵⁰Johann Daniel Major, Unvorgreiffliches Bedencken von Kunst- und Naturalienkammern insgemein, in: Museum Museorum, oder vollständige Schau-Bühne aller Materialien und Specereyen, edited by Michael Bernhard Valentini (Frankfurt am Main, 1704), 6–7.

⁵¹‘Dem ungeachtet gibt uns der Grund-Text vollkommene Versicherung, daß Salomon ein sowol kostbares, als künstliches und mit vielen Raritäten angefülltes Schatzhaus gehabt habe.’ C. F. Neickelius [Caspar Friedrich Jencquel], Museographia, oder Anleitung zum rechten Begriff und nützlicher Anlegung der Museorum, 4 vols, edited by Johann Kanold (Leipzig, 1727), 11.

⁵²‘in der That ist dasselbe ein admirables stücke: Man sagt, der Groß-Hertzog von Toscana habe einst 100,000 Thlr. dafür gegeben wollen.’ Neickelius (note 51), 22. On Erasmus, see Neickelius (note 51), 25; on Florence, see Neickelius (note 51), 37; and on Peter the Great, the text writes that ‘Dann est ist bekandt … auch noch das letzte mal vor 5. a 6. Jahren beydes hier in Hamburg von einem berühmten Materialisten, als auch in Holland ein Rarität-Cabinet für 80,000 Gulden gekaufft.’ C. F. Neickelius (note 51), I, 83.

⁵³‘Der verschiedene Preis, mit dessen vermutlicher Ursache annectiret werden.’ C. F. Neickelius (note 51), 464.

⁵⁴‘Das herrlichste rarest und kostbarst ist in dem Saal zwischen diesen Zimmern zu sehen, der il ribuno genennet wird. Insonderheit sind noch fünff Cabinette alle mit unaussprechlicher Kostbarkeit angefüllet, darunter das Cabinet von Ebenholz alleine 600,000 scudi wehrt geschätzet wird.’ [Paul Jakob Marperger], Die geöffnete Raritäten- und Naturalienkammern (Hamburg, 1705), 154; and on Volckers: ‘Vor kurtzen ist daselbst des beruffenen Johann Volckersen vortreffliche Raritäten-Kammer unwiet von der Brauer Kraffet bey der Harlemer Poort zu sehen gewesen, da die Muscheln allein bey 100,000 Gulden sindwehrt geschätzt wurden.’ P. J. Marperger, 159. A third example is the gift of a Polish aristocrat to Loreto, worth 130,000 thalers, mentioned in P. J. Marperger, 163. For Marperger, I relied on Mark Dion's reprint edition from 2002.

⁵⁵‘In dem Dritten sollten die Rechnungen der angewendeten Unkosten und die Catalogi ihre Stelle haben, dren billig drey seyn müssen, einer nach dem Alphabet, und der Dritte über die Auctores, bey denen von den fürhandenen Raritäten Nachricht zu finden. Bey dem ersten solte mit angedeutet seyn, wenn ein jedes Stück dazu kommen, woher, und von wem. Endlich in dem Vierten solte colligiret werden, was in den vorgeschlagenen Conferentzen schrifftlich concipiert worden.’ P. J. Marperger, 22.

⁵⁶[Germain Brice], A New Description of Paris … Translated out of French, 2^nd edition (London, 1688), 25 on materials, 16 on colours, 131 on Poussin, and 44 on miniatures. On Brice, see Germain Brice, Description de la ville de Paris, edited by Pierre Codet (Geneva, 1971).

⁵⁷G. Brice (note 56), 138.

⁵⁸G. Brice (note 56), 14 for the Bourbon palace, and 59 for the library.

⁵⁹‘Toutes les choses cy-dessus declarées, sont toutes de Vermeil d'Oré, d'une fabrique admirable et d'un Prix inestimable, car les Pieres qui y sont, sont si precieuses et d'une telle grosseur, et en si grand nombre, que l'oeil ne se peut pas assez rassasier de les voir.’ François Colsoni, Guide de Londres (London, 1693), 31; copied with some variation in Claude Jordan, Voyages historiques de l'Europe, 8 vols (Amsterdam, 1718), 4, 443.

⁶⁰‘Men vindt hier Huyzen zoo overkostelijk van Huysraat als Schilderyen en Oost-Indische vercierselen voorzien / dat de waarde van dien als onwaardeerlijk is / ja zommige zijn wel vijftigh duyzent / andere wel honder duyzendt en tweemaal zoo veel aan ‘t kostelyk Huysraat waardigh’. M. Fokkens, Beschrivinge der wijdt-vermaarde Koop-stadt Amstelredam, 2^nd ed. (Amsterdam, 1662), 69; for the note on the Damrak, see M. Fokkens, 69.

⁶¹R. van Gelder (note 28), 262.

⁶²J. Jankovics, 88. For the English guide, see F. Colsoni (note 59), 11.

⁶³C. F. Neickelius (note 51), 195.

⁶⁴Kurt Moeller Pedersen and Peter de Clercq, An Observer of Observatories: The Journal of Thomas Bugge's Tour of Germany, Holland, and England in 1777 (Aarhus, 2010), 195.

⁶⁵K. van Strien (note 19), 296.

⁶⁶C. F. Neickelius (note 51), IV, 140. Seba was very good at estimating the price of his cabinet, which would only be auctioned in 1752, after the collector's death, bringing in 24 400 guilders. Hendrick Engel, ‘The Sale-Catalogue of the Cabinets of Natural History of Albertus Seba (1752): A Curious Document from the Period of naturae curiosi’, Bulletin of the Research Council of Israel Section B: Zoology 10 (1961), 119–31; Dániel Margócsy, Commercial Visions: Science, Trade and Visual Culture in the Dutch Golden Age (Chicago, forthcoming).

⁶⁷‘Ezekre minden esztendoben rámegyen 30 000 tallér ára hús, azt mondja az inspektor.’ Ferenc Pápai Páriz, ‘Kincseskamrácska, avagy Írásművecske’, in: Békességet magamnak, másoknak, edited by Géza Nagy (Bucharest, 1977), 135–75, 148.

⁶⁸Guido M. C. Jansen, ‘De “Notitie der dagelijxe schilderoeffening” van Henrik van Limborch (1681–1759)’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 45 (1997), 26–67; Barbara Gaehtgens, Adriaen van der Werff 1659–1722 (Munich, 1987), 442–4.

⁶⁹Marlies K. Danziger, James Boswell: The Journal of his German and Swiss Travels (Edinburgh, 2008), 189. Danziger also publishes Boswell's detailed account books from his trip.

⁷⁰M. K. Danziger (note 69), 173.

⁷¹‘Más, kisebb iskátulyás ládában tart az európai királyok pénzit, …, sok szép nagy, arany-ezüst pénzek, úgyhogy edgynémelyben vagyon 50–55 arany.’ Bethlen, 65. The Hungarian term for goldgulden is arany, which refers both to the metal (Au) and to the coin, creating a strong ambiguity between content, numismatic form, and financial value.

⁷²John Locke, Some Considerations, in: Locke on Money, 2 vols, edited by Partick Hyde Kelley (Oxford, 1991), 258–60. On Locke's understanding of money, and gold, see Daniel Carey's article in this issue; as well as Karen I. Vaughn, ‘John Locke and the Labor Theory of Value’, Journal of Libertarian Studies 2 (1978), 311–26.

⁷³On Locke's travels in France, see John Lough, Locke's Travels in France 1675–1679 (Cambridge, 1953). On Holland, see C. D. van Strien, British Travellers in Holland during the Stuart Period: Edward Browne and John Locke as Tourists in the United Provinces (Leiden, 1993).

⁷⁴On similar approaches in anthropology, see Jane Guyer, Marginal Gains: Monetary Transactions in Atlantic Africa (Chicago, 2004); Jane Guyer, ed., Money Matters. Instability, Values and Social Payments in the Modern History of West African Communities (Portsmouth, 1995); Wim van Binsbergen and Peter Geschiere, eds., Commodification: Things, Agency and Identities: The Social Life of Things Revisited (Münster, 2005).

⁷⁵Robert Jütte, Poverty and Deviance in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 1994), 27. See also Daniel Carey and Christopher J. Finlay, eds. The Empire of Credit: The Financial Revolution in the British Atlantic World, 1688–1815 (Dublin, 2011).

⁷⁶William Roberds and Stephen Quinn, ‘An Economic Explanation of the Early Bank of Amsterdam, Debasement, Bills of Exchange and the Emergence of the First Central Bank’, in The Development of Financial Markets and Institutions, edited by Jeremy Atack and Larry Neal (Cambridge, 2009), 32–70.

⁷⁷‘… az egész magyar nemzetet minden jó pénziből kifosztá, az átkozott rossz pénz marada nyakunkban, s már semmi hasznát nem veheti senki.’ Mihály Cserei, Erdély históriája (1661–1711), edited by Imre Bánkúti (Budapest, 1983), 353. On the repeated devaluation of the poltura, see the memoirs of Louis Lemaire, reprinted in Louis Lemaire, ‘Beszámoló mindarról, ami a Magyarországi háborúban történt’, in: Rákóczi tükör. Naplók, jelentések, emlékiratok a szabadságharcról, edited by Béla Köpeczi and Ágnes R. Várkonyi, 2 vols (Budapest, 1973), 2, 176–288, 243 and 257.

⁷⁸[J. R.], A Letter of Advice to a Friend about the Currency of Clipt-Money (London, 1696). This concept of imaginary money is different from the one proposed in Luigi Einaudi, ‘The Theory of Imaginary Money from Charlemagne to the French Revolution’, in: Enterprise and Secular Change, edited by F. C. Lane and J. C. Riemersma (Homewood, 1953), 229-61. For Einaudi, imaginary money is much like the florin banco discussed above, used in transactions and contracts, but different from coins.

⁷⁹Zs. Font (note 4), 39.

⁸⁰‘… az aranyban igen sok kárunk lészen, legalább minden 100 aranybol defalcalodik 50 forint.’ Ferenc Pápai Páriz jr. to Sándor Teleki, September 20, 1711, in: Peregrinuslevelek 1711–1750. Külföldön tanuló diákok levelei Teleki Sándornak, edited by József Jankovics (Szeged, 1980).

⁸¹E. James Ferguson, The Power of the Purse (Chapel Hill, 1961), 4.

⁸²‘Was aber eigentlich die Würde oder den Preis dieses so hochschätzbaren Gefässses belanget, so ist dasselbe von etlichen auf 60000 von andern auf 90000. in letztem mütterlichen Hoch-Fürstl. Testament aber auf 150000 Rthlr. Angesetzet worden.’ C. F. Jencquel, I, 135. For a somewhat different example of divergent prices, where the Dutch claimed that paradise birds, given as a gift to the Ottoman Sultan, were much more expensive than what they had actually paid for them, see Claudia Swan, ‘Birds of Paradise for the Sultan: Early Seventeenth-Century Dutch-Turkish Encounters and the Uses of Wonder’, De zeventiende eeuw (2013), forthcoming.

⁸³Zacharias Conrad von Uffenbach, Commercii epistolaris Uffenbachiani selecta, 5 vols (Ulm, 1753-5), IV, 419–20.

⁸⁴M. Lister, 60.

⁸⁵James Petiver to Hans Sloane, June 29, 1711, British Library MS Sloane 3337, f. 160.

⁸⁶C. F. Neickelius (note 51), IV, 8. A ‘schlangencrone’ was a little white bone that grew on the head of a white snake from the spittle of another snake, as explained by Johannes Theodor Jablonski, Allgemeines Lexicon der Künste und Wissenschaften (Königsberg and Leipzig, 1746), 1000. I thank Christian Reiss for directing me to Jablonski.

⁸⁷‘The Hundred Guilder Print’, online catalog entry, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, http://www.rijksmuseum.nl/aria/aria_assets/RP-P-OB-601?page=2, consulted on October 18, 2012.

⁸⁸James Petiver to Patrick Blaier, February 12, 1711/2, British Library MS Sloane 3338, f. 28v.

⁸⁹Lorraine Daston, ‘The Ideal and the Reality of the Republic of Letters in the Enlightenment,’ Science in Context, 4 (1991), 367–86; Anne Goldgar, Impolite Learning: Conduct and Community in the Republic of Letters (New Haven, 1995); Anthony Grafton. ‘A Sketch Map of a Lost Continent: The Republic of Letters,’ Republic of Letters 1 (2009), http://rofl.stanford.edu/node/34; see also the whole issue of the Republic of Letters, 1 (2009); Dena Goodman, The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of the French Enlightenment (Ithaca, 1994); Peter N. Miller, Peiresc's Europe: Learning and Virtue in the Seventeenth Century (New Haven, 2000); Hans Bots and Françoise Waquet, eds., La République Des Lettres (Paris, 1997).

⁹⁰For the original formulation of Mertonian norms, see Robert Merton, ‘Science and technology in a democratic order’, Journal of Legal and Political Sociology 1 (1942), 115–26.

⁹¹Marcel Mauss, ‘Essai sur le don. Forme et raison de l’échange dans les sociétés archaïques’, L'année sociologique, Nouvelle série, 1 (1923–4), 30–186.

⁹²Dániel Margócsy, ’”Refer to folio and number”: Encyclopedias, the Exchange of Curiosities, and Practices of Identification before Linnaeus’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 71 (2010), 63–89.

⁹³For Bourdieu's classic reformulation of Mauss, see Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge, 1977). See also Ilana F. Silber, ‘Bourdieu's Gift to Gift Theory: An Unacknowledged Trajectory’, Sociological Theory 27 (2009), 173–90.

⁹⁴David Graeber, Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of Our Own Dreams (New York, 2001).

⁹⁵For more detail, see Dániel Margócsy, 'Advertising Cadavers in the Republic of Letters: Anatomical Publications in the Early Modern Netherlands’, British Journal for the History of Science 42 (2009), 187–210.

⁹⁶‘Die Wittwe hat diese Collection anfangs vor drey tausend Gulden gehalten, nachdem sie aber vieles verderben lassen, hat sie alles zusammen an den König in Preussen, vor drey hundert Gulden, welches ein Schande-Geld ist, verkaufft.’ Z. C. von Uffenbach, III, 418–9.

⁹⁷‘Ich hätte selbigen gern gekaufft, ich hoffte auch, weil sie das Brod kaum hat, ihn wohlfeil zu bekommen.’ Z. C. von Uffenbach, III, 419.