Note 117 — Chapter XXII · : Industry and Trade in Pontdebois. The Great Fair.

Mediæval coinages varied to such an extreme extent that it is almost impossible to make correct general statements about their modern values. In the time of Philip Augustus, probably the North French money table was something like this:

1 pound (livre)—2 marks—20 (earlier 24) sous—240 deniers—4760 obols.

A sou, merely a money of account, was equal to about 20 modern francs ($3.86 gold), and the denier, a regular coin, to about one franc (19.3 cents, gold). The copper obols were thus worth about one cent. But money in the Feudal Age had a purchasing power equal to at least ten times what it is to-day, and attempts at close estimating are decidedly futile.