Denarius Dei
The Denarius Dei (also: Gottespfennig, Arrah, Draufgeld, Weinkauf, Leitkauf, Hartpfennig etc.) is a small amount of money that was paid in the Middle Ages to seal a contract .
Originally, the Denarius Dei was attached to a sales contract. Both the contract and the divine penny were placed in a so-called divine chest for safe keeping. Later the Denarius Dei only referred to the money paid to confirm a contract, which was then often only paid symbolically. In Warmia, servants and maidservants who hired themselves out for a year usually received 10 groschen as god's penny in the second half of the 17th century .
literature
- Meinolf Schumacher : "The wynkouff is already down ..." (Sebastian Brant, "Narrenschiff" 85,17). "Buying wine" and "Lei (t) kauf" between legal language geography, history of mentality and historical metaphorology . In: "Words and Things" as a methodological principle and research direction , ed. by Ruth Schmidt-Wiegand , Part 2 (German Linguistics, Vol. 147–148). Georg Olms, Hildesheim 1999, pp. 411-425 ( digitized version ).
Footnotes
- ^ Franz Buchholz: Pictures from Wormditt's past . Verlag Bruno Kraft, Wormditt, 2nd increased and improved edition. 1935, p. 79.