MENUT: COIN OF VALENCIA (SPAIN)
Menut (dinero menut), 1667-1699: Kingdom of Valencia (Spain)
Ruler: Charles II of Spain (Carlos II El Hechizado) — the last Habsburg ruler of the Spanish Empire.
The year indicated on the coin is completely lost.
Stylized plant ornament (flowering tree) inside a beaded circle — so called in Latin "Arbor ad modum floris" (the traditional heraldic symbol of Valencia).
Portrait of King Carlos II.
More than 90% of obverse and reverse legends are lost: "VALENCIA ..." and "CAROLUS II REX".
For several centuries in a row, the Kingdom of Valencia issued dinero with an almost unchanged design as a whole: only the names of other monarchs were indicated (but today almost all coins of this type have practically lost the legends) and slightly different busts of the rulers were depicted (but with the then completely imperfect technique of performing images on small coins, and again due to the poor state of preservation of similar coins, most of these busts are very similar to each other). To be honest, it is very easy to confuse some of the menut varieties: I admit that this coin may be misidentified...
- Silver (billon): 15 mm - 1.15 g
- Reference price: 10$
COIN MENUT — WHERE & WHEN (coins catalog: by names & emitents)
- KINGDOM OF VALENCIA, SPAIN (13th-17th centuries): menut (dinero) = 1/18 real = 1/240 libra as conventional, accounting monetary unit
MENUT (menudo, dinero manut / menudo) as coin name.
Menut or menudo is a small billon and copper coin of the Kingdom of Valencia, issued from the 13th to the 17th century (approximately: somewhat contradictory data are given in various numismatic catalogs).
The name of the coin menut translated from the Catalan language (used in Valencia and Barcelona) means "small".
In general, the coin was called Dinero Menut or Dinero Menudo ("small dinero"). However, the term "menut" (sometimes: "menudo") is also used among numismatists.
It is quite easy to distinguish menut from other Spanish dinero: all of them contain a portrait of the king and a characteristic floral ornament (so-called, in Latin, "arbor ad modum floris" — "flowering tree"). Both images were contained within circles lined with beads/peas, outside of which was placed the legend: the name of the ruler and the inscription "VALENCIA".
In the Italian medieval states (Genoa, Sardinia...) there was also a similar coin — the minuto ("Denaro Minuto").
