![]() ![]() A goose would set you back 6d though (1375 price). Your medieval penny would get you 2lbs of cheese (in the late 12th century), or two dozen eggs (in the 14th century), or two chickens (also in the 14th century). Ale was around 1 to 1.5 pence a gallon (in the 14th century), so you could get around 8 pints for a day’s wages. Good wine was 8d per gallon (in 1331), though cheaper alternatives were available if you weren’t fussy. A modest baronial income was around £600 a year, 300 times that of a labourer.Įleanor Janega visits Grocers' Hall to explore the lives of those who earned in medieval London. To provide some context, a knight could expect to receive 4s, or 48d a day. Carpenters were limited to a wage of 4d a day, masons to 5d. Coopers (barrel makers) would receive 3d a day. Haymaking could pay no more than 1d a day. Edward III’s government set payments at pre-pandemic levels. In 1351, Parliament set the wages for various jobs in the face of rising wages during the Black Death, which made labour more scarce and forced up wages. Typical incomesĭuring the middle ages, a labourer could expect to earn £2 a year, which meant 2 pence per day. He had to transport and store chests and barrels packed with chinking silver penny coins, and would lose a vast amount in the Wash, on the east coast of England, in 1216. In the early 13th century, King John’s broken relationship with the Pope made him incredibly wealthy as he gathered the church’s income alongside his own. A gold noble was beyond the reach of all but the wealthiest elite. There was no shilling coin, or pound coin. Image Credit: The Portable Antiquities Scheme/ The Trustees of the British Museum, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commonsĭespite these complex measures of money, the only coin most people would ever have seen during the middle ages in England was a silver penny. If you had $7.04 billion available to repay a debt, you would be #102 in the 2010 Forbes list of billionaires.A collection of medieval silver pennies issued in the reigns of Edward I and Edward II and second richest in the world, has a net worth of $53 billion as of 2010: $35,200 x 200,000 = $7,040,000,000 $7.04 billionįor perspective, $7.04 billion is approximately one-eighth of the total wealth of Bill Gates. Therefore, if 100 denarii equaled four months’ salary, at current minimum wage, it would be equivalent to $11,733.33, which is substantially more than the NIV footnote of “a few dollars.”Įarning $35,200 per year at minimum wage, how much would you earn in 200,000 years to equal 10,000 talents? Thus, their annual wage, assuming they work 50 weeks as above, would be: $704 per week x 50 weeks = $35,200 Under California law, they would be paid 40 hours a week at $8 an hour and 32 hours of overtime at $12 an hour for a weekly wage of $704. From Matthew 20:1-16, we know that laborers worked 12 hours per day, which is 72 hours per week. What would 100 denarii and 10,000 talents look like in today’s dollars? Currently, California’s minimum wage is $8.00 per hour. You only have 9,999 more talents to go.”įrom this, we can easily see that if it takes 20 years to earn one talent, then repaying 10,000 talents would require working 200,000 YEARS! How absurd then for the servant to beg for mercy and tell the king that he would “pay back everything.” As a day laborer, he had no hope-almost literally “not in a million years”-of ever repaying his debt. You have worked for 20 years and have now earned 6,000 denarii. After 20 years of such labor, you will have earned 6,000 denarii.Īt this point, the king would say to his debtor, “Congratulations. Now suppose you continued to work as a day laborer earning 300 denarii each year. Therefore, 100 denarii was one-third of a year’s salary, or four months’ wages. Allowing approximately two weeks for various Jewish holidays, the typical laborer worked 50 weeks of the year and earned an annual wage of 300 denarii (50 weeks x 6 days). The denarius was one day’s wage for a typical day laborer, who worked six days a week with a Sabbath day of rest. The NIV footnotes usually say that this is equivalent to “several million dollars” versus “a few dollars.”Ī more accurate comparison is based on how much time it would take to earn these respective amounts of money. Matthew 18:23-35 records the parable of the two debtors: one owed the king 10,000 talents, and one owed his fellow servant 100 denarii. ![]()
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