On the night of 21 to 22 November 1443, the troops of Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, seized Luxembourg City. From then on, the Duchy then remained in foreign hands for more than 400 years.

Even before he took the city, Philip the Good (1396-1467) had wanted to reform the Duchy’s monetary system. So in April 1443 he appointed Jacques Dupont, mayor of Namur, as custodian of the Luxembourg Mint, instructing him to strike a series of new coins: a gold florin (alloy), a double gros, a gros, a half gros, a quarter gros and a denier. For unknown reasons, none of these coins were issued except for the gold florin.

Philip the Good’s first florins were issued in the town of Marche, which was then part of the Duchy, between September and November 1443. Once he had taken Luxembourg City he had the mint transferred there, and the coins continued to be minted in Luxembourg while the Duke of Burgundy was in the city. The gold florin of Philip the Good, which commemorates the capture of the city by the Burgundians, also marked the end of uninterrupted coining at the Luxembourg mint.

Coining activity did not last long, and only five copies of this florin have survived. Two of them are now in our collection. In general, there was not much gold coining done in the Duchy of Luxembourg, as material supply problems were frequent. Only 4,602 Philippus florins were struck when the mint was reopened under Philip the Fair, and of these only six have survived.

Text | CC BY-NC | François Reinert and Cécile Arnould