Up to 1375 the German gold coin was minted in close imitation of the Florentine florin. The weight was 53 grs., as was that of the Florentine piece; and the lily and St. John, the guardian saint of Florence, were both employed in the two coins, the German piece being indeed issued at first under the denomination, Florin d'or.
From the above-named date, however, and onwards, each succeeding and various power altered type, weight, or alloy, with more or less arbitrariness, but always to the increasing of the confusion of the system as a whole. And it was to remedy this confusion, or to reduce it somewhat, that the monetary union of the four electoral princes of the Rhine was established (8th June 1386), under the lead of the three towns, Frankfort, Speyer, and Worms; under which the four princes, Frederick, Archbishop of Cologne, Carl, Archbishop of Treves, Adolf, Archbishop of Mainz, and Rupert, Count Palatine of the Rhine, agreed upon a common minting of gold gulden. According to the treaty, 66 such gulden were to be minted from the Cologne mark of gold, each of the alloy of 22 carats 6 grs. gold, and 1 carat 6 grs. silver. In 1402 this coinage was confirmed at Mainz by the Mint edict of Rupert II.4
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Seven years later, 1409, the three spiritual electors, Frederick, Archbishop of Cologne, John, Archbishop of Mainz, and Werner, Archbishop of Treves, made a new and slightly different treaty, for the purpose of again reducing the alloy of the gulden from 22 1⁄2 to 22 carats.
At this rate the system was, in the same year, at Speyer, formally accepted for themselves by the Netherlands, and at Cologne also, in 1409, by the Empire generally.
The detailed and various changes which the independent princes and powers of Germany subsequently made, it is out of the question to follow. To instance only in brief. In 1419 Frederick of Brandenburg