500 Years of Gold Ducat Coins of Venice
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Updated:
8/21/2025
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The word Ducat is from Medieval Latin “ducalis” meaning a “Duke’s coin”. The Venetian Gold Ducat had a purity of 99.47% gold with a weight of (around) 3.545 grams. This represented the highest purity that medieval metallurgy could attain. These were struck by the Venetian Republic first under Doge Giovanni Dandolo starting October 31, 1284. These were introduced to have the same specifications as the florin of Florence created in 1252. The Venetian ducats wound up being called zecchino (sequin) because the zecca was the monetary workshop (mint).
They kept hammering them out in the same fineness and weight, and with the same motifs on both sides, until the surrender to Napoleon and suppression of the Venetian Republic by the Treaty of Campo Formio in 1797.
For more than 500 years these ducats of Venice all bore the same inscriptions and imagery, except for the name of the doges, one after another, serving their terms as executives of the Venetian Republic.
Obverse : The Doge receiving the gonfalon at the hands of Saint Mark. Along the periphery the legends, S.M.VENET. on left [NAME OF DOGE], on right continued by DVX to the right of the vertical banner, usually a banner with a cross. The staff had nothing or a small flag on top and changed after 1659 to a cross.
Reverse : The Standing figure of Christ in Glory facing forward with right hand bent upwards within convex lens known as a mandorla with 11-13 stars with 5 or 6 points along inner periphery. The legend SIT T XPE DAT QTV REGIS ISTE DVCAT along the periphery stands for Sit tibi, Christe, datus, quem tu regis, iste ducatus which translates as "To thee, O'Christ, duchy, which thou rulest, be dedicated". On reverse the legend had the word DVCAT which changed after 1655 to DVCA.
These ducats were for 500 years an internationally accepted and imitated currency. Imitations were produced in the eastern Mediterranean, the Levant, and as far away as India.
Ferdinand and Isabella, sponsors of Columbus’ voyage of discovery in 1492, in carrying out their great monetary reform by the Pragmatic of Medina del Campo of 13 June 1497, took the value of the Venetian ducat as that which their excelente should follow. In the early years of the century, when the Venetian ducat circulated in great quantities in Egypt under the name of īfranty, the Mamluk ruler An-Nāṣīr Faraj (1399–1412) made his new gold coin, called after him the nāsery, identical in weight with the ducat, and so a few years later did Al-Ashraf (1422–38), while even Muhammad the Conqueror took the ducat as the standard for his altin, the gold coin of the Ottoman Empire, struck for the first time in 1478.
Various changes in design offer a means of identifying each ducat uniquely. The lettering in the legend and the presence of stars, the character of the Doge's cap, the disposition of the figure of Christ and the nimbus in the oval, the number and arrangement of the stars and the number of points in each star. The presence or absence of a beard, evidently depended upon the appearance of the individual Doges.
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500 Years of Gold Ducat Coins of Venice
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