Billon denier tournois (debased issue)

Philip IV made the huge costs of the wars in Flanders and Guyenne out of the coinage itself. Recoinage (mutation), taking the margin from lowered fineness and weight, became his largest source of revenue, and the depreciation of 1296–99 exceeded the war spending of those same years. This is the material evidence of that debasement: an alloy coin with the silver taken down and base metal mixed in, weighing only 0.383 grams. Under the law of the day it was a legitimate power of the king, yet the poet Dante, in the Paradiso of the Divine Comedy, named him a falsifier of coin. Lawful and yet a betrayal — this single piece carries that doubleness.