Botdrager groot

A lion seated wearing a helmet — the Flemish silver groot that people called the botdrager. As the wool trade grew larger it created payments that small silver of the penny class could not meet, and the Low Countries entered the world of the groot, the large silver coin modelled on the gros tournois. The lion groot is a type that appeared in Flanders under Louis de Male, and this piece was struck for Philip the Bold, the first Burgundian count of Flanders. The back is cut with a long cross and a shield. A neighbour's debasement melts good coin down and draws it in — in a century of division in which such chains of debasement were the ordinary state of things, this is money that lived at the front line of the minting rivalry between Flanders and Brabant.