An odd issue of currency, not of paper, but of leather, took place in
Italy a few years before Polo's birth. The Emperor Frederic II., at the
siege of Faenza in 1241, being in great straits for money, issued pieces
of leather stamped with the mark of his mint at the value of his Golden
Augustals. This leather coinage was very popular, especially at Florence,
and it was afterwards honourably redeemed by Frederic's Treasury. Popular
tradition in Sicily reproaches William the Bad among his other sins with
having issued money of leather, but any stone is good enough to cast at a
dog with such a surname.
[Ma Twan-lin mentions that in the fourth year of the period Yuen Show
(B.C. 119), a currency of white metal and deer-skin was made. Mr.
Vissering (Chinese Currency, 38) observes that the skin-tallies "were
purely tokens, and have had nothing in common with the leather-money,
which was, during a long time, current in Russia. This Russian skin-money
had a truly representative character, as the parcels were used instead of
the skins from which they were cut; the skins themselves being too bulky
and heavy to be constantly carried backward and forward, only a little
piece was cut off, to figure as a token of possession of the whole skin.
The ownership of the skin was proved when the piece fitted in the hole."
Mr. Rockhill (Rubruck, 201 note) says:
