Ceitil - João III Group 1 - Castle with complete wall

The ceitil was Portugal's lowest-denomination coin throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and its name almost certainly derives from Ceuta — the North African city taken by the Portuguese in 1415, where the coin may have first circulated or been issued for local trade. By João III's reign, ceitis were the everyday currency of the poor, used for minor transactions at a time when Portugal's Atlantic empire was generating enormous silver and gold revenues that never trickled down to the copper economy. The two reference numbers here reflect longstanding disagreement among Portuguese specialists over how to organize João III's ceitil production into coherent groups.