Usually there is a lot of trouble trying to date French medieval coinage. If you are lucky, you can assign a coinage to a certain part of the ruler's reign, basing your assumptions on historical context, contemporary documents or stylistic details (like for instance in the early coinage of Vierzon), but many more times than not, what you have to acquiesce with is a dating that overlaps the full reign of the ruler, or even an immobilized issue, spanning many generations. This is why many numismatists seem to be disregarding the issue of dating altogether, focusing more on the readily available characteristics of a certain coinage, which can be drawn from the study of hoards, like a ballpark sequence of issues that circulated at a given time in a general area and the place that the certain coinage had inside that relative sequence. And then, by the first two decades of the 1300s, we start to have extensive historical and written data that dates issues with extreme accuracy. Even more, we do know about coinages (from known ordonnances) that are yet to be identified phisically in the discovered numismatic material. This mostly deals with Royal coinage, that by 1300 was already standardized in the form of the double system -- livre tournois and livre parisis, but by 1315/16, the King of France was more actively involved in the standardization and the regulation of the baronial coinage too. The primary result was that, because of Royal involvement, we now know of about two dozen baronial coinages that circulated in and (probably) after 1315 (Ordonnance de Lagny-sur-Marne, 1315), and about the subsequent retreat of the baronial coinage, while being replaced with the Royal types, as barons found it easier and more lucrative to just sell their minting rights to the Crown than bother to follow a (somewhat restrictive) monetary policy. To the issue at hand, after a longish hiatus (there's a debate to be held here, whether Louis X, Philippe V and Charles IV minted the basic denier tournois and denier parisis), Philippe VI de Valois, who ascended on April 1, 1328, started a new series of these so-called monnaies noires on September 6, 1329, the same day that he ordered a stabilization of the billon title -- 333/1000 at a poids theorique of 1.25-1.27g for a denier parisis and 305/1000 at a poids theorique of 1-1.12g for a denier tournois. The two coinages were set to circulate together at the older rate of 1.25 d. tournois for 1 d. parisis. The first page of the Ordonnance of September 6, 1329 that regulates the new monnaies noires, from a later copy, Chambre de Montpellier, armoire A 7 n° 181, fol. 29 v° ms. 4° 4, f° 179r°-184v° The re-establishment, the valuation and the exchange rate of this old coinage made new, along with the real silver value placed into it, carried well with the general public, after the many phases of debasement and inflation which took place between the second part of the reign of Philippe IV and the reign of Charles IV. Philippe VI de Valois (1328-1350) Specs: AR18mm 0.85g denier tournois 1er type, September 6, 1329 + PhILIPPVS ° REX; Cross pomettee + TVRONVS ° CIVIS °; Chateau tournois, no pellets, surmounted by cross over annulet. Duplessy 278, cf. Lafaurie 281, not in Ciani. This high silver standard was apparently kept at least until 1339, or more certainly 1343, when a new era of debasements and re-issues began, with the standard being lowered to 179/1000 for the denier tournois and 239/1000 for the parisis. This 1er type owns its identification and assignation to the coinage of September 6, 1329, due to the research by Jean Duplessy in the 1970s, detailed in Le tresor de Priziac (Morbihan), contribution a l'etude du monnayage de Philippe VI, published 1976 in Revue Numismatique 6e serie, XVIII. The description and datation of the types was confirmed again in 1999, when the second edition of Les Monnaies Francaises Royales I by Duplessy saw the light of print. Although the output of deniers tournois and parisii has been massive, these coins seem to be somewhat scarce today, especially in good condition. This might be due to lack of interest by the regular coin dealer in these "mundane" coins and/or due to the fact that it is very likely (as the hoard of Priziac with 15 specimens of 1er type, hidden between 1350 and 1351, shows) that these coins were hoarded starting with the 1340s and 1350s, as per Gresham's law. The debasement would be even more pronounced during the reign of Jean II.
Very interesting read. I've been branching out to early medieval coinage and this is good to know. Here's an imitation that looks similar from a lot I won from timeline a bit ago. You may remember helping me identify it: Greek/Thracian/Albanian Local issue copying the tournois of Arta around 1325 for Giovanni II Orsini of Kephalonia who ruled as a self-styled Despot of Romania (Epirus) from 1323 to 1335. Green patina denier tournois Legend: IOhS DESPOTVS DE ARTA CASTRV
