Merovingian coinage....

These are all rare to extremely rare/ many are unique. The Franks after defeating the Visigoths at Vouille in 507AD established Kingship over what is now France/ Low Countries/ part of Germany/ Austria.
This was called the Merovingian Empire. After Clovis died/ the Kingdom was partitioned into four separate Kingdoms/ Neustria/ Burgundy/ Aquitaine/ Austrasia. Later Karl der Grosse would create the Carolingian Empire/ crowned in 800AD as first Holy Roman Emperor.
Please add your Merovingian coins.

I will start with....Merovingian Empire/ divided into four kingships
Austrasia/ Auvergne
AV Triens ND coin is unique/ only the second coin known from this King
Brioud Mint
Theudebert II 595-612AD King of Austrasia

 

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Never heard of Austrasia before. Nice coin

 

What a great coin! Most of the Merovingian dynasty are remembered for being weak monarchs, with the mayors of the palace having the real power until they eventually made themselves kings. Most Merovingian coins are in the names of the city of manufacture and the moneyer's name. The king's name is absent on most coins. Very rare exceptions like your coin. Regal inscribed coins are extremely rare. Well done!

I have a few Merovingian coins but only one regal inscribed coin, of Charibert II, king of Aquitaine, son of Clotaire II and brother of Dagobert I. Clotaire, who united the Merovingian holdings, subsequently divided his kingdom unevenly between his two sons, with Dagobert receiving the lion's share. Charibert was only king for a short time, 629-632, and died young, probably of disease but possibly murdered by his brother.



Tremissis of Charibert II, king of Aquitaine 629-632
Mint: Banassac
Moneyer: Maximinus
Belfort 697
O: MAXIMIN VS M.
R: CHARIBERTVS REX

 

Austrasia was the eastern part of the Merovingian and later Carolingian Empires. Austrasia included parts of modern Germany and the Low Countries. The counterpart in the west was called Neustria.

Here is a very interesting and excessively rare Dekanummi of Theodebert I (534-48). The only other Merovingian Deka was sold in the Ratto auction (famous catalog) in the 1930s.

The coin was minted at Marseille possibly to tie into the Ostrogothic dekanummi, which were the only other dekanummi around in the west. In fact, it is possible, that the monogram is not that of Theodebert, but of Amalaric.

 

Just, Wow to all three.

 

Here is another.....now have lots of time being "unemployed" Got this from Triton Auction.
Merovingians
Neustria
Moneyer Angiulfus
Struck at Orleans (not where i am living)
620-40AD

 

That coin may be a good candidate for "Post your ugyliest coin"

 

John, Great score ! Simi-realistic portraits on Merovingian coinage are RARE .

 

My only Merovingian coin. On to Victobi !!!

 

It's time to formally add one representative Merovingian coin (silver) to my collecting 'bucket list.'
@Hrefn, how early is that one? I'm really challenged for references for these in print. (Only Roberts, Silver Coins of Medieval France --right, American; an overview from existing sources; very good for what it's good for.) I never guessed that the Merovingians were imitating Byzantine, the way that other tribal kingdoms were doing from the 6th if not 5th centuries.

 

@+VGO.DVCKS here are my notes on this coin, if this helps. #84 is a Merovingian Solidus modeled on Anastasius (491-518AD.). Mint: possibly Rheims. His reign approximated that of Clovis. Clovis was baptized in Rheims. Very similar to MEC I 344, noted by Grierson to be more likely Merovingian than Burgundian. Note the spelling VICTOBI and the backward N in CONOB. This coin is also ex: Subjack collection but I bought it from Gordon Andreas Singer on 11/6/1999 for CMT when I recognized it from one of the Subjack sales catalogs, Nummorum Auctiones 14 lot#22. It went under the hammer again in Nummorum Auctiones 15 #1709, 15 June 1999. And again on 9 October 1999 in auction 16 #628, here attributed definitely to the Merovingians. Either no one wanted it or someone failed to pay, which is odd because Merovingian full solidi are uncommon.

 

Here’s MEC 1 #344

 

Bringing this thread down from the stratosphere (Wow to all these coins! ) here is a late 7th century fourrée of a Merovingian tremissis. It appears to be based on coins of the moneyer Marcovaldo, known from the Amboise mint near Tours in southern Neustria.

It's the worst portrait in my collection! (It's also a published coin, in Monnaies de Sites et Trésors de L'Antiquité aux Temps Modernes, vol. II by Jean-Marc Doyen and Jean-Patrick Duchemin, European Centre for Numismatic Studies 2018, p. 197.) Not in any other reference books.

And here is an early 8th century Merovingian denier minted in St. Denis/Catullacum:

The BnF has another example, and there are later issues copying this coin in much poorer style.

I find the Merovingian coinage particularly fascinating! Too bad it's typically so expensive.

 

Thanks for the thread guys. So much to add to my coin bucket list.

 

I'm willing to sacrifice my collecting skills in order to save yours. Please send that "ugly" one to me, immediately! You have an amazing collection. I wouldn't want this "yuk" coin to bring your collection down. Please think of yourself. Send it first thing tomorrow. I'm only doing this for you, because I love your collection so much, I'm willing to go the extra mile, for you, of course!

 

Many thanks for the further elucidation, @Hrefn. The fascination of this stuff, along with sceattas, translates very readily through the fog of my effectively total ignorance!

 

Here is my only Merovingian coin. As others mentioned earlier, if they weren't so damn expensive I would love to have more.



AV Tremissis (13 mm, 1.31 grams, 9h), Struck circa A.D. 570/580-670, Rouen, France mint, moneyer Aigoaldus

Obverse: + ROTO[…] MO CIV, bust right
Reverse: AIGOALDO M’O’ (D retrograde), small cross within wreath
References: British Numismatic Journal 58 (1988), Coin Register No. 100 (this coin); Fitzwilliam Museum Corpus of Early Medieval Coins 1988.0100 (this coin); Coinage & History of the North Sea World c. 500-1250, page 50-51 (this coin); cf. NM Type 21-1A, 11; cf. Belfort 3840; Prou 250; MEC 1 –
Provenance: CNG 82 (September 16, 2009), Lot 1169; Stack’s (January 12, 2009), Lot 2383, Golden Horn collection; Künker 121 (March 12-13, 2007), Lot 160, G.W. De Wit collection; purchased from Spink, London, 1996; found at Knighton, Oxfordshire, England, circa 1986.

In the EMC 1988.0100 reference David Metcalf comments that “the likelihood is that this coin came directly into Wessex across the Channel.”

In the Coinage & History of the North Sea World reference it was noted that this coin appears as duplicate entries in the EMC, 1988.0100 and 1989.9003, referring to the same coin. In the latter entry Metcalf describes the findspot as near Swindon, Wiltshire, but this is just over the county border from Knighton in Oxfordshire.

I originally bid on this coin unsuccessfully in the Stack's auction of 2009 where its full history was mentioned. Then later that same year I saw it again at the CNG auction but surprisingly without any mention of its provenance. I jumped on it and got it below the estimate. The power of provenance!

 

It is fantastic to have such a provenance.

Below is a coin from my collection. It was found in England (Lincolnshire - productive site).* According to Grierson, coins that show a stylized Victoria with dotted wings come from Alamannia, i.e. have been struck in what is now southwestern Germany, Alsace or northwestern Switzerland. The Alamanni were a Germanic people, who came under Frankish suzerainty shortly before AD 500. The coin probably dates to the early 7th century.
Weight: 1.37g

*The 'South Lincolnshire productive site' is in the parish of Heckington, in North Kesteven. The site is exceptional for the quantity of continental coins of the 7th and 8th centuries, implying it had a significant role in North Sea trade. It may have suffered a real decline or been abandoned by the 9th century.

 

Here is another interesting Tremissis or Triens of the Merovingian period. The coin is special in several respect. Indeed, I received an offer from a Dutch museum to purchase the coin.

The coin was minted at Maastricht in The Netherlands. The city’s Latin name Traiectum indicates its important location at a passage (traiectum) over the river Maas.

Maastricht may even have been home to a royal palace, as some of the coins of the monneyer Godofredus have the city name TRIECTO followed by PA for Palatium.

The Merovingian mint of Maastricht boasted a series of at least ten monneyers, including Godofredus, Ansoaldus, the well known Madelinus and Thrasemundus, who made the coin at hand.

Obv.: (T)RI ECTOFI(T), i.e. TRIECTO FIT, for Traiectum fitur, meaning ‘produced at Maastricht’.
Rev: THRASEMVNDVS.
Weight: 1.3g (13mm)
Thrasemundus worked in the early decades of the 7th century.
Found: England (Lincolnshire - productive site)

What is interesting is that the coin shows a helmeted bust (copied from a Roman coin), which is highly unusual for Merovingian coins.

More on this coin can be found here:
https://www.academia.edu/36582523/A_Rare_Coin_of_Thrasemundus_of_Maastricht

 

Here is the link to an article on the 37 Merovingian tremisses from the Sutton Hoo ship burial:

The Merovingian Coins (arcgis.com)

The article has a map which shows the geographical distribution of the mints from where the 37 coins came. Unsurprisingly, the bulk of the coins were minted in what is now France, i.e. the western part of the Merovingian kingdom (Neustria). Only four coins come from modern Belgium, 3 from modern Germany and 1 from what is now Switzerland, which would have counted as Burgundy in the 7th century.

None of the coins came from The Netherlands, despite the proximity to the Sutton Hoo location. This underlines the great rarity of Merovingian coins from the eastern regions of the Merovingian kingdom (Austrasia). While Merovingian gold coins are very rare in general, coins from Neustria are relatively much more common than coins from Austrasia, which is, why the two tremisses I showed above are so exceptional.