A couple of Carolingian French Coins

We have some very knowledgeable historians on Coin Talk and I'm not one of them. I would love to do a historical writeup on these coins and the rulers but I won't copy and paste a bunch of stuff from the web. That's not fair to the author of the information or the people here who are smarter than I am in this field.

Anyway, here are three interesting Carolingian coins.

Louis the Pius (or the Fair), 822-840 was co-emperor with his father Charlemagne from 813.
Obv. +HLVDOVVICVS IMP
Rev. +XPISTIANA RELIGIO
20mm 1.60 grams
MEC 794
Charles the Bald 840-877 was son of Louis the Pius. He was king during the Viking raid of 845 when 120 Viking ships raided Paris led by the famous Ragnar Lothbrok.
Obv. +CARLVS REX R
Rev. +MET X VLLO around monogram
21mm 1.67 grams
MEC 936

Charles the Simple (or the Straightforward) 898-954 has another Viking connection. He was King when Rollo raided Paris in 911 with whom a treaty was negotiated creating the Duchy of Normandy.
Obv. CARLVS REX I
Rev. MET/ALO in two lines
22mm .93 grams
Roberts 3863

Please jump in with any Carolingian coins or information. And please let me know if I got anything wrong. I'm always wanting to improve my knowledge.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

Your last coin seems to be this one: https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=3342572

I have seen it being offered before that in 2011.

It is probably Boudeau 413, p. 53 and was probably minted as an immobilise by the Count of Poitou around 950 rather than under the authority of Charles le Simple (he died in 929), so rather a feudal coinage than a Carolingian one.

 

Yes it is. The coin came with the CNG tag for Auction 263 Lot 452 dated August 31, 2011. Thank you for the link. Does this mean it was meant to imitate a coin of Charles the Simple? Maybe to make it more acceptable?

 

It is a continuation of an earlier issue, which in the case of Melle lasted for around 200 years. Your coin is one of the early ones. The point was to actually feed the market with coins people liked and accepted, in good standard (Melle minted coins from the local silver ore), hence many medieval coinages lasted for a very long time with little changes in their design.

 

@seth77 , thanks to your guidance I found it in The Silver Coins of Medieval France by Roberts on page 234 as coin 3863. It's in the early Feudal section and they call it a copy of a prototype of Charles the Bald and minted as late as the 13th century. Interesting information.

 

Love the coins @alde!

 

Always happy to see medieval coins here.

 

Those are some great coins @alde the Charles the Bald is my favorite. I would love to add coins of the Carolingians to my collection.

 

Here is my only Carolingian coin. An obol of Louis the Pious, from Melle, minted from 819 to 822.

 

That Charles the Bald is a beauty!

Here's my example of the Louis the Pious:


Here's another coin with Viking & Carolingian connections, though not Carolingian itself. Odo was the Count of Paris who successfully resisted the Vikings (including Rollo) when they besieged the city in 885-86. The emperor at the time, Charles the Fat, ultimately paid off the invaders, much to the disgust of Odo and many other Parisians. When Charles the Fat died in 888, Odo was elected as the first non-Carolingian King of the Franks.

Odo's name goes across the middle of the obverse, with the O's looking like weird crosses.

 

Nice coins everyone. I would love to find an Odo. This is such an interesting time in European history and there are plenty of different coins to represent it. I would also love to add a Charlemagne to my collection. Maybe some day.

 

Wonderful coins all! Alas I do not have any from this period.

 

Oh, you need to change that.

 

I need some too... some day.

 

Very nice coins Albert, and I enjoyed the write-ups, stolen from someone else or not

I do have a question, not meant as a dig at all. How do vikings with 120 ships raid Paris? It's not exactly on the ocean. It would I'm sure add some interest to your write-up, as opposed (at least to me) to a head-scratching moment

 

They went right up the Seine. It took them right to the middle of medieval Paris.

 

Really! I cannot even imagine 120 Viking ships on the Seine!

 

They went up smaller rivers than that. They were pretty determined. The the History Channel show Vikings shows them taking their boats out of the water and manually taking them around areas of the river that were not navigable. I don't know how much truth there is to that but it's very possible.

 

I can’t speak to this specifically happening no when sacking Paris, but longboats were light enough that the could be carried - particularly since about 60 men (if I remember correctly) would be in a ship

 

The more I read about the Vikings the more impressed I am with them. They sure influenced the direction of history in Europe.