A Group of Interesting Coins: Medieval Edition

This is the third installment in a series of vignette style threads that I decided to undertake in order to help me catch up on write ups for interesting coins in my collection that I haven’t posted before. I have previously posted two such threads

• A Group of Interesting Coins: Greek Edition
• A Group of Interesting Coins: Roman Edition

This thread will focus on medieval coins. Later, I will post one final thread in the series covering some interesting Byzantine coins.

Writing this post has served to remind me just how critical the members I interact with on CoinTalk have become to the study of my collection. I would not have been able to understand any of the below coins nearly as well as I do without the help of several of the knowledgeable members who are kind enough to share their knowledge and coins with others. I will be posting individual thank you notes for each coin in recognition of the help I received from the members here but I also want to extend a general thank you to the members who consistently help others on the forum.

A Crusader Coin Showing a Converted Roman Temple?

Crusaders, Duchy of Athens
Regency of Helena Angelina for Guy II de la Roche (AD 1287-1291)
BI Denier Tournois, Thebes mint, struck ca. AD 1287-1288(?)
Dia.: 19 mm
Wt.: 0.82 g
Obv.: + ⦂ ThEBE ⦂ CIVIS ⦂ Chateau tournois
Rev.: + ⦂ G ⦂ DVX ⦂ ATENES ⦂ Cross pattee
Ref.: Malloy 86, Tzamalis GR105

My Notes:
This coin is doubly interesting because it is both a crusader coin as well as a fascinating architecture type. As a further bonus, the legends are clear enough that even I (with my limited medieval experience) can read them clearly. It was struck in the Duchy of Athens by Helena Angelina as regent for her son Guy II de la Roche. The Duchy of Athens and the other Crusader states of Greece were formed in the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade. I can’t possibly improve upon the excellent thread posted by @seth77 on this subject here so I will not attempt to. Instead I will only say that the Fourth Crusade was a fiasco of an operation that decided it was easier to sack Constantinople and conquer parts of the Byzantine Empire than it was to do any of the things the crusade initially set out to do. Some folks were definitely excommunicated...

At first glance the type looks like it depicts a cathedral. When I first became aware of the design that is what I assumed it was. However, after some research on CT I came across the below graphic that shows a progression of the design from what is clearly a temple into the “cathedral-like” design on my OP. The early examples were struck by Loius the Pious ca. AD 800.


Page from Poey d'Avant (1864) (Courtesy of John Scholefield in post linked below)

I think it is not at all a stretch to think that in its initial conception we could be looking at a pagan temple that has been converted into a Christian place of worship. Some of the most famous buildings of antiquity (such as the Pantheon) were converted into early Christian churches. Initially, the appearance of these buildings would not have been altered substantially. However, over time many converted temples were significantly altered in appearance. I don’t know if this has anything to do with the changes to the design of the coins over time or if this was just simple artistic drift over the centuries. Probably more of the latter but I still think it is an interesting parallel worthy of note.


This is probably the poster child for temples that have been converted into churches. This is the Temple of Faustina in the Roman Forum. (Author's Photo)

Thank you: @seth77 , @John Scholefield
I would not have known how interesting these coins really were if it wasn’t for the post from Seth that I link to above. His thread provided enough information that I was able to understand what this coin was when I saw it at auction (it was misattributed) and I was able to identify it more specifically thanks to the excellent information he provided in that thread. If you haven’t read that thread I cannot recommend it enough. It is one of my favorite threads on medieval coins on the forum.

In addition, John’s posts in this thread helped me better understand the evolution of the type and how it could be related to temple architecture. It was from that thread that I came across the above graphic of the evolution of the design.

King John of Magna Carta… also the Wimpy Lion from Robin Hood

Medieval England
King John Lackland (AD 1199 – 1216)
AR Short Cross Penny, London mint, struck ca. AD 1207 – 1210
Dia.: 18.5 mm
Wt.: 0.6 g
Obv.: HENRICVS REX; Crowned bust of king holding scepter
Rev.: +ABEL.ON.LVNDE; Short voided cross with quatrefoil in each angle, pellet stops
Class 5c (N. 971; S. 1352)

My Notes:
In most histories, King John of England is regarded as one of the worst monarchs to sit on the English throne. Most notably, he managed to lose almost the entirety of the Angevin Empire during his reign. The best thing that can be said about his leadership is that he antagonized his nobility so much that they forced him to sign the Magna Carta. Not a great resume. John’s terrible reputation has led to all sorts of legends and stories being set in his time by later writers, such as Robin Hood and Ivanhoe. I encourage you to check out this thread by @TheRed that speaks a bit more eloquently about King John and his background (and shows a fantastic coin!).

I have known who King John was for almost the entirety of my life thanks to the Disney cartoon Robin Hood. Upon reaching adulthood(…ish) I was very disappointed to learn that King John was not a scrawny talking lion with a habit of sucking his thumb. Oh well.



This coin, like many short cross pennies, was cut to make change in the middle ages. The voided cross design helped facilitate this. I have read that a penny during this period would have been a day’s wage for a skilled laborer and would have bought two gallons of ale. I like to think that the owner of my coin was trying to cut back a bit and only required one gallon of ale that day.

Thank you: @Ryro , @FitzNigel , @TheRed
I received this coin from The Scooby himself as part of a holiday exchange. I was struggling to narrow the attribution down between John and Henry III since all of the indicators to differentiate that I knew about were on the missing part of the bust. I reached out to two folks I knew would be able to help; @FitzNigel and @TheRed. Needless to say I was not disappointed. They both were willing to check their libraries and provided great information that helped me narrow it down. I was able to learn a lot about this coin that would have been impossible for me if I wouldn’t have had these two specialists as resources. Thanks guys!

Early Feudal Coinage of France

Feudal France
Anonymous; Bishopric of Le Puy-en-Velay
BI Denier, Le Puy mint, struck ca. 11th – 12th century AD
Dia.: 18 mm
Wt.: 0.9 g
Obv.: Cross with four arms
Rev.: Cross with six arms

My Notes:
The city and Bishopric of Le Puy were formed around Mont Anis where a shrine to the Virgin Mary and then a Christian cathedral replaced an earlier pagan holy site (ca. 5th century?). The city was the starting point of the most popular pilgrimage route of the Middle Ages in France. French kings as far back as Charlemagne visited the location. There was a legend that the Virgin Mary had appeared to a sick widow at the site.

The bishopric of Le Puy was unusual in that it received the right to mint its own coins in AD 924. It vied with a rival mint under the Polignac family. This meant that neither mint could debase the coins for fear that the opposing mint would gain supremacy as the dominant currency of the region. The right of the bishopric to mint coins was reaffirmed by the French king in the 11th century.


Le Puy-en-Velay with the Cathedral shown at right and Mont Anis at left. (Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Thank you: @Theodosius , @seth77 , @Ryro
This was a holiday gift from everyone’s favorite fine style fanatic; @Theodosius . For a long time I didn’t know how to even start to attribute. Google searches for “pronged clover shaped think-y on silver coin” proved no help at all. It wasn’t until I posted the coin to Seth’s thread here that I learned from Ryro that this coin was from Le Puy-en-Velay. Seth followed up with help on the time period and the rest was just fun history researching from there. Thank you for the help guys!

References
https://www.cointalk.com/threads/a-fleeting-view-of-athens-as-realm-of-the-frankokratia.351376/

https://www.cointalk.com/threads/help-in-identifying-a-denier-tournois.376745/

https://www.cointalk.com/threads/john-lackland-the-rotten-king-of-england.304915/

https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/A_Book_of_the_Cevennes/Le_Velay

Pile on
Please post anything and everything you feel is relevant. A few suggestions;

• Cathedrals or temples on medieval coins
• Any and all Deniers
• Feudal Coins
• Crusader Coins
• Coins of historical figures made into cartoons
• Coins you needed help from CT members to identify
• Anything at all...

 

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I always enjoy your posts and will go back and catch up with the prior threads on your interesting coins! Thank you for taking the time to share these coins and what you have learned with us.

Please enjoy the holiday season and the new year!

LaC

 

Great group of coins Thoroughly enjoyed reading this thread!
And thanks for the shout out the great(ish) one.
I've an imitation converted Roman temple (and yep, is that Green in hand):

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

I think Timeline misidentified the Lot they sold me as a group of Henry III's. I'm so glad you were able to make heads or tails (with a little help from some friends) of the half!
Here's another from that lot that ended up being king John, class 5 or early 6, Samuel:

And to dispel the bad press, here's a new take on king John that'll change folks minds about him.

And lastly, I just so happened to pick up this snack as both sides remind of bosses on shields:

Feudal coins
AUVERGNE - BISHOPRIC OF LE PUY - ANONYMOUS
Obole AR, 1200-1290 CE, Mint name / Town : Le Puy, 18 mm
1 h. 1,00 g.
Rarity : R3
Obverse : + POIES, Croix aux bouts arrondis
Reverse: .+. DELPVEI, Rosace à six feuilles
Bd.374 (5 f.) - PA.2238 (49/3)
Ex: Zeus

 

Nice looking coins @Curtisimo! Perhaps I missed it, but isn’t the design of the Denier Tournois based on the church of St. Martin’s in Tours? The original is now gone, so I don’t know if we know what it looked like, or if the design on the coin was just a basic chapel design…

 

My only medieval coin is from Secret Saturn 2020.

This appears to be a douzain of Henri IV

 

Curtis, Excellent article . I'm always fascinated when I see medieval split-coinage. One half of the split British penny you posted would only weigh .03 gm . Silver must have been very valuable in the 13th century. People can get very resourceful when there is a monetary shortage. During the U.S. Civil War the government authorized the use of postage stamps for use as small change when there was a coin shortage, much to the chagrin of shop keepers .

 

Thanks @FitzNigel ! As to your question I wouldn’t presume to think I know more about the iconography than you would. As always I am interested in your take when it comes to medieval coinage. My research has led me believe that the temple coins of Louis the Pius developed into the chateau tournois design through the progression shown in the OP diagram.

This photo is from CNG and shows the supposed inspiration for the design according to the hypothesis. Seems plausible to me. I thought the possibility was actually quite fascinating.

 

Very interesting !

The French numismatist Jean Babelon proposed a hypothesis about the Carolingian temple with the legend XPISTIANA RELIGIO. Could it be an ideal image of Solomon's Temple? (Jean BABELON, « Le temple ou le châtel », BSFN, 1968, n° 7-8, p. 309-313)

If you can read French, there is this blog page about the so-called "chatel tournois".
http://numismatique-medievale.blogspot.com/2007/01/faut-il-rebaptiser-le-chtel-tournois.html

The main point is that in the beginning the chatel tournois always came with the legend SCS MARTINVS, the mint place being on the other side of the coin. Other contemporary coins with the name of a saint depicted his relics (usually his "chef", that is his head). Thus the chatel tournois could very well point to the relics of Saint Martin, in the same spirit, and the chatel would not be a castle (of couse !), not even a building, but the reliquary in which pilgrims could see Martin's relics.

I found an example of a 13th c. reliquary (Lille Museum), I must admit the chatel tournois looks more like this than like a temple or a cathedral...

 

I think that the general idea that the Carolingian blueprint was both Christian and (likely) an ancient (tetrastyle) temple converted later on is the safest (and all-encompassing) explanation. The degree of schematization and abstractization seen at Tours around 1100 is likely (at least partially) based on a local landmark -- the old St. Martin's -- but as we get closer to 1200 I think another aspect begins to take shape as castles and fortifications (keeps and whatnot) were the occurrences du jour: the architrave becomes little by little a spire while the colonnades disappear, leaving room for two (or perhaps four) towers -- of which the first two upfront might represent the idea of an enclosure -- be it abbey or city. Both are known from the coinage of Tours per se: the denier tournois starts as the coinage of the Abbaye St. Martin de Tours, starts its shift during the period of Philippe II Augustus as abbe laique (ca. 1204) to come out ca. 1220 as the Royal coinage of the city of Tours. The reverse legend sequence shows this very well in the relative chronologie of SCS MARTINVS and TVRONVS CIVI.

 

Great thread @Curtisimo !

 

Great coins, great writeup, thanks for sharing

Q

 

Thanks @LaCointessa ! You are too kind. I hope you holiday season is going well also.

From the video you posted:

“Foul as it is, Hell itself is made fouler by the presence of John.” - Mathew Paris (d. 1259)​

OUCH...

Great coins my friend! Thanks again for your help in identifying the Le Puy denier. That one had me stumped. You are an impressively broad based collector indeed!

Nice coin. Thanks for sharing HWE!

Thanks for the kind words Al! That is interesting about stamps during the Civil War. I did not know that.

Thanks for the interesting information and comments. When I have some time I’ll have to translate this and read it. Great photo of the reliquary.

Thank you for this @seth77 . Also thank you for sharing the information on the coins of the Frankokratia from your earlier post linked above. It’s one of the main reasons I bid on the first OP coin.

Thanks ACH!

Thanks Q! Glad you enjoyed it. It’s always enjoyable to learn about and write up my Medieval coins since most everything I read about is new knowledge to me.

 

Likewise my dude. If I was more of a broad my Saturday nights would be a LOT busier!
Or
If I was more of a broad collector my wife would've kicked me out by now!
Choose your own adventure style
I thoroughly enjoy all your threads and this one has no exception
More crusader stuff....




Ps, how hasn't this rad thread been featured yet??

 

Great thread and write up!

Nice work identifying that Bishopric of Le Puy-en-Velay...

John

 

I like the cut pennies when they are identifiable. That usually means having enough of the moneyer name to ID him. It is best when the name you have was only used from one mint unless you have some of the city name, too, and if he only worked under one of the kings which pins down which of the kings that used the name Henry is involved. For example there were two Willelms working at London under John so they added the last initial. My coin has the .L. following the partial M and before ON LVN making the ID obvious while the other half of this coin would not have told you which Willelm it was even though it would have had almost the full name. Also, the other half of the coin would have just shown the hair/crown of the king. Not all cut haves are equal. I really should redo this photo rotating the reverse to reflect the proper die axis.


I suppose I understand why whole coins sell for more than the cuts but the John penny below that matches my half just seems boringly easy with all the letters present. I would like more of these coins but I do want ones that allow ID.


My favorite English coin is this cut John farthing showing only WA but only Walter of London had WA. Again I feel lucky to have one eye on my quarter. I have never gotten interested enough in these to care about the types as cataloged by the books but I enjoy the concept of the moneyers. I do wish we had a catalog of them that might include some 'biographical' information like "executed for stealing silver".

 

so far as I know there is no such thing for the Angevins, but there is a relatively new book on the moneyers of later Anglo-Saxon England that does something similar. I haven’t read it yet, but I attended a paper given by the author at the Medieval Congress at Kalamazoo a few years ago and spoke to him briefly afterwards. It sounds very interesting:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/140735374...olid=3VWBZ78F2JJNJ&psc=1&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

 

"Was"... and still is! Many people from all Europe, every year, hike to Santiago de Compostela and Le Puy en Velay is one of the most popular starting point of this pilgrimage. On this photo you can see a few pilgrims just leaving Le Puy's cathedral on the first morning of their long journey. The scallop shell on the backpack is the symbol of the pilgrimage: it means the person wearing it is going to Santiago.



The rule is: you must walk. You can start from where you want, from Germany, Belgium if you like, the minimum for pretending being a pilgrim is starting 100 km from Santiago.

It sometimes takes more than a few weeks vacation to walk all the way long. One of my friends did it in several stages: she walked with her husband as far as they could go in three weeks, then took a bus and a train home from where they had stopped, and the following year resumed their pilgrimage from this place.

A popular French writer, Jean-Christophe Rufin, recently did it, but not starting from le Puy: he started from the Franco-Spanish border, and walked all the way long to Santiago. He wrote a book about his experience.

 

This reminds me, has anyone seen the movie with Martin Sheen and Emilio Estevez about el camino de Santiago?

 

This is a very interesting thread and opening post.

I always thought that the interpretation of the reverse design on the pennies of Ludwig the Pious and his successors as a church was rather odd, given that Carolingian churches (the most important and one of the best preserved one is the chapel of Charlemagne in Aachen, Germany) don't look anything like it. Instead, I think a good case can be made for interpreting the design as a reliquary shrine.

 

Lol

I love those Crusader coins! The ones from Antioch showing medieval armor are probably the most iconic of all the Crusader coins.

Crusader Antioch
Bohemond III (Minority 1149-1163, Majority 1163-1201)
AR Denier, Antioch mint, struck ca. 1163-1188
Wt.: 1.06 g
Dia.: 17 mm
Obv.: +BOAHVHDVS; Helmeted head left marked with cross pattee, coif mail composed of crescents, five pointed star right, crescent left.
Rev.: +ANTIOCNIA; cross pattee, with crescent pointing downward in second angle.
Ref.: Malloy 65/Class A to B cf. Metcalf
Ex AMCC 2, Lot 289 (Nov. 9, 2019)

Thank you @Theodosius ! I enjoyed reading up on this coin and the place it came from very much.

Nice coins Doug! I agree it is cool to be able to attribute a coin from a half or quarter. Without help I would have been unable to do so on my OP coin.

Both Nick and Edwin pointed out that the distinctive R on the obverse narrowed it down to King John’s reign. From there Edwin was able to help me narrow based on the moneyer. I was both impressed and grateful.

It’s pretty neat that this is still a popular pilgrimage after 1000+ years. Looks like the distance is about 560 miles through some really picturesque places. Very cool!

I haven’t seen it but I just looked it up. “The Way”. It looks like it got pretty solid reviews. I’ll have to download and watch it on my next flight. Thanks!

Thanks Tejas! Interesting post. If the Carolingian design was meant to be a reliquary then perhaps the reliquary design was based on a temple church? The design seems to fit well with the classic type where the cross has replaced both the figures (quadriga in many cases) on the roof as well as the cult statue inside.

Of course that could be just as true of a temple shaped reliquary.

There were reliquaries that seem to have been modeled on buildings but the ones I found below seem to be based on a basilica.

12th century


13th century