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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;+VGO.DVCKS, post: 4628468, member: 110504&quot;]On this front, maybe you could call a quarter century or so of collecting Medieval cheating.&nbsp; But eventually, it lands on you that in any mileu with literacy rates in the low teens or aughts, this is just Going to happen.&nbsp; By the sheer, irrational and no less inexorable weight of the demographics.</p><p>In the case of a lot of early French feudal issues, &quot;immobilizations&quot; begin from Carolingian prototypes, mostly 9th or earlier 10th centuries, and continue into the 12th and 13th.&nbsp; Over that kind of span, you can see the literacy gradually degrade, along with the style of the (pretty elementary) motifs.</p><p>But moving backward, nearer the period you&#039;re talking about, something else happens.&nbsp; With the late 10th and 11th century Scandinavian imitations, both of late Saxon pennies and even Byzantine nomismae (...<i>not</i> Norse Dublin, so much, least of all this early), the rules change.&nbsp; Not only are the die sinkers often completely illiterate in the operant languages (Latin, Old English and Greek); it almost looks as if they&#039;re actively drawing inspiration from Runes.&nbsp; Yeah, Literally!&nbsp; ...And otherwise, who knows, creatively adapting the otherwise meaningless texts along more purely esthetic lines?&nbsp; The Scandinavian penchant for design, around this time, was fairly pronounced.</p><p>Sorry for the digression.&nbsp; But it&#039;s easy to suspect that with the Roman -ish barbarous coins, similar combinations of factors were involved.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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