Chateaudun: the French Feudal Series that Would Not Die

Another variation from the late 12th century from the suzerainty of the Counts of Blois:


AR20mm, 0.74g, denier bléso-chartrain minted at Chateaudun cca. 1180-1200(?)
anepigraphic; stylized bleso-chartrain head between two crosses
DVNI OSTIEI; Cross pattee.
cf. Boudeau 244, Poey d'Avant 1839.


The viscounts during this period were:

- Geoffroi IV (1180-1185)
- Hugo V, who died at the siege of Acre in the Third Crusade with Thibaut V de Blois in 1191
- and Geoffroi V, which was already mentioned and held Chateaudun as vassal of Louis de Blois (1191-1205)

 

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Brilliant call, @TheRed. If you don't mind me saying so, you definitely have the eye for this stuff. (From Anglo-Galiic to this is a slippery slope! ...Watch out! :<} ) Cool that you're familiar the cgb archives. Best thing online for this stuff. Having had the luck to fall into the books I have now, I still consult it at regular intervals. ...For years, I only knew the books by citations, conspicuously from there.

 

...Oops, Wrong Button.

 

Thanks for your contribution, @seth77. Along with Boudeau and Poey, your example corresponds to Duplessy 481. He dates the issue to 'before 1160-1180,' corresponding to Hugues III, fl. 1119-c.1180; viscount by c. 1147. (Cf. Cawley, Medieval Lands website; Livingstone, esp. table, p. 238. Cawley numbers his Hugueses and Geoffroys by order of birth among all descendants of known record, rather than by succession.)
I almost landed this example of the same issue from a dealer on French ebay. (He held it ...just not long enough.)


For what's in the center of the motif, forming the 'eye,' Duplessy only lists an annulet. In your instance and the other one, that little nuance falls victim to the endemically weak center strikes. In the one that got away, with a sllllightly weaker strike of the reverse, all you still get is a 'besant.'
Continuing the wedge motif, this is an obole from the previous issue, corresponding to Geoffroy III, fl. 1110-c. 1180/90. (From Duplessy, numerous later issues correspond to the one who died at the siege of Acre in 1191.)

Obv. Bléso-chartrain profile. Same variation, but with three besants in the field, the middle one composing the 'eye.' ...Right, the profile faces left. (...Got all that? Not sure I did, the first time....)
Rev. +DVTCS:STICTI-I-I-. (Duplessy 479 (obole), with the 7th legend variant of deniers of the same type, as in 477A).
...Speaking of the number of things you get to upload in one post, here's the best I could find online for a map, from a 1911 edition of Shepherd's Historical Atlas. ...That's where you get the couple of lines of blank space toward the beginning of the initial post. ...Fell victim to One More Coin.
...Except, Dang, Sorry for the scale. Did what I knew how to to tweak that; multiple programs were conspicuous by their lack of cooperation.

 

A bit earlier than I would have expected.

 

Well, actually, the broad outline, in terms of the rendering of the 'mouth,' goes from the three small wedges (as in issues of Chartres), to the horizontal omega from c. 1040-1130, to the single wedge predominating from roughly 1130-1180, with a return to the omega (punctuated by the star motif) from then to c. 1220.