Coinage of Free France

Here's the oldest coin I have from native Gaul. Well, maybe it's not quite Free France as suggested in the thread title, but it was certainly trying to be...... Free from the Romans that is!

This small coin is a quarter stater and was minted at Rheims to help finance Vercingetorix's rebellion against Rome (circa 56 BC). It is technically `electrum', that is silver and gold mixed. However the mix was poor and the gold content was even poorer.

The scan shows some gold showing through, but the silver content is basically well corroded. Sadly, the scan shows little else, but that is unfortunately par for the course for these coins. They show up every now and again and (surprisingly) aren't particularly expensive.

 

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Ah the stater coinages... so they issued them on the continent as well then!

 

That's pretty cool Ian.I don't have any staters from that period in Gaul but I have another potin from slightly earlier than the one I posted before.It also features the wild man/boar design,including another fleur de lis.To tired to take pics tonight but I will tomorrow.

 

Hmm fleur-de-lys. You asked how long it had been associated with the symbol of 'France'.

Seemingly it wasn't adopted until, the twelfth century.

 

Although it had been used by many civilisations before that, including Gaul, Greece etc. to simply symbolise a flower.

Lys (or Lis) is actually misleading because it's not actually a lily flower but more likely an iris flower.

 

Here's a silver stater of the Durotriges tribe in England from the same time frame.

 

Nice Ian!
Here are some pics of the other Gallic potin.It was interesting to find out the fleur-de-lys became the symbol of France that late in history Sylvester.I can only assume that the design had some religious or cultural significance long before even the celts since it is featured on so many early coins.Here is a good site on these from Marc Breitsprecher
http://www.ancientimports.com/introtopotinsofgaul.html
By the way,the fleur is growing from the ground beneath the boars stomach on the reverse.

 

That's a nice coin...and that is a very informative site. Thanks for that.

I got my Hugues V denier yesterday (Dijon mint same as yours). It's not arrived with me yet so i'll hang off showing pic''s for now. Hopefully i'll have another interesting piece to speak of by then as well.

 

Can't wait to see the new coin.
This is a bit off topic but I didn't want to start a new thread.I found a coin of Constantine I in my collection that was minted in London.Do you know if he ever visited England? Maybe he's your great x 100 grandfather.

 

It surprised me too!

 

In all honesty I don't know offhand whether he visited Britain or not. He may very well have, but if he did I think it highly unlikely that he made any sojourns north of Hadrians Wall. As such I strongly suspect that there's little chance of there being any little `Constantines' running about in Scotland.

 

The `fleur de lis' has been associated with French kings ever since it's use in the crowning ceremony of Clovis I. It has been seen as a symbol of the Merovingian dynasty since then. I'm not so sure as to it's use between the collapse of the Merovingians (mid 740's) to Philip I deciding to adopt it as the symbol of France, but it obviously had a prominent role in the symbolry of the time. The three petals of the `lis ' were seen as representing faith, wisdom and chivalry, as well as the Holy trinity.

 

Here's an interesting bit of info I found with almost the same take on the fleur-de-lys:
"The motif is commonly believed to represent a lily, signifying purity. This symbol, depicting a stylized lily or lotus flower, has many meanings. Traditionally, it has been used to represent French royalty, and in that sense it is said to signify perfection, light, and life. Today it remains a potent symbol of French nationalism. Due to its three "petals," the fleur-de-lys has also been used to represent the Holy Trinity. The fleur-de-lys motif is, however, most commonly associated with the Royal Arms of France and European heraldly in general.

There is difference of opinion on the origin of the fleur-de-lys motif. Legend has it that an angel presented Clovis, King of the Franks, with a golden lily as a symbol of his purification upon his conversion to Christianity. Others claim that the Frankish king, Clovis, being trapped between the Gothic army and the Rhine, noticed the water lily growing out into the river, this signified that it was safe to ford the river at this point. He crossed in safety with his army, and because of this incident, he is thought to have adopted the water lily in the form of the fluer-de-lys as his emblem."
Of course,this still doesn't explain the celtic connection but as the website above suggests,we may never know why they used certain symbols.

 

But you have to take into account the fact that later historians were the ones writing this down, many of them were around at the time that the French monarchy was asserting it's divinity and thus suddenly the fleur-de-lys and the bottle of annointing ointment were coming down from heaven as if God had sent them personally to sanction his support for the dynasty. Be careful what you believe, i believe the Clovis link to be heavily adapted for later propaganda purposes.

 

Oh by the way originally it wasn't an angel, originally it came with a dove. But someone thought a dove and an angel were both signs of divine approval so did it really matter which was used? Afterall an angel sounds better no?

 

History is more likely to have been `adapted' to meet the way the catholic church wanted it to be told it than anything else.

In the absence of documented history, we are left with myths and legends from which we can but sift and filter for the possibility of `facts'. I think we can discount the `angel' and any divine annointment, but it is not so easy to discount the use of the lis. Even when dealing with `recorded' history we should keep ourselves aware that sometimes we are dealing with the equivalence of the historical novel of the times. Facts liberally laced and blurred with fiction.

If we accept that Clovis was crowned king on the death of his father, then this was before his conversion to christianity. He didn't convert to christianity until his marriage to whatsername (?) of Burgundy. Was the lis (or iris) used in crowning ceremonies or just allegedly used? If it was, was it part of a druidic rite that had been adopted by Clovis's tribe to consolidate his claim to the title ? or was it a rite imported to the region by them? That the lis apopears on early french coins (pre Clovis) is very apparent. The question (in relation to symbolry) is more a case of `why' than`if'.

For me the catholic church version of history is somewhat lacking in facts to back up the story it tries to sell.

 

I generally take a dim view of Christianity during this early period. It was when they were trying to stamp out paganism and by doing so the either erradicated festivals or decided to take them over as their own and rewrite the history of it as if they'd thought it up. It amounted to nothing more than institutionalised plagerism (the Romans had done this with the Greek religion though).

Perhaps the most famous case of this was the festival of Lupercalia held in February. Which was about having fun, celebrating love, lust, heavy drinking and a good party, a chance for a knees up. And lets face it in those days life was much harder than it is now and thus can you imagine how nice it would be to let your hair down and have fun.

The festival was immensley popular and the Church realised they'd never be able to stamp it out thus they moved in, took it over, swept away much of the fun and the revelries and renamed it Valentine's day.

 

Hmm fleur-de-lis no?

 

There's a realfleury -des -lis ...(yes a bunch of four on this one), and on a coin two hundred years earlier too.

 

Is this a competition? OK here's my submission,a 13th century Philip IV that has a fleur-de-lis in place of the normal cross.It looks a lot like the ones on Sylvester's Louis coin,almost like a photo cut out of that.hehe
OK, I cheated!