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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;kaparthy, post: 3501710, member: 57463&quot;]If you wanted to collect coins of medieval France, you would also need to add Hungarian coins.&nbsp; Robert d&#039;Anjou (1275-1343) was king of Hungary. He was also the King of Naples. The lands of Louis d&#039;Anjou (1339-1383) are below.</p><p>[ATTACH=full]927732[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>From the Broadway musical Kismet comes the line, &quot;Princes come, princes go, an hour of pomp and show...&quot; When you consider the &quot;Middle Ages&quot; - say 800 to 1500 - that is a lot of lifetimes in a rich and complex cultural matrix dominated by <b>families.</b>&nbsp; We too easily speak of <b>&quot;the House of Habsburg&quot;</b> without letting that sink it: lands crossing what we consider modern nations were within the same household, no less than your car is today, no matter where you park it.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]927737[/ATTACH]</p><p>Poland, Lithuania, Hungary...&nbsp; we give them modern names, but over centuries, who ruled what came and went with powerful families, tragic battles, accidental death by disease and purposeful death by assassination. Marriages changed borders.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]927738[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>Over the entire span of the Middle Ages several hundred, perhaps a full thousand, of local authorities struck coins. Above, in the little corner of the world called &quot;Swabia,&quot; are Ulm, Stuttgart, Augsburg, Zurich, and Geneva, among others.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]927741[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>Even in an age of princes and dukes, Italian cities were republics in which some people chose others to hold civic office. Genoa was the home of the man we call Christopher Columbus. In Venice, they had schools of arithmetic to teach long division with Arabic numerals so that merchants could keep track of profits and losses. We think of &quot;Italy&quot; as a nation. To them, it was just a peninsula. On the island of Sicily there were Vikings. The coins of the German emperor Frederick II of Sicily (1197-1250) are highly-prized works of art. So, if you wanted to collect &quot;coins of medieval Germany&quot; you would have take a broader view than we accept today.</p><p>[ATTACH=full]927743[/ATTACH]</p><p><b>Classical Numismatic Group - Triton XXII, Lot 1304 USD 5000.</b></p><p>[ATTACH=full]927744[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>Silver penny of Frederick II Aegean Numismatics on VCOINS USD 30.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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