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Message:: [QUOTE="kaparthy, post: 1021145, member: 57463"]Nice coin, but as indicated, not medieval.  476 AD is given as the end of the Classical Era and the start of the Dark Ages (early medieval) because that is when the Roman Emperor Romulus Augustulus abdicated in favor of the German, Odoacer, who in fact was Flavius Odoacer , the Germans in Italy long having been Romanized.   As noted the end of the Middle Ages can be a grey area, but I take 1453, the Fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks, but 1450 (Gutenberg's printing press) and 1492 (obvious) also work.  That said, I, too did not get involved in the Middle Ages until lately.  I always saw them as an age of religion and superstition, life-hating ignorance, and an overpowering Church with Inquisitions and the Divine Right of Kings. Then, I learned. Researching an article for The Celator I learned to see the vitality and affirmination of Life on Earth that was expressed in literature and paid for with innovative and expansive commerce.  I learned that "divine right of kings" is a Protestant concept, best expressed by King James I of England (VI of Scotland).   The "inquisition" was created to investigate heresies, not heretics -- there is a subtle difference -- and it did not reach its height in the Middle Ages at all, but hundreds of years later as the Reformation became the Age of Reason (so-called).  All in all, the Middle Ages have much to offer. [ATTACH]99646.vB[/ATTACH][ATTACH]99647.vB[/ATTACH] Hugues of Champagne: not a Stella or a Saint, but truly a silver penny that gave us the Troy Ounce, from the great fairs at the town of Troyes in the county of Champagne where a bard known as Chretian composed the Arthurian Legends and Shlomo Itzak set down rabbinical law, and the Templars stored their wealth to build the first great Cathedral.[/QUOTE]

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