Medieval Monday!

Cilician Armenia. Hetoum I. 1226-1270.

 

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Hi again, @FitzNigel! Welp, it's still mid-afternoon out here, and I can be of some measure of help with sources for DeShazo's prototype. ...For openers, your skepticism makes easy, intuitive sense. If, as a collector, I weren't wired the same way, I might venture to call it admirable.
But the same prototype appears in Roberts, The Silver Coins of Medieval France (Attic Books, 1996). ...Yes, in a not dissimilar vein, it's easy (and fun) to look down on Roberts as a reference, but his bibliography is pretty impressive. He attributes this, unambiguously, to Lothaire, with possible mints of Saint-Philibert, Tournus (neighboring mints in the Duchy of Burgundy), or Jumieges ("Carolingian Issues," #1836). For this, he cites Fougeres and Conbrouse, Description complete et raisonnee des monnaies de la deuxieme race royal [Carolingian vs. Merovingian] (Paris, 1837).
Here's one place where it gets interesting. For his plate, DeShazo cites another work of the same century, Gariel, Les monnaies royales de France (Strasbourg, 1883). Two features immediately emerge. On one hand, the plates are unmistakably of the same issue, with effectively identical legends, and with the pellets in each angle of the obverse cross --evoking one of the distinctive features of 10th-11th c. Norman issues. And they're no less unmistakably variant examples, replete with nuanced, but mutually very plausible differences in the legends' punctuation.
It's no wonder that, of the published options, DeShazo gravitated to Jumieges, a monastery in Normandy, and the namesake of an important chronicler. But there are several towns, both in Normandy and elsewhere in France, named St.-Philibert. ...Given that, very much to your point, the research is effectively ongoing in real time, where earlier medieval is concerned, I'm still voting (Yep, Only Once) for DeShazo's principal thesis.
In other news, @lordmarcovan, Hearty Congrats on getting such a resonantly solid example, from somebody you've been needing representation of for a long minute! ...Something else fun about the issue is that, since ones of John Balliol are so scarce (suggesting a low initial mintage), and Robert the Bruce didn't issue coins until a ways into his reign, these would have been the primary coin in circulation all the way from Alexander's own reign, to the rising of Wallace, to the Battle of Bannockburn (...right, in 1314).
...While we're on books, here's one I hope you have: Trequair, Freedom's Sword: Scotland's Wars of Independence (Niwot, Colorado: Roberts Rinehart, 1998).

 

...Yeah, that movie involved a rehabilitation process for me, too. You're hardly the only one!!! ...My favorite bits are the crazy Irishman, who I still need sometimes for comic relief. ...I have to like how his 'dagger' would've gotten past a metal detector.

...The irony being that, of two known Anglo-Norman ancestors in my descent, one was killed at Bannockburn, and another was taken prisoner. ...Just That Little Bit of poetic justice. (...Yep, may the record show, there's some Scots too, very much under separate cover. ...On each side of the immediate family, with the patriarchs arriving here, respectively, in the mid-17th and earlier 18th centuries --both of them, wait for it, as criminal transportees.)

 

...Oh, ...just, Right, I would do something less than rational for known descent from someone who was at Culloden. I always wanted the ancestor who arrived in Maryland in 1719 to have been a Jacobite. Sadly, all anyone in the family has found so far are the court records, which don't mention that. Yeah, you'd kind of think they would have, even as an aside.
[Edit:] Sorry for wallowing in the obvious, but it just landed on me that, if you were interested in pursuing the milieu of what the English call 'the Scottish Wars' (right, along the lines of, 'The French Disease'),* one option would be to look for one of Edward I's Berwick pennies. I can't find the pics of mine (bought too long ago), but if your standards for condition are suitably relaxed, you can probably still find one at a price that's considerably less than stratospheric, with enough detail to justify having gone to the trouble.

*...Or even, 'Pardon my French' --for words that are invariably of Old English /ancient Germanic origin. (I have to love how the oldest words in English run to being monosyllabic ...often enough of four letters.)

 

thank you for pushing me @+VGO.DVCKS! The two different references do indeed have two different designs. That encouraged me to actually check ACSearch, and I found an image of the coin from an iNumis sale: https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=2670481

Although the inscription runs counterclockwise, which is not how it is depicted in each of the sources. Interesting. This does make me feel better about the Lothaire theory.

 

Poey d'Avant's work has the great advantage of being a general catalog of feudal coinages and this is why it is still used as a reference today. Regarding the interpretations of the coinages, Poey has almost none and where it does bring some comments they are rather lacunary and outdated. It is better than Boudeau -- which is normal considering that Boudeau just marks the available numismatic material from the auctions of the time.

An example is the coinage of Chartres, which goes from the grand denier of 1000 to the 12th century issues and then back to the grand deniers etc, in a rather random progression. The same with Chateaudun 11th century coinage, that's a complete Durcheinander by Poey's.

 

Well put, @seth77. ...Given all of that, it's kind of a letdown that Duplessy doesn't do more than he does in expanding on Boudeau. --He does plenty, but you do get the sense that Boudeau was almost as much a template as something to substantively improve.

 

Many thanks for the link, @FitzNigel, along with your generous comments. Never occurred to me to do a ACSearch. iNnumis really seem to have picked up the mantle that .cgb dropped, where late Carolingian -early feudal are concened. (Cgb's archives are as fantastic as ever ...but how are the mighty fallen!)

 

My experience has been that if you are interested in a certain issue of a certain realm/polity, you search for articles or (less available usually) books that treat *just that* realm/polity by academics (usually local) who are actively involved in the study of that niche. And this ties to the reason we don't see much of French feudal numismatists and collectors in the English-speaking world -- they need to read Bompaire, C. Morrisson, Dumas, Musset, Duplessy, Lafaurie usw. And these people write in French.

What I do tell everyone who'd listen is that if you are interested in learning not just numismatics, but European history on a more in-depth level, especially if you want to pursue an academic career in history-related fields, learn as many European languages as possible, at least at the basic level of being able to read and comprehend a scientific article.

 

...@seth77, please receive equal parts envy and admiration. ...I had to wait until an interim course (between semesters) as a first-year undergrad to get any Latin at all. --And it was, wait for it, Conversational Latin. As in, so you'd be able to order a hamburger at the McDonald's in Vatican City (--fictional, as I ardently hope). But I was very fortunate to get a program in grade school, over several years, which happened to emphasize Latin origins of English words. Served me very well when it comes to making such sense out of French as I'm able to ...and I try, by fits and starts, to improve my vocabulary and grammar, bit by bit.

 

THIS IS IT! A full year of Medieval Mondays! While it has only just passed midnight Eastern time, I thought I would try to get this anniversary going sooner rather than later.

I decided to include my most recent purchase for today - I’m still working on my German coins, and the desire to get this latest one was a sudden inspiration once the school year started:

Holy Roman Empire - Diocese of Würzburg
Rudolf II von Scherenberg, r. 1466-1495
AR Schilling, 26.04 mm x 2.24 grams
Obv.: SANCTVS KILIANVS. St. Kilian holding sword and crosier
Rev.: +RVD˙LF’✿EPIS’✿HERBIPOLE’. Shield
Ref.: cf. de Witt 2327

I know little of Würzburg or Rudolf II, but the reason I bought this coin is because of the role Rudolf plays in the summer reading book I assign my AP Euro students. Peasant Fires: The Drummer of Niklashausen by Richard Wunderli works through the historians craft, while getting into the minds of the peasantry during an uprising led by a peasant named Hans Behem who claimed to receive a vision of the Virgin Mary. All AP courses require taking a training course before one can teach them, and this book was a recommendation to start off the year. I had actually owned the book for years because Dr. Wunderli was my professor in college - I had just never gotten around to reading his book! Anyway, Rudolf II was the bishop who ordered Behem’s execution, and it occurred to me that he was likely an authority who issued coins! Of course, I shared the coin with my students when it came in, and they are always appreciative of my hobby (or at least pretend to be…).

My thanks to all you lovely people who contributed in this bit of fun. While I might occasionally post here on mondays in the future, I think it’s time to focus on more meaningful and informational threads. Hopefully I’ll have time to do that! So as a nice bow to wrap this up, here is a group shot if all of my Medieval Monday coins:

That’s 64 coins! I doubled up at the beginning…. For extra credit obviously. Happy Monday everyone!

 

A coin from the Gisor hoard! Well done @lordmarcovan!

 

Italian coinage is probably one of the most interesting, diverse and complex areas of medieval numismatics, so it was always a side interest that I pursued whenever I got a chance, from the tornesi of Nicola II di Monforte to the petty denarii and mezzi of the Hohenstaufen and Angevin Sicily and the strong currencies of the city states.

This one here is a bolognino grosso, a civic issue from Bologna ca. 1250s. The bolognino, both grosso and piccolo, was copied around Italy and used with intensity from ca. mid 13th century to the 16th century. This specimen from Bologna was struck of a 820/1000 strong alloy at a poids theorique of 1.41g, of which, after intense circulation, 1.20g remains:


+ E N R I C I I S; I P R T in a cross shape and 5 bezants flanking the letters, also forming a cross
・B O ・ N O ・ NI ; large A flanked by 4 bezants forming a cross
BdNonline 4 pp. 20-1 #14-15; CNI X p. 2 #9; cf Chimienti 2009 p. 95 #13

Notes: The larger denomination of the bolognino grosso follows the smaller denomination bolognino piccolo (which started the mint in 1191) and was introduced in 1236. It was a denomination that followed a trend for larger silver-based coinages in northern Italy in the 13th century and marked the economic and political rise of the Italian city states.

The coinage was immobilized in the name of Enrico VI (Heinrich von Hohenstaufen, Holy Roman Emperor) who gave the city its minting rights in 1191 and continued until the first quarter of the 14th century. Quite specific to it is the spelling of ENRICVS as ENRICIIS. Stefan di Virgilio in BdNonline 4 dates this phase between 1236 and 1260, but it is possible that this particular piece with the usual punctuation and letter forms was minted extensively in the 1250s.

The high silver title made this coin a successful one, used and hoarded considerably throughout Italy and especially in the north. This specimen is well worn indicating many years in circulation.

 

Wow, @FitzNigel, Congratulations on having held up that whole side of this tent for this long. With cordial thanks to @seth77, @lordmarcovan, @TheRed, @panzerman, and everyone I'm forgetting for having held up the rest of it.

...Here's one I bought over the last week. This is from a French dealer who lists on ebay and Delcampe. (Rtnumis.) He sold me his copy of Dumas, Fecamp, at his cost. Yeah, I made him inscribe it. I guess we're friends.

Picardie (northeast France), Abbey of St.-Medard. Denier, c. late 10th century. ...Oddly, no examples of this are in Dumas' aforementioned, magisterial study of le Tresor de Fecamp. From the likes of ACSearch and CoinArchives, along with the archives of CGB.fr, no one is citing anyone besides Poey d'Avant and Boudeau. But it's kinda cool for being that underpublished. For French feudal as early as this, you almost want the added dimension of mystery.