Medieval Monday!

Crusaders Bishops of Valence Denier
Billon Silver, 17 mm, 1.19 gm
Struck at Valence in south-east France approximately AD 1096 to 1099

Obverse:
Angel (The design appears to be a skull and crossbones)
VRBS VALENTIAI (City of Valence)

Reverse:
Cross with circle at lower right
S APOLLINARS (Saint Apollinaire of Valence, AD 453-520)

These little coins were minted in great quantities by the Bishops of Valence for use by members of the First Crusade (AD 1096-1099) passing through their territory. Large quantities of them have been found in the Crusader territories of Syria and Palestine

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

@willieboyd2, that's a solid example. ...Please read, just for one, better than mine. Which was from Greece, via US ebay, demonstrating your point about how widely they circulated. Except, key to that, in the Levant as well as Frankish Greece, was that they were minted as immobilizations well into the 13th century.
Just In Case you had any use for the Duplessy reference, here's the whole thing.
Duplessy, Jean. Les Monnaies Francaises Feodales. Tome II. Paris, 2010.
P. 146, no. 2255.
...I wish Duplessy would hurry up and finish the series (Tome II is his latest --he's nowhere near done), and that it was easier to get one's hands on the two volumes so far.

 

Wow, good idea, I can do that!

IVAN THE TERRIBLE


RUSSIA Ivan IV The Terrible 1533-1584 AR Denga Moscow mint Horseman riding right brandishing sword - Inscription in lines G&K 59 Rare type



RUSSIA Ivan IV The Terrible 1533-1584 AR Kopek Wire money Novogorod mint 1535-1538 Horseman riding right brandishing sword - Inscription G&K 75


PETER THE GREAT


Russia
Peter the Great
AR Kopek 1682-1725
Wire Money
Obv: Horse Rider
Rev: Great Tsar Peter
11.1mm 0.27g

 

@+VGO.DVCKS the dating is usually very tentative as in all long-serving types with style and minor detail differences but I think that it is likely that this rather large issue can be put in the context of the preparations for the Second Crusade, a rather expensive endeavor that could have necessitated large minting operations to finance. As the market has seen many deniers of Raymond de Poitiers made available in the last couple of years, I also think that there is a way to add to this theory: as the campaign of Louis in the Second Crusade set foot in Antioch, findings of Louis VII parisii together with the coinage of Raymond de Poitiers would shed some more light. Unfortunately I don't think there is much interest in that area towards numismatics at present.

 

@seth77, thanks for the illuminating context. What Duplessy considers pertinent circumstantial evidence is hard to ignore, much less discount. On the other hand, since there are only four types of Louis VII deniers parisis, the period preceding the Second Crusade seems pretty early, on a purely intuitive level, for the third one.

 

There is that and then there are the obvious style differences between types. I wonder if there wasn't a second mint pushing the same type at the same time in the 1140s. Then again, as you mentioned earlier -- when was the last time you saw a Type 1 being offered?

 

For that matter, I wish Duplessy would go into Just a Little more detail on the classes, precisely as you mention, along the lines of the hoard evidence. Sometimes --granted, not often enough-- he does that in the two Feodales volumes. Since that's clearly the primary basis of the sequence for them in the first place, you'd like to think something in the way of chronology could tag along with it, even in a secondary capacity.

 

There is a reticence as far as dating goes in the field of medieval numismatics that sometimes borders on disinterest.

 

...Not to mention a more generalized undercurrent of conservatism, especially in France, which is sometimes frankly counterproductive. ...Even to the point, in worst cases, of ignoring hoard evidence, or new documentary evidence rgarding the interpretation of legends. (Richard I of Normandy's second Rouen issue being a conspicuous example.) But especially regarding dating, it's easy to appreciate the intitial impulse to err on the side of caution.

 

If you refer to the errors and missattributions in Boudeau, I think they are mistakes worth making. I also look at how wrong some great numismatists on Balkan coinage -- Docev or Iordanov for instance -- were at times and still how relevant their work (and sometimes their imagination) still is today. I'm a fan of almost-monographical works of analysis, articles like "Les monnayages d'Alphonse de Poitiers" by Teboulbi-Bompaire-Barrandon, where all sources of information are involved, from textual to chemical/spectral analysis, but where is still room for new hypotheses.

 

Nope, this as recent as Depeyrot, between the 3rd (2008) and 4th editions of Le Numeraire Carolingien. I share your admiration for the remarkable accomplishments both of Boudeau and Poey d'Avant, in their own contexts. In later ones, what begins as caution can end up smelling more like inertia.

 

Oh dear, I'm late for medieval Monday – so here is a late medieval coin:


Landgraviate of Hesse, under Ludwig I, AR “Alter Schockgroschen,” 1430–1444 AD, Schmalkalden mint. Obv: °**°+°** LANGGRAVE * LVDEWIG; rampant lion l., in field l., rose. Rev: °*°+°** LANGGRAVE * LVDEWIG; cross fleury in quatrefoil with four rings. 27mm, 1.88g. Ref: Schütz 274.7.

 

Gotta love those groschens, @Orielensis. This one is cool from here for the imitation of the lion from as far east as the Pragergroschens from Bohemia, continuous from the later 13th c. into the 15th.

 

...Yeah, @seth77, every time I even glance at one of Duplessy's bibliographies, my mouth waters. (...And I wish I took French, instead of German, which it took years to figure out I just didn't especially get along with in the first place. Goethe, some of my best friends, blah, blah, notwithstanding.)
Sounds more and more suspiciously as if you have access to an academic library worthy of the name. If so, please receive my combined envy and admiration!

 

You can access the Alphonse de Poitiers article here. As a fan of the Capetians of the 13th century I thought you already knew about it. I'm sure you'll like it.

 

Ah, Bompaire ...the name is familiar, at least, in connection with the transition from Carolingian to 10th-c. feudal around Picardie. But that was an article I found cold by googling. I've never mastered the navigation on Persee --basically because, Oops, my French is barely less fragmentary than my 'coin Latin.' Anyway, you'd better believe I bookmarked it. Thanks!
...Y'know what? It's only since joining this forum that I've learned how disorganized my .pdfs and articles are. But I did eventually stumble across several pages from Duplessy, Feodales v. 1, that Alan DeShazo (who reattributed the second issue of Richard I as a coissue with Lothaire --there's a thread about that somewhere) scanned for me. Wanna swap some links for some scans? --If you have Feodales, Oops, Sorry.

 

It’s Monday! Here’s one of my favorite coins:
Norman Italy - Calabria
Roger I, r. 1072-1101 (1098-1101)
Mileto Mint, AE Trifollaro, 28.04 mm x 8.3 grams
Obv.: ROG [ERVS] COME +S. Roger, mounted left wearing Norman helm, holding kite shield and striped banner
Rev.: + MARIA [MATE]R DNI (’N’ retrograde). Enthroned nimbate Virgin Mary holding on lap Christ child, nimbate and in swaddling clothes right
Ref.: NCKS 131var., MEC 14.93, De Wit 3789

 

France, Alsace. Strasbourg, Anonymous City Coinage. Circa AD 1500. AR Kreuzer (17mm, 0.76g, 6H). Obv: +GLA IN EXCELS DO; Fleur de lis in circle of dots. Rev: +MONETA ARGET; Fleur de lis in circle of dots. Ref: Boudeau 1335var; Saurma 967.
Ex Glenn Woods.

 

These dineros from medieval Aragon (today part of Spain) arrived recently. Jaime (or James) I "the Conqueror" is easily recognizable by not having cheeks. When his grandson Jaime II "the Just" issued a new large emission of dineros in 1307, he generally copied granpa's design, but refined the features of the royal bust quite a bit:


Kingdom of Aragon, under James I “the Conqueror”, BI dinero, 1213-1276 AD, Jaca mint. Obv: ARAGON; crowned bust of James I l. Rev: +IACOBVS : REX; patriarchal cross. 19mm, 0.80g. Ref: Crusafont i Sabater 1992, 318.


Kingdom of Aragon, under James II “the Just”, BI dinero, 1291–1327 AD (struck ca. 1308 AD), Sariñena mint. Obv: ARAGON; crowned bust of James II l. Rev: +IACOBVS : REX; patriarchal cross. 18mm, 0.85g. Ref: Crusafont i Sabater 1992, 364.

 

To wallow in the obvious (never stoppped me before), those Spanish ones are cool. And (pssst) they've traditionally been sleepers, along with contemporary Castilian ones.
Marquisate of Provence. Denier, Raymond VI (1194-1222) or VII (1222-1249).
Obv. Crescent and sun. +DVX MARCHIO PV[VINCIE].
Rev. Cross of Toulouse. +R: COMES PALACI.
(Duplessy 1606A; a slight variant of Duplessy's variant.)
The counts of Toulouse held the marquisate /'march' of Provence. The terminology demonstrates the fluidity of the border between France and the German Empire (/former Kingdom of Burgundy). There was a marquisate of Provence on the French side, and a county on the Burgundian side. By the same token, a German county of Burgundy was across the border from the French duchy.
Similarly, the term 'dux' hadn't fully coalesced into the formal title of 'duke;' it could connote any polity that was on a frontier (hence the association with 'march' and 'marquisate').