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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;seth77, post: 8102188, member: 56653&quot;]What a wonderful specimen of this rather strange (and certainly scarce) copper fraction of Antioch. One of the best I&#039;ve ever seen. Raymond&#039;s whole career in Antioch is one of &#039;reformer&#039; and &#039;westernizer&#039; -- which he undertook as official vassal to Constantinople, while his politics, more than his predecessors, was almost in its entirety in the Occitan cultural tradition, much more refined and &#039;stratified&#039; (in lack of better terminology) than the Italo-Norman generation that had established the Principality in the First Crusade. His coinage is a melange of Occitan and Levantine systems, blended together seamlessly. If we surmise the monetary system of Antioch in 1136 we have on one side the copper petty currency, the reduced heirs of the &#039;folli&#039; of 1100-1119, and the billon coinage of Valence that had been introduced by Patriarch Bernard ca. 1100. When Raymond died he left a full local monetary system with a local western-style denier of high billon quality and a local copper fraction -- a system that survived 100+ years.</p><p><br /></p><p>About Fulk, there has been research done by R. Kool of Israel Antiquities Authority that tentatively assigns the very rare denier MONETA REGIS to him in the late 1130s to early 1140s (The Circulation and Use of Coins in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, 2013) -- so he might have been the one introducing the local denier in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. This would be in tune with what happens in Tripoli and Antioch also around this time or a bit later -- although Tripoli already had a denier experiment as early as Bertrand (1109-1112), which didn&#039;t seem to take root. Kool bases his hypothesis both on stylistic grounds -- the A and W tied to the arms of the cross are very reminiscent of the Angevin denier of the 1100s -- and on his observations as a field archaeologist, so there should be something there. Alas the coinage is very rare.</p><p><br /></p><p>Now back to Henry and his deniers of Aquitaine, it would seem rather to be expected that his coinage there would postdate 1154 rather than antedate it. But everywhere in catalogs and auction entries you will see in the description of his deniers and halves 1152 to 1189 (if any date is mentioned at all). Those dates are impossible on many accounts such as that as early as 1169 or at the latest 1172 the denier of Aquitaine is struck in the name of Richard. Would this mean that there was room in the first half of the 1150s for the Alienor coinage say 1151/2 to 1155? On the other hand &#039;tresor de Saucats&#039; mentioned by Duplessy has the deniers of Alienor only together with Guillaume and Louis implying the early date given by 19th century French antiquarians and numismatists and noted by Boudeau as 1137. The overall motif of the coinage fits with the coinage of Guillaume of the 1130s but the module does not. Plus the style and the lettering is certainly not 1130s but very much similar to the late coinage of Richard (which might have been struck to 1189, or some say even to around 1200). Alienor dies in 1204. To me her coinage also brings glimpses of the coinage of Hugo de Lusignan for his La Marche domain (the shape of the G or the S couchee or the &#039;thickness&#039; of the lettering etc.) implying possibly the same hand (or the same school of hands) carving the dies for the Duke of Aquitaine and their vassal at Lusignan ca. 1200. Another thing -- Guillaume&#039;s coinage is localized at Bordeaux in the ancient tradition of the Dukes of Gascony, while the &#039;new&#039; coinage of Louis, Alienor, Henry, Richard does not name the Bordeaux mint, allowing the possibility of a coinage of the realm struck (also) some place elsewhere.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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