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Message:: [QUOTE="horge, post: 464221, member: 7167"]Great post!<img src="styles/default/xenforo/clear.png" class="mceSmilieSprite mceSmilie1" alt=":)" unselectable="on" unselectable="on" /> We have to be careful though: the early Renaissance was characterized by a profound interest in Classical antiquities, an interest that led to organized collection and study of relics from that period --including coins. There certainly would have been many othersdiligently studying the coins they collected, and certainly some preceding Petrarch,(and that's just within the early Renaissance.) Petrarch did not really gift Emperor Carolus IV with a "collection" of Roman silver and gold coin,in that winter of 1355 in Mantua. The word "selection" is more honest, as it was all somewhat spur of the moment. In Petrarch's Familiarum rerum libri, he describes how Carolus IV had sought in vain for an advance copy of the author's unfinished De viris illustribus, and how Petrarch scrambled for something else he could give, to wit: "aliquot sibi aureas argenteas que nostrorumprincipum effigies minutissimis ac veteribus literis inscriptas, quas in delitiis habebam, dono dedi inquibus et Augusti Cesaris vultus erat pene spirans. ‘Et ecce,’ inquam, ‘Cesar, quibus successisti; eccequs imitari studeas et mirari.’" "some gold and silver images of our princes, inscribed with tiny, ancient legends, which were dear to me, among which was an image of Augustus that seemed to breathe. “Behold, Caesar,” I said, “those you have succeeded; behold those you should strive to imitate and revere." Petrarch did provide the emperor with a written summary of the histories of the various Caesars, whose effigies appeared on the gift coins, which is proof enough of numismatic scholarship. Petrarch described himself as a sort of 'local coin-geek'. to whom farmers often referred finds that they had plowed up (no doubt hoping to sell them to Petrarch).He was just like many of us, a rabid coin collector, though his interests and scholarship ranged far abroad of just numismatics. While he may not have been the first numismatist, nor even the first true numismatic scholar(brief references to coin collections and coin collecting go farther back, even to Classical times), his interest and his gift to the emperor subsequently caught the public fancy, elevating coin collecting to a noble pursuit that Kings and commoners alike could indulge in, or at least pretend at. Petrarch's coin collecting "made the news", at a time when everything in Europe seemed to be starting from scratch. His passion for coins inspired widespread emulation by others. Thus is Petrarch the "father of numismatics". <img src="styles/default/xenforo/clear.png" class="mceSmilieSprite mceSmilie1" alt=":)" unselectable="on" unselectable="on" />h.[/QUOTE]

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