COINAGE OF THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES

In the early centuries of the first millennium a.d. the borders of the Roman Empire divided Europe into two monetary zones: (1) a southern and western zone, in which coins were minted and circulated more or less regularly as an intrinsic part of the economy, and (2) a northern and eastern zone, which made no coins of its own and imported coins sporadically as a result of various interactions, economic and otherwise. This same monetary division of Europe, following approximately the valleys of the Rhine and Danube Rivers, survived the political dissolution of the Roman Empire and was maintained almost until the end of the millennium. It was only in the ninth century and especially the tenth century that lands beyond the Roman imperial frontiers began to produce their own coins to supply a monetized economy.

roman coinage in europe

Coinage was unified throughout the western Roman Empire, with mints scattered across Europe producing coins of various denominations of gold, silver, and copper. Minting, like many other aspects of the Roman state, went through a period of disarray in the third century, to be revived and regularized by the reforms of the Roman emperors Diocletian and Constantine I around a.d. 300. The regular mints of Europe for the next two centuries included Lyons and Arles in Gaul; Trier in Rhineland Germany; Rome, Milan, Ravenna, and Aquileia in Italy; Siscia (modern-day Sisak) in Pannonia; and Thessalonica (now Salonika) in Greece. Spain, which had been an important source of bullion in the earlier empire, lacked a mint in the later period, as did England after the closing of the mint of London in a.d. 325.

The standard coin of the late empire was the gold solidus, which was of pure alloy and an unchanging weight of 24 karats, or 1⁄72 of the Roman pound (4.5 modern grams), from its introduction in a.d. 309 well into the tenth century, by which time it was called a nomisma. Fractions of the solidus also were minted; in the west the third, or tremissis, was most common (fig. 1). The silver denarius had been the basis of the Roman monetary system during the republic and early empire, but in the fourth and fifth centuries silver coinage was rare. Copper coinage was relatively common, of varying weights and denominations. By the fifth century as many as 7,200 copper nummi were needed to buy a gold solidus, with no intermediate denominations available. The obverse of late Roman coins generally bore the image of the reigning emperor, with his name and honorific titles making up the surrounding legend. On the reverse pagan deities gradually gave way to generalized symbolic representations of Roman virtues and scenes of the emperor in military contexts; explicitly Christian imagery was rare.

Beyond the frontiers delimited by the limes, or boundaries, along the Rhine and Danube Rivers, Roman coinage was a familiar phenomenon, especially to those in direct contact with the empire. The frontier regions themselves constituted a heavily monetized zone, with coins exchanged to provide for the needs of the soldiers garrisoned there and to pay for commodities imported across the border. Military payments also fueled the export of Roman coinage beyond the frontiers in the form of salaries to individual barbarian soldiers who returned home after service in the Roman army and as payments to federated bands of warriors from outside the empire who were enlisted into its campaigns. Coins also were exported as tribute to barbarian leaders and were carried back home among the booty gained on cross-border raids.

The export of Roman coins to barbarian Europe is attested to by archaeological finds throughout the north and east of the Continent. For the most part copper coins are found nearest to the frontiers, chiefly as stray losses on excavated habitation sites. Gold coins are encountered farther afield, usually buried in hoards varying from a few coins to thousands. Some of these hoards, chiefly in the area north of the Danube, have been identified as salary payments to individual soldiers and as blocks of tribute to such groups as the Huns. Solidi found in Scandinavia constitute a less-clear class of exports; these coins cluster in the period a.d. 454 to 488 and have been interpreted variously as the result of a trade in furs and slaves or sums sent north by federates and invaders.

the coinages of the early germanic states

The coins produced by the Germanic rulers who succeeded the Roman emperors in Europe followed the form of the earlier Roman examples, if not necessarily retaining their content or function. Again gold coinage dominated, especially the denomination of the tremissis, one-third of the solidus. Silver and copper issues were rare and intermittent. Although the earliest coins were of pure gold, like their Roman predecessors, by a.d. 600 debasements effected by alloying silver with the gold can be noted in many of the issues. The weight of the coinage also underwent reduction; by a.d. 600 the standard of the solidus in Gaul had dropped from 24 karats of weight to 21 karats.

The first issues of the Germanic rulers also followed the imperial example by placing the name and image of the reigning emperor, by that time in Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul), on the obverse of their gold coins. The rarer issues of silver and copper coins sometimes had the name or monogram of the issuing king. Shortly before the middle of the sixth century the Frankish king Theodebert put his own name on his gold issues, thereby provoking an angry response from the Byzantine writer and historian Procopius, who asserted that only emperors had the right to put their images on gold coins. By the end of the century kings of the Suevi and the Visigoths also had replaced the imperial name with their own on their gold coins. Frisian and Anglo-Saxon gold tremisses were modeled on those of Francia; the name of an English king first appears on a coin in the first half of the seventh century. The pseudo-imperial coinage lasted longer in Italy, where the Ostrogothic issues were replaced by those of the Byzantine reconquerors and finally by the Langobards, who put their king's name on the coinage only at the end of the seventh century. Most of these issues followed the Roman and Byzantine imagery of a portrait obverse and a symbolic reverse, with the cross becoming the most common reverse image.

It is evident that a coinage comprising only gold pieces, as was characteristic of most of Europe in the fifth through seventh centuries, was ill suited to a retail economy and would have been outside the daily experience of most people. A great proliferation of mints, especially in the Merovingian and Visigothic kingdoms, implies a change in the circumstances of minting from centralized to local, paralleling changes in the bases of tax collection. This phenomenon is most apparent in the coinage of seventh-century Francia, where the names of hundreds of mint towns appear on the coins, along with names of thousands of people identified as "moneyers."

Finds of Byzantine gold coins and southern Frankish ones in Frisia (a northern province in modern-day Netherlands) and England suggest a trade route for goods imported from the north to the Mediterranean. Finds of coins of the sixth and seventh centuries are extremely rare beyond the boundaries of the former Roman Empire, however; the few tremisses found in western Jutland seem to tie into the Frisian economic network rather than to a Scandinavian or Baltic sphere.

the age of silver

In the course of the seventh century the gold coinages of Merovingian Francia, of Frisia, and of Anglo-Saxon England gave way to silver issues, and silver remained virtually the only coin metal in Transalpine Europe for the rest of the millennium. In Spain the Visigoths continued to produce debased gold tremisses until Muslim invaders eliminated their kingdom in a.d. 711. The Langobard kings maintained their gold coinages in Italy until Charlemagne's conquest at the end of the eighth century, and the semi-independent Beneventan dukes continued minting gold into the ninth century.

In Francia silver coins moved gradually away from the seventh-century type of portrait and cross with the names of moneyer and mint. By the end of the Merovingian dynasty in the mid–eighth century most denarii were small chunks of silver with simple geometric designs on both faces and few legible inscriptions. The silver coins of Frisia and England in the period, known as sceattas, also were small, thick, and lacking in legends; their imagery in some cases appears to have derived from local artistic traditions (fig. 2). A brief issue of sceattas minted at Ribe on the west coast of Jutland c. a.d. 720 can lay claim to being the earliest European coinage minted beyond the ancient Roman borders.

In the second half of the eighth century silver coinages underwent modifications in appearance and weight standards that resulted in the coin known as the penny (called the denarius in Latin, the denier in French, and the pfenning in German). These innovations appear to have been the initiatives of Carolingian kings, with Pepin the Short, the first of the "mayors of the palace" to take the title of king, standardizing the coinage shortly after becoming king of Francia in a.d. 751 and his son Charlemagne creating a new, heavier penny for his enlarged realm in about a.d. 793 (fig. 3). The coins of the kingdoms that made up Anglo-Saxon England followed a similar pattern of reform and standardization.

By a.d. 800 the silver penny was a broad, well-struck coin weighing between 1.5 and 2.0 modern grams. In England the coins usually featured a royal portrait on the obverse, whereas the Carolingians favored geometric types, especially the monogram of the ruler's name. Anglo-Saxon and Carolingian coins bear the names of a substantial number of mints throughout their respective realms, generally coinciding with the main commercial and ecclesiastical centers. No such mints were located north or west of the Roman boundaries of England or beyond the Rhine-Danube frontiers on the Continent.

The standardized silver pennies of the Carolingian empire and of England provided a sound basis for retail and long-distance commerce and facilitated the development of a monetized segment of the economy to supplement the heavily subsistence and manorial agricultural base. The uniformity of the Carolingian coinage broke down with the dissolution of the centralized power of the empire. Counts and dukes and even bishops and abbots took over minting throughout the empire, although they often retained a royal or imperial Carolingian name on their coins. In the course of the tenth century minting began east of the Rhine and north of the Danube, chiefly at mints in Saxony exploiting the newly discovered silver deposits there.

Almost no English or Carolingian coins of the ninth century are found in Scandinavia that would correspond to the well-documented booty seized by Viking raiders and tributes exacted by them; if such wealth reached the Baltic region in the form of coins, these must have been melted rather than buried. A series of coins imitating those of Charlemagne was minted in Jutland, probably at Hedeby (Haithabu in German), in the early ninth century, but local minting then ceased until about the year 1000.

Large Viking Age hoards are found in the lands bordering the Volga basin, on the eastern shores of the Baltic, and in Scandinavia, especially on the island of Gotland. These comprise Islamic silver dirhams, chiefly of the tenth century; Byzantine silver coins from the same period; and German and English pennies of the late tenth century and the eleventh century. As in the case of the earlier hoards of Roman and Byzantine solidi, these silver finds of the end of the millennium have been interpreted variously as the results of trade, booty, tribute, and the pay of mercenary soldiers. The extent of the use and recirculation of these coins in a local northern economic sphere is difficult to ascertain.

By the end of the first millennium a.d. coinage had spread throughout Europe. The silver penny was struck by royal authority in England and by more localized rulers in France, Germany, and Italy. Minting was initiated in Bohemia in the a.d. 960s, in Kiev in about a.d. 990, and in Hungary and Poland shortly after 1000. In Scandinavia the Hedeby coinage was revived after a.d. 950, and by the year 1000 Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian kings had initiated royal coinages. Not all of these initiatives resulted in continuous minting, and it would not be until the commercial revolution of the twelfth century that Europe could be said to have a fully monetized economy.

See alsoCoinage of Iron Age Europe (vol. 2, part 6).

bibliography

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Spufford, Peter. Money and Its Use in Medieval Europe. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1988. (A thorough discussion of the role of coinage in the European economy from the end of the Roman period through the later Middle Ages.)

Alan M. Stahl