Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Philip Grierson's contribution to numismatics
- A bibliography of the writings of Philip Grierson
- Introduction
- 1 Thoughts on the beginnings of coinage
- 2 The life of obverse dies in the Hellenistic period
- 3 Roman coinage of the Cyrenaica, first century bc to first century ad
- 4 Roman imperial coin types and the formation of public opinion
- 5 Coin hoards and Roman coinage of the third century AD
- 6 Belgian finds of late fourth-century Roman bronze
- 7 The re-use of obsolete coins: the case of Roman imperial bronzes revived in the late fifth century
- 8 Interpreting the alloy of the Merovingian silver coinagae
- 9 Carolingian gold coins from the Ilanz hoard
- 10 The novi denarii and forgery in the ninth century
- 11 On the rejection of good coin in Carolingian Europe
- 12 Ælfred the Great's abandonment of the concept of periodic recoinage
- 13 King or Queen? An eleventh-century pfennig of Duisburg
- 14 Personal names on Norman coins of the eleventh century: an hypothesis
- 15 The Gornoslav hoard, the Emperor Frederick I, and the Monastery of Bachkovo
- 16 Coinages of Barcelona (1209 to 1222): the documentary evidence
- 17 Finds of English medieval coins in Schleswig-Holstein
- 18 Privy-marking and the trial of the pyx
- 19 Judicial documents relating to coin forgery
- 20 Mint organisation in the Burgundian Netherlands in the fifteenth century
- 21 Coinage in Andrew Halyburton's Ledger
- 22 Imitation in later medieval coinage: the influence of Scottish types abroad
- 23 Barter in fifteenth-century Genoa
- Index
9 - Carolingian gold coins from the Ilanz hoard
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Philip Grierson's contribution to numismatics
- A bibliography of the writings of Philip Grierson
- Introduction
- 1 Thoughts on the beginnings of coinage
- 2 The life of obverse dies in the Hellenistic period
- 3 Roman coinage of the Cyrenaica, first century bc to first century ad
- 4 Roman imperial coin types and the formation of public opinion
- 5 Coin hoards and Roman coinage of the third century AD
- 6 Belgian finds of late fourth-century Roman bronze
- 7 The re-use of obsolete coins: the case of Roman imperial bronzes revived in the late fifth century
- 8 Interpreting the alloy of the Merovingian silver coinagae
- 9 Carolingian gold coins from the Ilanz hoard
- 10 The novi denarii and forgery in the ninth century
- 11 On the rejection of good coin in Carolingian Europe
- 12 Ælfred the Great's abandonment of the concept of periodic recoinage
- 13 King or Queen? An eleventh-century pfennig of Duisburg
- 14 Personal names on Norman coins of the eleventh century: an hypothesis
- 15 The Gornoslav hoard, the Emperor Frederick I, and the Monastery of Bachkovo
- 16 Coinages of Barcelona (1209 to 1222): the documentary evidence
- 17 Finds of English medieval coins in Schleswig-Holstein
- 18 Privy-marking and the trial of the pyx
- 19 Judicial documents relating to coin forgery
- 20 Mint organisation in the Burgundian Netherlands in the fifteenth century
- 21 Coinage in Andrew Halyburton's Ledger
- 22 Imitation in later medieval coinage: the influence of Scottish types abroad
- 23 Barter in fifteenth-century Genoa
- Index
Summary
As a whole, the Carolingian gold coins in the Ilanz hoard, now in the Rätisches Museum at Chur, have been dealt with only in a rather casual fashion up to now. The most recent study is one by myself, published in 1977, but this was limited to reproducing the legends of all the specimens, to identifying the dies and to posing a number of questions without any claim to having provided answers to them. Such a neglect of valuable numismatic material is surprising when one considers that these gold coins are the only ones certainly struck during the reign of Charlemagne, that they are of extreme rarity, with perhaps not more than ten other authentic specimens known, and that they bear legends that are, at least in part, without parallel on any other Carolingian coins. Even if their issue was brief and localised, and so cannot be regarded as representing one of the more important of Charlemagne's coinages, their association with a particular economic and political situation allows us to document the final stages of the transition from the gold monometallism of the Constantinian tradition to the silver monometallism that was Frankish in origin and Carolingian in fulfilment.
The study of these coins seems to have been inadequate from the outset. Jecklin, who was responsible for cataloguing them immediately after the hoard was discovered, left gaps and ambiguities in his description.
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- Studies in Numismatic MethodPresented to Philip Grierson, pp. 127 - 136Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1983