FRENCH COIN COLLECTING ?
Charlemagne and the Carolingians
| When Charlemagne - 'Karl der Grosse' - set up the Carolingian empire, it was already the period that Samuel Huntingdon refers to today as " The Clash of Civilisations " : Europe was fighting in the East against the Asian peoples and in the south against Islam. Peoples were united in big groups where, apart from a few civil wars or minor wars of succession, the battles were between huge empires : the Chinese, the Islamic, the Christian. The borders between these different blocks changed according to victories and defeats : the border with Islam was situated at this time at the Pyrenees because Spain was occupied. The Huns, who had come from Mongolia, had already invaded Europe around 400 A.D. and besieged Paris. They still threatened from Russia where Russian tribes from the north had not yet founded the Kiev kingdom (around 900 A.D.). America was only to exist as a political entity a thousand years later. |
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A 'denier' from |
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A 'denier' from |
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The coins of Charlemagne and of his successors are an indication to us of the extent of his empire, for nearly all the coins are struck according to the same mould : the cross of Christ, surrounded by his name and his title CARLUS REX and, on the reverse, his signature, a monogram in the centre, surrounded by the name of the town where it was minted. These are often the old names of the local Gallic tribes : PARIS is the tribe of the 'Parisii', SENONES, now known as Sens, in Burgundy, is the tribe of the same name; TOLOSA, now known as Toulouse, is the tribe of the Tolosates. The name of the mint is sometimes clearer still : ATREBATIS CIVITAS is the town of Atrébates, now known as Arras, in the north of France. The daily life of our ancestors was at this time very hard and we are often surprised by many of its aspects. Verdun, an imperial town, was for example a great centre of slave-trade, slaves coming mainly from the Slavonic plains, which explains the etymology of the word. |
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A 'denier' from Paris, struck by Charles the Bald around 850. |
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A 'denier' by Louis the Pious |
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Paris had probably, at the most, a population of five thousand inhabitants and a large community of Syrian tradesmen. Reading and arithmetic were virtually unheard of, personal hygiene inexistant, which explains why Charlemagne created schools and had a bath put into his palace. By comparison, Islamic civilisation was then at its height, with several thousand public baths and schools in Baghdad. Coins from the Carolingian empire are quite easy to find and
start at four hundred francs There is no specialised reference collection,; but the National French Library (BnF) has a substantial collection. |
