NEW BOOK: MEROVINGIAN COINS

DU TRÉSOR ROYAL AU SALAIRE DE LA MINE MONNAIES, MONÉTAIRES ET POUVOIRS MÉROVINGIENS Recherches et Travaux de la Société d'Études Numismatiques et Archéologiques n° 12, Société d'Études Numismatiques et Archéologiques (SÉNA), Paris, 2025.

FROM ROYAL TREASURY TO MINE WAGES: MEROVINGIAN COINS, MONETARY, AND POWERS, Research and Works of the Society for Numismatic and Archaeological Studies n° 12. Book entirely in French.

Inès Villela-Petit, Karim Meziane et Philippe Schiesser (dir.),

SENA Members: €35 France, €45 Outside France

Public price France including shipping €40, Public price Outside France including shipping €50

SENA alternates between publishing proceedings of regional conferences and thematic volumes. The first category includes volumes on numismatics in Poitou-Charentes (RTSÉNA 2), numismatics in Normandy (RTSÉNA 4), Breton numismatics (RTSÉNA 6), Monegasque and Provençal numismatics (RTSÉNA 8), coinage in Metz and Lorraine (RTSÉNA 9), coins and coinage in Avignon, between Provence and the Papacy (RTSÉNA 10), and coinage in Troyes and Champagne (RTSÉNA 11); to be followed soon by numismatics in Béarn (Pau conference, 2023) and numismatics in Anjou and along the Loire (Angers conference, 2025). Several include articles that align with the theme of this volume: Coins, Moneyers, and Merovingian Power. Previous thematic issues, in addition to counterfeit coins (to which RTSÉNA 6 was also devoted), have focused on the army and coinage (RT SÉNA 1 and 3), Celtic numismatics (RTSÉNA 5, a collection of essays in honor of Louis-Pol Delestrée), and Merovingian numismatics through the silver coinage of Touraine (RTSÉNA 7). RTSÉNA 7 thus paved the way for us by clarifying the chronology of the appearance of the denier (c. 670) and demonstrating the importance of silver coinage through the Touraine corpus.

The submissions of articles on Merovingian coins, both in the Cahiers Numismatiques and at the SÉNA regional conferences, reflect the rapid renewal of research and the growing interest of numismatists. The response to the call for papers for this volume confirms this: unpublished works and in-depth articles have already filled not one, but two issues of the RTSÉNA journal on Merovingian coinage. This coinage is indeed abundant, both in terms of the variety of types and the number of surviving examples: Guillaume Blanchet inventories 1,124 argentei in his thesis; Arent Pol lists 12,000 gold coins in his database (solidi and tremisses), and Philippe Schiesser lists almost as many denarii, as well as about a hundred silver obols.

Research in Merovingian numismatics is also benefiting from the general revival of interest in the period, through archaeological excavations, the considerable amount of newly unearthed material, and exhibitions, notably in 2016-2017: "The Merovingian Era" at the Musée de Cluny in Paris and "Austrasia." The forgotten Merovingian kingdom at Saint-Dizier and the National Archaeological Museum in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, and recent studies on the structures of Merovingian power, are challenging received ideas and dispelling the negative images left to us by 19th-century authors.

This conceptual constraint, which distorted our perspective, is that of Maurice Prou's introduction to his Catalogue of Merovingian Coins in the National Library (1892), although it remains a standard reference. The idea of ??a disintegrated state and obscure moneyers taking the initiative in minting coins is, however, obsolete since the importance of the chancery and the palace of the Frankish kings, direct heirs to imperial practices, has been highlighted. Nevertheless, the number of mints is vastly greater than the three mints in Roman Gaul and Germania operating in Arles, Lyon, and Trier at the beginning of the 5th century. Around 700 minting sites, both permanent and temporary, are attested in the 6th and 7th centuries through place names associated with coins, primarily for gold, but others remain unidentified.

In any case, they seem to reveal the control exercised by the central administration of the Frankish kings from their capitals (the sedes regni) or their palaces (the palatium) through a dense territorial network, as evidenced by both the distribution of place names and that of coin finds and hoards. The place names identified in the Prou ??region would, moreover, require a general revision, as the linguist Jean-Pierre Chambon demonstrated twenty years ago through the study of a sample of names of mints in Auvergne, half of which turned out to be incorrectly identified. Nevertheless, the "money-makers' coins," so characteristic of Merovingian coinage, which are unique in that they lack the name of a sovereign, reflect both a system of government by delegation and a centralized monetary policy, implemented around 581-582, at the height of Frankish power.

From its inception, the SÉNA has been committed to disseminating information impartially and not limiting publications to institutional authors, a commitment all the more justified in a field as diverse as Merovingian numismatics. Thus, the contributions of a new generation of researchers join the work of established authors, both French and international. The articles express the opinions of their authors and may, in some cases, contradict each other, but this is a deliberate choice, so as not to conceal the difficulties faced by researchers and to showcase the scholarly reflection in progress; we have allowed these divergences to be expressed. The interpretation of the monograms is one example, as documentary evidence is so lacking that it is difficult to transform the appealing hypothesis into a certainty and to decide between possible readings.

Editor's notes [Ed.] summarize, where applicable, the ongoing debates and the alternatives. The contributions gathered in this first volume cover all periods of Merovingian coinage: from imperial imitations (before 581), to the gold coinage known as that of the moneyers (c. 582–c. 670), and silver coinage (c. 670–c. 750); from all parts of the kingdom (regiones rather than Teilreiche), from Austrasia to Aquitaine, including Provence, with forays into more distant territories: Rome and the Byzantine Empire; and from all aspects of Merovingian numismatics, including classification and toponymy, typology and corpora, iconography and economics, the history of institutions and metrology, with several case studies.

Using a silver coin of Childebert I as a starting point, Christophe Adam offers a new interpretation of royal monograms, comparing them to toponymic monograms. Thibault Cardon proposes a stylistic and geographical classification framework for the tremisses of the Merovingian kingdoms, using Austrasia as an example. He emphasizes the territorial boundaries established by the regio.

Based on Arent Pol's study of the coinage of Rouergue (the pagus rutenicus), Inès Villela-Petit examines monetary place names for what they reveal about power structures through their distribution in the peripheries. Villela-Petit also focuses on the career of a moneyer-goldsmith contemporary with Saint Eligius: Haribald, who may have worked successively in Rodez, Clermont d'Auvergne, and Marseille. Fernando López-Sánchez reveals papal control over the "quasi-imperial" coinage of Marseille during the reign of Childeric II, and the monetary commemoration of the reception of the Byzantine Emperor Constans II at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.

Philippe Cossettini revisits Provençal coinage from the last quarter of the 7th century, focusing on a political interpretation of "weak signals" based on rare archival and chronicle references.

Samuel Gouet and Philippe Schiesser study a hoard of Merovingian deniers found at Queudes (Marne), on the border of the three kingdoms of Neustria, Austrasia, and Burgundy.

Daniel Patarin examines Candes-Saint-Martin (Indre-et-Loire), the site of Martin of Tours' death at the confluence of the Vienne and Loire rivers, from where the saint's body was transported to Tours by barge. The author gathers evidence of a moneta (a type of coin).

Similarly, Christophe Adam proposes attributing the deniers of Leodegiselus with the bearded face, and the triens that precede them, to a "Mound of Theodebert" still visible in the urban landscape of Thiverzay (Vendée).

Finally, Bernard Seguin presents the long-awaited catalogue of Merovingian silver coinage from Melle (Deux-Sèvres), focusing on three types: deniers and obols with a large cross-shaped A, a large uncial M also with a cross, and the monogrammed letters ME. Philippe Schiesser also presents the equally anticipated catalogue of uniface obols or bracteates, subdivisions of deniers, which extend into the Carolingian period.

This diversity of approaches and perspectives, of research avenues, both traditional and more original, is what makes contemporary Merovingian numismatic studies so rich.

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