The Myth of the Mancus (^)
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CAROLINGIAN EUROPE AND THE ARABS : THE MYTH OF THE MANCUS (^) Three interrelated ideas have come to be widely accepted in récent years regarding the currency and coinage of western Europe during the Carolingian and early feudal âge. The first is that the stock of gold in the west was much larger than was formerly supposed. The second is that an appréciable proportion of this gold was in circulation in the form of coin. The third is that this coin was not, with rare exceptions, struck in Europe itself ; it consisted of Arab dinars, which circulated under various names in western Europe in much the same way as did the florin outside Italy in the fourteenth century, or as the Maria Theresa dollar has done for the last century and a half in certain régions of the Middle and Far East {^). (1) This paper was read at the Anglo-American conférence of Historians in Lon don on 14 July 1951. A summary of it was published in the BULLETIN OF THE INSTITUTE OF HISTORICAL RESEARCH, t. XXV (1952), pp. 1516. I have left its form almost unchanged, while bringing the material and the footnotes up to date. (2) The three sLudies of cardinal importance dealing with this subject are Ugo MONNERET DE VILLARD, La monetazione nelV Italia barbarica, RIVISTA ITAHANA Di NuMisMATicA, t. XXXII (1919), pp. 2238, 73112, 12538 ; t. XXXIII (1920), pp. 169232 ; t. XXXIV (1921), pp. 191218 ; Marc BLOCH, Le problème de l'or au moyen âge, ANNALES D'HISTOIRE éCONOMIQUE ET SOCIALE, t. V (1933), pp. 134 ; and Maurice LOMBARD, L'or musulman du VU' au XII' siècle, ANNALES : ÉCO NOMIES, SOCIéTéS, CIVILISATIONS, t. II (1947), pp. 14369. The first of thèse, though a work of great learning and extremely useful as a collection of material, is con fused in its arrangement, uncritical in its handling of both the documentary and the numismatic évidence, and quite incorrect in most of its conclusions. Its gênerai ténor may be judged by the triumphant but quite unjustified statement with which its author terminâtes his third section (p. 138) : « Conto con queste ricerche d'aver seppelita una volta per sempre la teoria generalmente accettate del mono metallismo argenteo durante l'alto medioevo in Occidente ». Marc Bloch's article is excellent; the only reproach one can make against it Is that its author relied almost entirely on Monneret de Villard for his account of the mancus. M. Lom 1060 PH. GRIERSON (2) The first of thèse ideas may well be correct, despite the fact that it conflicts with the generally accepted but somewhat dubious theory, that the passage of western Europe from a gold to a silver coinage in the course of the seventh and eighth centuries was due to the exhaustion of its stocks of gold owing to an unfavourable trade balance with the east. It is certainly correct so far as England is concerned : one has only to glance through Miss Whitelock's volume of Anglo-Saxon wills to see that in the two centuries before the Conquest every person or household of any pretensions to rank and wealth possessed many orna- ments — drinking cups, armlets, baldrics, scabbards, and so on — either entirely of gold or heavily gilded, as well as what one can only interpret as a private hoard of gold in the form of plate, ingots, and coin (}). It is also true of Italy. Only for Francia is the évidence some• what scanty, though whether this is due to defects in the évidence itself or to a real différence of conditions it is difficult to say (^). It is a question, however, which need not be investigated here. bard's article is extremely interesting and suggestive, but in my opinion it is toc schematic and exaggerates the influence of Islamic coinage in the west. Nor does it provide the évidence by which its conclusions can be tested. See also the articles of Kennepohl and Blanchet cited below, p. 1065, n. 3, and p. 1068, n. 1. Alfons DopscH believed firmly in the persistence of large quantities of gold in the west (Die Wirlschaftsentwickelimg der Karolingerzeit, 2nd éd., t. II, Vienna, 1922, pp. 305- 308 ; Naturalwirischaft und Geldwirtschaft in der Weltgeschicbte, Vienna, 1930, pp. 119-21). Henri PIRENNE no less categorically denied it (Mahomet et Charle- magne, 5th éd., Brussels-Paris, 1937, pp. 220-22, esp. p. 221, n. 3). (1) Dorothy WHITELOCK, Anglo-Saxon Wills (Cambridge, 1930). To take one example at random, the bequests of a certain Brihtric and his wife Aelfswith, who died c. 980, include an armlet weighing eighty mancuses of gold to the king and one of thirty to the queen ; thirty mancuses of gold, a necklace of forty man• cuses, a silver cup and half a gold headband to Rochester Cathedral ; sixty man• cuses of gold, a necklace of eighty mancuses and two silver cups to Christchurch, Canterbury ; thirty mancuses of gold, two silver cups, and half a gold headband to St. Augustine's ; ail this over and above various estâtes and sums of money to other legatees (no. XI, pp. 26-9). (2) The main source of évidence from England consists of wills, and thèse are rare for France. One of the few examples, that of Eberhard of Friuli, son-in-law of Louis the Pious, does include a considérable number of gold or gilded objects (I. DE CoussEMAKER, CaHulaire de l'abbaye de Cysoing, t. 1 [Lille, 1885], pp. 1-5). The share of Raoul, Eberhard's fourth son, includes mancosos c, but it is not clear whether this refers to actual coins or to gold by weight. (3) THE MYTH OF THE MANCUS 1061 The other two ideas, that there was an abundance of gold coin in circulation, and that this coin consisted mainly of Arab dinars, can scarcely be considered separately, for if the first is not true, the second does not arise. Before going on to discuss the évidence for the continued use of gold coins, it will be as well to examine briefly what thèse coins might be. This may be most conveniently done in summary form. In addition to what survived from the past — a good deal of Lom• bard and Byzantine gold in Italy, Uttle if anything elsewhere — wes• tern Europe in the three centuries between 750 and 1050 could receive gold coinage as follows : (1) From extraneous sources : (a) Byzantine solidi, struck continuously at Constantinople through- out the period and up to 878 at Syracuse (^). (b) Beneventan solidi, becoming baser as time went on, and coming to an end c. 850 {^). (c) Arab dinars, struck by the Abbasids and later dynasties at many eastern mints, and by the Umayyads in Spain from 929 onwards (1) For Byzantine coins, the best worlc for this period is W. WROTH, Catalogue of Impérial Byzantine coins in the British Muséum (2 vols., London, 1908). Italian issues are conveniently listed in G. SAMBON, Répertoria générale délie monete co- niate in Italia. Parte I (Paris, 1912). For Sicilian issues, an essential revision of parts of Wroth and Sambon is given by D. RICOTTI PRINA, La monetazione siciliana nelV epoca bizantina, NUMISMATICA, t. XVI (1950), pp. 26-60. (2) The standard works are W. WROTH, Catalogue of the coins of the Vandals, Ostrogoths and Lombards ... in the British Muséum (London, 1911) ; G. SAMBON, Recueil des monnaies médiévales du sud d'Italie avant la domination des Normands (Paris, 1919) ; M. GAGIATI, La Zecca di Benevento (Milan, 1916-17). See also Sam- bon's Répertoria générale, referred to in the preceding note, and vol. XVIII of the Corpus Nummorum Italicorum. Thèse gold coins were struck for the last time by Radelchis ot Benevento (839-51), as also by his contemporary Siconulf of Salerno (839-49). They are very light (c. 3,8 g.) and much debased ; spécimens in my collection are of 8 carats or less. (3) For thèse coinages, in addition to the standard catalogues of S. LANE-POOLE (British Muséum), H. LAVOIX (Bibliothèque Nationale), and H. NUTZEL (Berlin), one has now G. C. MILES, Rare Islamic coins (New York, 1950) and The coinage of the Umayyads of Spain (2 vols. New York, 1950). 1062 PH. GRIERSON (4) (d) Arab gold coins, known in Latin Christendom as taris (1/4 di• nars), struck in North African mints and in Sicily from the early tenth century onwards (^), and imitations of them struck at Salerno and Amalfi (the latter very base) in the second quarter of the eleventh century (^). (2) From domestic sources : (a) Gold tremisses struck by the last Lombard kings, by some Itahan cities in 774-81, and by Charlemagne in the period immediately foUowing the conquest (^). It should be noted that the often cited gold sohdus of Uzès, generally attributed to Charlemagne, is in fact a feudal pièce, probably of the tenth or eleventh century (*), and that the denarii auri, which ap• pear from time to time in ninth century Burgundian charters and are often cited as évidence of Carohngian gold coinage, were not necessarily coins at ail, but may have been penny- weights of gold. If they were coin, they were probably struck for the spécifie purpose of cérémonial payments as was the case with the gold « coins » of Uzès. (b) Sohdi struck by Louis the Pious in the years immediately following bis coronation, and the very numerous imitations of thèse made in Frisia during the next half century (^). (1) SAMBON, Repertorio, pp. 128 ff., and after the Aghiabids were supplanted by the Fatimids G. C. MILES, Fatimid coins in the collection of the University Muséum, Philadelphia, and the American Numismatic Society (New York, 1951).