Regensburg, Wandalgarius and The Novi Reform Revisited: Denarii: Charlemagne's Monetary
Regensburg, Wandalgarius and The Novi Reform Revisited: Denarii: Charlemagne's Monetary
Regensburg, Wandalgarius and The Novi Reform Revisited: Denarii: Charlemagne's Monetary
* I am grateful to Jinty Nelson and Rory Naismith for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this
paper. I also wish to thank Jinty Nelson for sharing with me her forthcoming papers ‘Staging
Integration in Bavaria, 791–3’ and ‘Evidence in Question: Dendrochronology and Early Medi-
eval Historians’. The latter was inspirational for my discussion of Charlemagne’s canal in the
third section of this study.
1
Capitularia regum Francorum, ed. A. Boretius and V. Krause, MGH Legum Sectio 2, 2 vols
(Hanover, 1883), I, p. 74. My translation.
2
Ph. Grierson, ‘Money and Coinage under Charlemagne’, in W. Braunfels (ed.), Karl der Grosse:
Lebenswerk und Nachleben, 5 vols (Düsseldorf, 1965–7), I (1965), pp. 501–36, at pp. 507–11;
repeated in Ph. Grierson and M. Blackburn, Medieval European Coinage I: The Early Middle
Ages (5th–10th Centuries) (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 208 and 282.
3
See, for example, S. Coupland, ‘Charlemagne’s Coinage: Ideology and Economy’, in J. Story
(ed.), Charlemagne: Empire and Society (Manchester, 2005), pp. 211–29, at pp. 218–23; I.
Garipzanov, Symbolic Language of Authority in the Carolingian World, c. 751–877, Brill’s Series on
the Early Middle Ages 16 (Leiden, 2008), pp. 131–2; and R. Naismith, Money and Power in
Anglo-Saxon England: The Southern English Kingdoms, 757–865 (Cambridge, 2012), pp. 175–8.
voyage from Italy – it is most likely that it was deposited some months or
a few years after it was minted.4 By contrast, this person must have
acquired the newly struck post-reform denier as he journeyed to Gaul. It
was this evidence of the Ilanz hoard that established a terminus post quem
for Charlemagne’s reform of c.790.5
In addition, there is indirect numismatic evidence employed by
Grierson in his interpretation, namely, the introduction of new heavier
pennies by King Offa in 792/3. Following Christopher Blunt’s study of
Offa’s coinage, Grierson dated that event to the summer of 792. This date
was based on one unique coin issued by Archbishop Iænberht of Can-
terbury that was described by Blunt as ‘transitional’ to the new type of
Offa’s heavier coins. Also, all the coins of his successor Archbishop
Æthelheard belonged to the new type and/or weight. Hence, Blunt and
Grierson thought that the new coinage of Offa was introduced shortly
before Iænberht’s death on 12 August 792.6 But the weight and size of the
coin in question (no. 132 in Blunt’s catalogue and no. 151 in Derek
Chick’s catalogue) are still within the parameters of Offa’s pre-reform
coins (Light Coinage).7 Æthelheard’s coinage thus becomes crucial for
the dating of Offa’s reform. It is known that he was elected in 792 and
consecrated on 21 July 793, which means that Offa’s reform took place in
792/3 in the period between Iænberht’s death and Æthelheard’s installa-
tion at the seat of Canterbury.8 These new coins of Offa visually ‘corre-
spond in their basic pattern’, as Grierson put it, to Charlemagne’s pre-
reform coins, which suggests that the former were introduced before the
Carolingian novi denarii arrived in England. Hence, the latter must have
been introduced between 792 and 794. ‘792 is scarcely possible, since the
Avar war was still not over, and 793 or the early months of 794 are the
dates with which one is left.’ Grierson thought that the winter of 793/4
when Charlemagne celebrated Christmas in Würzburg and Easter in
Frankfurt should be preferred to the preceding months of 793, when
4
For more details and all the references, see Grierson, ‘Money and Coinage’, pp. 504, 509, and
511, and notes 25, 44 and 53; and Grierson and Blackburn, Medieval European Coinage I, pp. 210
and 282; M. McCormick, Origins of the European Economy: Communication and Commerce AD
300–900 (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 825–6; and D. Chick, The Coinage of Offa and His Contempo-
raries, ed. M. Blackburn and R. Naismith, The British Numismatic Society, Special Publication
6 (London, 2010), nos. 102f and 103b.
5
Based on this evidence, some numismatists including the early Grierson dated the monetary
reform to c.790: Ph. Grierson, ‘Cronologia delle riforme monetarie di Carolo Magno’, Rivista
italiana di numismatica 56 (1954), pp. 65–79; S. Suchodolski, Moneta i obrót pieniézny w Europie
Zachodniej (Wrocław, 1982), pp. 192–201.
6
C.E. Blunt, ‘Coinage of Offa’, in R.H.M. Dolley (ed.), Anglo-Saxon Coins: Studies Presented to
F. M. Stenton on the Occasion of His 80th Birthday (London, 1961), pp. 39–62, at pp. 47–9 and
53; and Grierson, ‘Money and Coinage’, pp. 510–11.
7
Blunt, ‘Coinage of Offa’, p. 54; and Chick, The Coinage of Offa, p. 129.
8
Chick, The Coinage of Offa, p. 28; R. Naimsith, ‘The Coinage of Offa Revisited’, British
Numismatic Journal 80 (2010), pp. 76–106, at pp. 88–9; and Naismith, Money and Power, p. 175.
9
Grierson, ‘Money and Coinage’, p. 511.
10
St Gall, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. Sang. 731: Lex Romana Visigothorum, Lex Salica, Lex
Alamannorum (<http://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en/list/one/csg/0731>). For its detailed descrip-
tion, see G. Scherrer, Verzeichniss der Handschriften der Stiftsbibliothek von St. Gallen (Halle,
1875), pp. 238–40, and B.M. von Scarpatetti, R. Gamper and M. Stähli (eds), Katalog der
datierten Handschriften in der Schweiz in lateinischer Schrift vom Anfang des Mittelalters bis 1550,
III: Die Handschriften der Bibliotheken St. Gallen-Zürich (Zurich, 1991), no. 160, p. 59.
11
‘Panorama der Handschriftenüberlieferung aus der Zeit Karls des Grossen’, in Mittelalterliche
Studien, 3 vols (Stuttgart, 1966–81), I (1981), pp. 5–38, at p. 19.
12
For more details and references, see H. Mordek, Biblioteca capitularium regum Francorum
manuscripta: Überlieferung und Traditionszusammenhang der fränkischen Herrschererlasse
(Munich, 1995), p. 671; A. von Euw, ‘Zur künstlerischen Ausstattung früher Leges-
Handschriften Cod. 729, 730 und 731 der Stiftsbibliothek St. Gallen’, in K. Böse and S.
Wittekind (eds), Ausbildung des Rechts: Systematisierung und Vermittlung von Wissen in
mittelalterlichen Rechtshandschriften (Frankfurt, 2009), pp. 62–81, at p. 64.
Fig. 1 St Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. Sang. 731, p. 113, fragment – Lex Romana
Visigothorum, Lex Salica, Lex Alamannorum <http://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en/
csg/0731/111>
Fig. 2 St Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. Sang. 731, p. 111, fragment – Lex Romana
Visigothorum, Lex Salica, Lex Alamannorum <http://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en/
csg/0731/113>
16
Verzeichniss der Handschriften der Stiftsbibliothek von St. Gallen, p. 240.
17
Lex Romana Visigothorum, ed. G. Hänel (Leipzig, 1849), p. 194.
18
‘Omnes iudicis sciant quod, quidquid male rapuerent, se [instead of si] ipsi non redederent, ad
[instead of a] suis heredis esse redendo.’ As a result of such unintelligent copying, a number of
legal passages in this manuscript are ‘hair-raisingly misleading’, McKitterick, The Carolingians
and the Written Word, p. 43.
19
Lex Romana Visigothorum, ed. Hänel, pp. 190–1.
20
‘[Praemium accipiat] Quicumque adulterum monedario prodedire, et his qui proditus est, se
[instead of si] de monida adulteracione fuerit adprobatus, ignibus concremetur.’
21
Lex Romana Visigothorum, ed. Hänel, pp. 190–2.
indicated not with the two initial letters FR as on original coins, but is
spelled out almost entirely. After all, Wandalgarius was more familiar
with notarial practices than with the craft of a moneyer.
The inhabited initials on pages 111 and 113 were drawn alongside early
sixth-century chapters to illustrate their legal applicability in some Caro-
lingian territories in Charlemagne’s time. The initials made it visually
clear that, albeit with their antiquated style and numerous grammatical
errors, these chapters referred to Carolingian judges and coins. The
images of Charlemagne’s seal and new coin symbolically validated those
legal texts and thus functioned as visual tokens of royal authority for both
the scribe and the readers of the Breviary of Alaric. In doing so, these
symbols also confirmed Charlemagne’s royal authority by linking it to a
centuries-old tradition of Visigothic kingship.
Codex Sangallensis 731 is unique in presenting a faithful image of an
early medieval coin. But what makes this codex even more remarkable
from a numismatic point of view is the date of its completion that
Wandalgarius proudly stated on the final page after he had finished
transcribing the three books of law (p. 342).
22
Mordek, Biblioteca capitularium, p. 674, argues that tertio should be translated with die as
referring to the third working day of Wandalgarius that started on Wednesday, when according
to his note on page 237 he started transcribing the Salic Law. Yet in the texts of laws written
between these two notes, there is an explicit line after the Salic Law (page 297), but no such line
at the end of the Law of the Alamans, the third law book in the manuscript.
23
A widely accepted opinion is that ho stands here as an abbreviation for homo (man), Mordek,
Biblioteca capitularium, p. 673. At the same time, an interjection ho came to Middle English
from Old French, so it is possible that the interjection had an older history in Romance dialects.
The manuscript’s size is 21.5 × 13 cm, and each page usually has 21 lines
of text. This means that there are c.4851 lines written between page 111
with the image of Charlemagne’s coin and page 342 with the concluding
note. It has been suggested by Michael Gullick that a few centuries later
a normal productivity of a scribe was about 300 lines of text a day.24 If
Wandalgarius wrote as fast as the Romanesque scribes, it would have
taken him sixteen days to complete the text after page 111. Apparently, due
to his notarial skills, his productivity was higher since he states on page
237 that he started copying the text of the Salic Law on Wednesday just
before 1 November 793.
This means that he wrote about 35 pages or c.720 lines a day. With such
a speed he might have completed the manuscript within a week after he
drew the image of the coin. Such haste would also explain many mis-
spellings and errors in his transcription. Yet to complete the manuscript
must have taken longer since Waldalgarius not only wrote its text but also
drew numerous decorated initials, tens of inhabited initials and one
full-page illumination in the text of the Breviary of Alaric preceding the
Salic Law. These decorations are embedded in the text to an extent that
indicates that each of them was drawn at the same time as the corre-
sponding lines of text. First, as mentioned above, these illustrations were
executed using the same inks as the text. Second, the text was laid out so
as to allow space for corresponding illustrations. Finally, the images
presented by the inhabited initials were created in correspondence with
the content of the accompanying chapters. Considering that it is very
unlikely that he kept working on the manuscript without any break – at
least Sundays must have been out of the question – one can loosely
estimate that the image of Charlemagne’s coin was drawn in mid-
October 793 at the latest. Also, some time must have passed before the
novi denarii reached the scribe’s hands and eventually compelled him to
use them as a blueprint for the initial that embellished legal chapters on
coinage. After all, as the passage of the Frankfurt Council on novi denarii
demonstrates, in the first months or year after the monetary reform the
24
M. Gullick, ‘How Fast Did Scribes Write? Evidence from Romanesque Manuscripts’, in L.L.
Brownrigg (ed.), Making the Medieval Book: Techniques of Production (Los Altos Hills, 1995), pp.
39–58. See also J.P. Gumbert, ‘The Speed of Scribes’, in E. Condello and G. de Gregorio (eds),
Scribi e colofoni: Le sottoscrizione di copisti dalle origini all’avvento della stampo, Biblioteca del
Centro per il Collegamento degli studi medievali e umanistici in Umbria 14 (Spoleto, 1995), pp.
57–69.
As mentioned above in this paper, Philip Grierson argued that the his-
torical context of 792/3 made those months an unlikely time for
Charlemagne’s monetary reform for he was allegedly too busy waging
wars and digging ditches. This argument does not hold water: King
Charlemagne was always a busy man and the period between August 792
and October 793 was not any different from the rest of his reign. In any
case, all the practical work must have been done by his advisers and
assistants at the court. It is therefore more productive to consider whether
or not a monetary reform fits in with other important events that took
place in 792/3. At the outset, a famine was ravaging both England and
Francia in these two years 792–93, which might have encouraged both
Offa and Charlemagne to look for additional sources of revenue. As
pointed out by Rory Naismith, an increase in the weight of coins would
have augmented ‘the intrinsic value of any payment made to the king and
other members of the elite at a fixed numerical quantity’.26
A monetary reform also implied reminting older coins at royal mints,
which might have provided another source of revenue for the king. Thus,
a relevant chapter in a capitulary of Pippin the Short (754/5) informs us
that a moneyer (monetarius) was entitled to one out of twenty-two solidi
(one pound) brought in for minting.27 By the 790s, a similar fee must
have been taken by royal mints. Stanislaw Suchodolski also thought
that after Charlemagne’s reform the novi denarii were exchanged for
the pre-reform coins at a higher rate than their intrinsic value, with the
difference (Suchodolski guesstimates it as thirteen per cent) going to the
royal fisc. This could have caused an initial avoidance of the post-reform
25
Alcuin mentioned these heavier new coins in his letter to Paulinus, Patriarch of Aquileia, in 796,
which mentions two golden bracelets ‘pensantes XXIIII denarios minus de nova moneta regis
quam libram plenam’, Alcuin, Epistolae, no. 96, in Epistolae Karolini Aevi II, ed. E. Dümmler,
MGH Epistolae 4 (Berlin, 1895), p. 140.
26
Naismith, Money and Power in Anglo-Saxon England, p. 176.
27
Capitularia regum Francorum, ed. Boretius and Krause, I, p. 32: ‘De moneta constituimus, ut
amplius non habeat in libra pensante nisi XXII solidos, et de ipsis XXII solidis monetarius
accipiat solidum I, et illos alios domino cuius sunt reddat.’
28
‘On the Rejection of Good Coin in Carolingian Europe’, in C.N.L. Brooke et al. (eds), Studies
in Numismatic Method Presented to Philip Grierson (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 147–52.
29
J. Nelson, ‘Evidence in Question: Dendrochronology and Early Medieval Historians’, in
Mélanges Shoichi Sato (in press); and Annales qui dicuntur Einhardi, s.a. 793, in Annales regni
Francorum et annales q. d. Einhard, ed. G.H. Pertz and F. Kurze, MGH SRG 6 (Hanover, 1895),
p. 93.
30
Ch. Zielhofer et al., ‘Charlemagne’s Summit Canal: An Early Medieval Hydro-Engineering
Project for Passing the Central European Watershed’, PLoS One 9.9 (2014), e108194 <http://
journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0108194>.
31
For more details, see I. Garipzanov, ‘Annales Guelferbytani: Changing Perspectives of a Local
Narrative’, in R. Corradini and M. Diesenberger (eds), Zwischen Niederschrift und Wiederschrift:
Hagiographie und Historiographie im Spannungsfeld von Kompendienüberlieferung und
Editionstechnik (Vienna, 2010), pp. 123–38.
32
P. Squatriti, ‘Digging Ditches in Early Medieval Europe’, Past and Present 176 (2002), pp. 11–65,
at p. 16.
33
For more details and references, see J. Nelson, ‘The Siting of the Council at Frankfurt: Some
Reflections on Family and Politics’, in B. Berndt (ed.), Das Frankfurter Konzil von 794.
Frankfurt: Kristallisationspunkt karolingischer Kultur, 2 vols (Mainz, 1997), I, pp. 149–65, at p.
159; and R. McKitterick, Charlemagne: The Formation of European Identity (Cambridge, 2008),
p. 43. For a very detailed overview of Charlemagne’s stay in Regensburg, see J. Nelson, ‘Staging
Integration in Bavaria, 791–3’ (forthcoming).
34
P. Schmid, ‘Civitas regia: Die Königsstadt Regensburg’, in Geschichte der Stadt Regensburg 1
(Regensburg, 2000), pp. 102–47, at p. 103. For the place of Regensburg in Tassilo’s polity, see
C.I. Hammer, From ducatus to regnum: Ruling Bavaria under the Merovingians and Early
Carolingians (Turnhout, 2007), p. 173.
35
Nelson, ‘The Siting of the Council at Frankfurt’, pp. 164–5.
36
Annales regni Francorum, s.a. 792, in Annales regni Francorum et annales q. d. Einhard, ed. G.H.
Pertz and F. Kurze, MGH SRG 6 (Hanover, 1895), p. 92.
37
J. Nelson, ‘Charlemagne – pater optimus?’, in P. Godman, J. Jarnut and P. Johanek (eds), Am
Vorabend der Kaiser Krönung: Das Epos ‘Karolus Magnus et Leo Papa’ und der Papst Besuch in
Paderborn 799 (Berlin, 2002), pp. 269–81, at p. 275.
38
Annales Quaferbytani, s.a. 791 and 792, in Garipzanov, ‘Annales Guelferbytani’, p. 119.
39
Annales q. d. Einhardi, s.a. 792, pp. 91 and 93; Einhard, Vita Karoli Magni, c. 20, ed. G.H. Pertz
and G. Waitz, MGH SRG 25 (Hanover and Leipzig, 1911), pp. 25–6; and Nelson, ‘The Siting of
the Council at Frankfurt’, pp. 156–61.
40
See Nelson, ‘The Siting of the Council at Frankfurt’, pp. 160–1; eadem, ‘Charlemagne – pater
optimus?’, pp. 277–8; eadem, Opposition to Charlemagne, The Annual Lecture of the German
Historical Institute (London, 2009), pp. 8–12; and eadem, ‘Hussies, Matrons, and Others in
Carolingian Chronicles’, in J. Dresvina and N. Sparks (eds), Authority and Gender in Medieval
and Renaissance Chronicles (Newcastle upon Tyne, 2012), pp. 5–31, at p. 15.
41
Annales q. d. Einhardi, s.a. 793, p. 93.
42
For more details and relevant references, see Nelson, ‘Evidence in Question’.
43
Squatriti, ‘Digging Ditches in Early Medieval Europe’, p. 46.
44
For a strong argument for an important role of monetary exchange in the early Middle Ages,
see R. Naismith, ‘The Social Significance of Monetization in the Early Middle Age’, Past and
Present 223 (2014), pp. 3–39.
45
Zielhofer et al., ‘Charlemagne’s Summit Canal’, p. 18.
At the end of autumn, the construction project had failed to achieve its
stated goal. In consequence, Charlemagne had to abandon his ambitious
plan and had to relocate his court to Francia where the mechanisms of
social power clearly needed a royal presence. In 794 he arrived in Frank-
furt, where Fastrada and her retinue had arrived before him and cel-
ebrated Christmas the previous year. Jinty Nelson has suggested that
Frankfurt might have been in the area where Fastrada’s father, Count
Radulf of an East Frankish origin, came from, and that for this reason the
royal couple could have considered this city in those months as another
option for a permanent sedes regia. In Frankfurt, Charlemagne spent
many months attending to various urgent social and religious matters,
and on 20 July his residence there was for the first time identified in a
royal charter as a palace.46 The death of his wife Fastrada on 10 August
794 must have aborted the plan of turning Frankfurt into a more per-
manent location for the royal court. Similar to Regensburg at the end of
793, Frankfurt ceased to be viewed as a potential sedes regia, a role that was
successfully taken on later by Aachen.
Finally, in addition to socioeconomic and fiscal reasons, there might
have been a strong political incentive to undertake a monetary reform in
792/3. The support that the conspiracy of Pippin the Hunchback received
from some nobles in the Frankish heartlands must also have been viewed
at Charlemagne’s court as questioning his legitimacy as the leader of the
Franks.47 The introduction of a new coin type (Fig. 3) that propagated
Charlemagne, first and foremost, as king of the Franks and presented his
royal monogram to every coin user in the Carolingian realm could have
been a propagandistic response to this perceived legitimacy crisis. One
should remember that Charlemagne’s full title at that time included such
elements as ‘King of the Lombards and Patrician of the Romans’. Yet in
the political situation of 792/3, it seems that the title ‘King of the Franks’
mattered much more. As the image in Codex Sangallensis 731 of the ‘royal
side’ of such a coin shows, the royal message was received by coin users –
like the notary Wandalgarius – who could see a novus denarius as a token
of royal authority worthy of being depicted, along with Charlemagne’s
seal, on the pages of a law book copied for use in his regnum.
4. Concluding remarks
46
For more details, see Nelson, ‘The Siting of the Council at Frankfurt’, pp. 150 and 162–4.
47
For more details and references, see Garipzanov, Symbolic Language of Authority, pp. 274–6.
48
Grierson and Blackburn, Medieval European Coinage I, p. 197.
49
J. Lafaurie, ‘Moneta palatina’, Francia 4 (1976), pp. 59–87, at pp. 65–9.
50
Capitularia regum Francorum, ed. Boretius and Krause, II, p. 315.
51
Capitularia regum Francorum, ed. Boretius and Krause, I, pp. 73–4.
52
For more details and references, see Nelson, ‘Staging Integration in Bavaria, 791–3’.
53
S. Airlie, ‘Narratives of Triumph and Rituals of Submission: Charlemagne’s Mastering of
Bavaria’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 9 (1999), pp. 93–119, at pp. 116–18.
in 792–3 when famine was ravaging the Frankish lands than in the
context of summer 794. In a similar vein, Chapter 5 on novi denarii was
written to ensure that the new coins introduced during the royal stay in
Regensburg circulated freely in the Carolingian realm.
Finally, the correction of the date of Charlemagne’s monetary reform
to 792/3 makes it much closer in time to the monetary reform of the
Anglo-Saxon king Offa and thus gives more weight to a general assump-
tion that the two events were somehow linked, with one inspiring the
other. It is quite symbolic that there is an eighteenth-century report
mentioning a find of a penny of Offa in the grounds of St Emmeram’s
abbey in Regensburg and dating this find – highly unusual in the Caro-
lingian realm – to the time of Charlemagne.54 But as Rory Naismith
warns us, one must be very careful in defining the precise nature of the
connection between the two reforms.55 The new coins across the Channel
looked and weighed differently, and each king, after all, might have had
his own particular reasons for a monetary reform. At the same time, such
a close chronological correspondence between both reforms was hardly
accidental considering the known pattern of regular interactions between
the circles of Charlemagne and Offa in those years.56 It is quite possible
that the idea of such a monetary reform being discussed and imple-
mented at one of the royal courts could have very soon become known
and prompted the same process at the other, without any actual post-
reform coin having yet crossed the Channel either way.
University of Oslo
54
I am grateful to Rory Naismith for pointing my attention to this coin find. For more details,
see R. Naismith, ‘An Eighteenth-Century Single-Find of Offa from Regensburg?’, Numismatic
Circular 116 (2008), pp. 115–16.
55
Naismith, Money and Power in Anglo-Saxon England, p. 176.
56
For more details, see J. Story, ‘Charlemagne and the Anglo-Saxons’, in J. Story (ed.),
Charlemagne: Empire and Society (Manchester, 2005), pp. 196–210.