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 Replies: 11 / Views: 6,623 |
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Pillar of the Community
United Kingdom
2624 Posts |
I had a brief look but couldn't really find any easily digestable information on this.
When and whose coins first started bearing the Christian calender?
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
20753 Posts |
Sort of depends on which calendar. Remember ther have been several different variations. And what about the Chines calendar. I would think that in answer to that a coin would have to have the AD or BC noted by the date. I just can't remember a coin with a BC after the date though. First one would have to have the AD I guess.   |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1391 Posts |
Well, the Christian year calandar was created by Dionysius Exiguus (Dennis the Short) in AD 525 to replace Anno Martyrum (AM) or the Year of the Martyrs calandar. AM was associated with the Emperor Diocletian and Dionysius did not want to continue using a system the was attached to a great persecutor of the Church.
AD stands for Anno Domini which is Year of our Lord. So you are not going to find any coin with a date on it before AD 525. However, the coins will probably be older because the system was slowly adopted over the next three centuries.
Dennis the Short was from Scythia Minor, in what is modern Romania and Bulgaria. He lived later in life in what is the modern city of Constanta. So I would suspect that that area of the world (the historic Romanian and Bulgarian states/kingdoms) would be the best place to look to find the first coin in the AD system.
Edited by allranger
08/11/2012 7:13 pm
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Pillar of the Community
 United Kingdom
2624 Posts |
Thank you allranger, an informative answer which gives me some clues where to look and roughly when...
I knew that such a coin would likely be after the end of the Romans and pressumably in a Christian country...I was unaware that the invention of the calander was so late (though it makes sense because I heard it is out by about 3 years if you believe that anyone name Jesus was a real historical figure)
I cant recall seeing any English coins displaying a date of before 1500's and I asked myself the question and was unable to discover any answer...
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Pillar of the Community
Australia
9416 Posts |
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Moderator
 Australia
16837 Posts |
Although the AD calendar has been around since AD 525, it was not widely adopted until the Middle Ages. Writing it on coins was further complicated because the compact "Western" numeral system had not yet been invented; everyone would have needed to use Roman numerals. The first coin to bear an AD date was the silver pfennig from Roskilde, Denmark in AD 1234 and the entire legend on the coin, both obverse and reverse, is the date: ANNO DOMINII on the obverse and MCCXXXIIII on the reverse. Only seven examples of this coin are known to exist, and six of those are in museums. The sole privately-owned example did not reach the 33,500 euro estimate when offered for sale in 2008. The next-oldest coins are a series of silver dirhams from the Crusader States, struck in Acre over the period 1251-1253 with designs imitating the Islamic silver dirham of Damascus but with Christian slogans replacing the Islamic ones, and the AD calendar replacing the Islamic calendar. This date is written out in full, in the Arabic language. The earliest coin to use "Western" numerals to denote the AD date was the silver plappart of the Swiss canton of St Gallen in 1424. For pics of these and other super-early AD-dated coins, see this web page on mediaevalcoinage.com. The "1166" dated coin at the top of that list is actually dated "1204" in a local Spanish calendar, not the AD calendar. Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise, you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. - C. S. Lewis
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Moderator
Australia
16837 Posts |
Quote:
I cant recall seeing any English coins displaying a date of before 1500's... The earliest English coin to bear an AD date in Roman numerals is in the gold half-sovereign series of Edward VI; 1548 is the oldest reported date though these coins actually appear to have been struck in 1549. "Western" numerals followed soon after on the silver coinage in 1551. Britain was a fairly late adopter of dating coins because the "privy mark" system functioned just as well for quality control purposes. This general lack of dates (of any kind) on the coins of Europe prior to the mid-1500s goes partway to explaining why our "how far back can we go?" thread has slowed right down, now that it's in the 1540s. We've just about reached the point in that thread where coins with Arabic dates will have to take over. Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise, you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. - C. S. Lewis
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
20753 Posts |
Between allranger and Sap, here is a great coin history lesson. I printed this one out. Lots of not popular information adn good to know.
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Pillar of the Community
United Kingdom
2624 Posts |
:) Great answers :)
To be ignorant of something always annoys me but thankfully there are educated people here who don't mind imparting their knowledge :)
I too will save those answers and have browse of the link too :)
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Moderator
United States
188917 Posts |
Quote:
Between allranger and Sap, here is a great coin history lesson. I agree. This one has been bookmarked.  |
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New Member
United States
2 Posts |
The earliest dated coin is a Samian silver tetradrachm struck in Zankle (now Messina), Sicily, dated year 1, viz 494 BC - shown as the letter 'A' on one side.
The earliest Christian Era dated coin is: MCCXXXIIII (1234) Bishop of Roskilde coins, Denmark (six known).
Above from Guiness
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Pillar of the Community
Russian Federation
5174 Posts |
See also: Eight Weeks of Early Dated European Coinage, an ongoing thread featuring coins with Christian dates from 1500 and earlier. In the third version of HFBCWG, two English coins dated 1549 were posted recently (though they weren't half-sovereigns). |
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Replies: 11 / Views: 6,623 |
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Posted 08/11/2012 7:11 pm
