Birthday Coin!

With the big day coming up soon (somewhere at the end of this month ), I went ahead and treated myself to a coin that I had been eyeing. Its already in hand so these are my own photos.

The Carolingian silver deniers with the temple reverse and XPISTIANA RELIGIO legend are one of the most common Carolingian types, but still aren't cheap. The legend means 'Christian Religion' and has the Latin CH replace by the first two Greek letters for Christ's name: XP. This religiously-based coin type was to affirm the empire's Christianity. The temple itself is reminiscent of those found on Roman imperial coins, and may even have been based on them from found examples of those Roman coins, but with the cross in the temple instead of a pagan deity. To help symbolize the unity of the Frankish Empire by making the coinage more uniform, this type was minted without any mintmark or other reference to the cities in which they were struck. This type influenced other temple-reverse coinage, some of which were struck until the 14th century.

Louis the Pious, King of the Franks and Carolingian Emperor (814-840 AD)
AR Denier
Obv: + H LVDOVVICVS IMP, legend around cross with pellets
Rev: + XPISTIANA RELIGIO, legend around temple, cross in temple
Unknown mint, struck 822-840 AD
Ref: MEC 794