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 Replies: 9 / Views: 1,302 |
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Moderator
 United States
34427 Posts |
Hi I'd like to share the story of one of my newer coins with you. According to Jean Duplessy's book "Les Monnaies Francaises Royales", King Henry the VI was king of France (and England) from October 31, 1422 through October 19, 1453. Not bad considering that he was only nine months old when he ascended to the crown. Henry VI's life seems to have been rather unhappy, having been born into the Hundred Year's way, his claim as King of France being contested, losing most of his French territory, experiencing a series of mental breakdowns, and then finally dying in the Tower of London in 1471. That said, his legacy has been the educational institutions that he founded: Eton College and King's College in Cambridge are a couple examples. See below for a picture of my Blanc aux ecus minted in Rouen France somewhere in the latter part of 1422 or beginning part of 1423. Fittingly, Rouen is near the north coast of France, about as close to England as you can get while still being on the European mainland. The diameter of this coin is 28 mm and the mass is 3.0 g. It is made from billon—debased silver, but still retains a nice shine to the fields. In fact, the seeming large areas of the coin devoid of devices are what drew me to this coin. So many other coins of this time period are crammed full of words and images with no free space. The attribution is Dup. #445 and these coins are not particularly rare. I do see another one for sale on vcoins. The obverse contains two shields: one of France and one of England under HERICVS, with the legend "FRANCORVM:ET:ANGLIE:REX" around the rim. The reverse contains a plain, Latin cross, with a single fleur de lis in the lower left quadrant and a leopard/lion in the lower right hand quadrant. The name HERICVS appears again, along with the legend "SIT:NOMEN:DNI:BENEDICTV". In addition to those wide open spaces that I mentioned previously, two other details to note are the subtle doubling of many of the features as well as the use of two different characters for the letter "N". This is perhaps most striking in the word "NOMEN", where the first letter N is similar to our lower case "r", while the final letter N is similar to our capital letter "H" or perhaps a backward capital "N". I am not an expert in medieval linguistics and so am not sure why the two different characters are used. Perhaps one of our forum members can shed additional light on this subject.    "If you climb a good tree, you get a push."
-----Ghanaian proverb
"The danger we all now face is distinguishing between what is authentic and what is performed."
-----King Adz
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Pillar of the Community
United States
7066 Posts |
Impressive coin, spence, and - as always - a super write-up. I love how much digging for information you do with your coins. Thanks for treating us to another great post.
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Pillar of the Community
Belgium
1194 Posts |
very nice coin with an interesting history .Henry VI was one of the last English king who pretended also to be king of France and during his reign Jeanne d'Arc was executed in Rouen .Rouen was the most imported town of the duchy of Normandy and the English queen is still duchess of Normandy .
For the final N : you find the same form on the obverse in the word fraNcorum ,just before 3 o'clock , so I think this is the normal way of writing , I suppose . The first N/r : It can be some form of capital : the word nomen = name is here the name of God : sit Nomen Domini benedictum :blessed be the Name of the Lord . albert
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Moderator
United States
23731 Posts |
Excellent coin and very interesting write up. I like how the design uses both the English and French Coat of Arms.
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Moderator
 United States
34427 Posts |
Thanks guys. I kinda like these because they encourage me to dig a little deeper with my coins. If I can, I'll try to write one up at the rate of one per week. Let me know when you guys get tired of them...
@albert, thanks for the interesting idea that it is a case of lower and upper case letters. I can think of other examples where a letter or number has multiple shapes (A and S are two others), but in no other cases were the two different versions of the letters used on a single coin. I think that I'll have to dig into this a little more.
"If you climb a good tree, you get a push."
-----Ghanaian proverb
"The danger we all now face is distinguishing between what is authentic and what is performed."
-----King Adz
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Pillar of the Community
Belgium
1194 Posts |
I have a book of Greek and Latin palaeographic (I don t know the exact term in English ),maybe I find some more information .I check this afterneen .albert
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Pillar of the Community
Russian Federation
5176 Posts |
I checked all the other Ns on this example; the backwards N is used in ANGLIAE, FRANCORUM, and BENEDICTUM, while the N in DNI looks like the other type (only the lower part is visible).
I don't know exactly what DNI stands for, but it seems to be an abbreviation, which does make a lower vs. upper case distinction likely.
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Moderator
United States
34427 Posts |
I'm quite sure that DNI is an abbreviated form of DOMINI, meaning "Lord".
"If you climb a good tree, you get a push."
-----Ghanaian proverb
"The danger we all now face is distinguishing between what is authentic and what is performed."
-----King Adz
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Pillar of the Community
Belgium
1194 Posts |
I found nothing about letters on coins .Do you have other coins of this period from England ? If so , check the form , maybe you will find so more indications . albert
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Moderator
United States
34427 Posts |
@albert, thanks anyway for looking. I can see that I need to do a little research on this. if I find anything, I'll resurrect the thread and share my results.
"If you climb a good tree, you get a push."
-----Ghanaian proverb
"The danger we all now face is distinguishing between what is authentic and what is performed."
-----King Adz
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Replies: 9 / Views: 1,302 |
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Posted 02/28/2016 10:28 am
