Philip Grierson – författare

This, the first volume of Medieval European Coinage, surveys the coinage of Western Europe from the fall of the Roman Empire in the West in the fifth century to the emergence of recognizable 'national' political units in the tenth. It starts with the Vandals, Visigoths, Burgundians and other Germanic invaders of the Empire, whose coins were modelled on contemporary issues of the Western or Eastern emperors. The coinage of the Franks is followed from early Merovingian times through to the establishment and subsequent fragmentation of the Carolingian empire. Italy is represented by the coinages of the Ostrogoths, Lombards, Carolingians and popes down to the Ottoman conquest in the mid-tenth century. The coinage of the Anglo-Saxons is traced from the introduction of minting in the early seventh century to the emergence of a united kingdom during the first half of the tenth century, including the aberrant coinages of Northumbria and the Anglo-Viking coinages of the Danelaw.

This volume of Medieval European Coinage deals with the coinage of south Italy, Sicily and Sardinia between the mid-tenth century, when Part I ended, and the reign of Ferdinand the Catholic, on the threshold of the modern era. It thus covers very different coinages of the immediate pre-Norman period and those of the Norman, Hohenstaufen, Angevin and Aragonese dynasties, which in turn ruled part or the whole of the Mezzogiorno. The complex background to the history of this region makes its coinages among the most interesting of medieval Europe. They have rarely been studied together or in a single volume, and the work, which makes extensive use of written evidence and coin finds, will take its place as the standard work of reference for the foreseeable future.

This book, first published in 1991, is a full study of early Hellenistic coinage. It provides a general history of the coinage of Alexander the Great and his successors, and of the cities of Greece and Asia Minor, over the century and a half 336-188 BC. Dr Mørkholm's detailed descriptions of the coins, and the 40 pages of plates illustrating over 600 items, will provide a standard work of reference for ancient historians, numismatists and collectors. His original intention was to write a survey of Hellenistic coinage down to the Roman acquisition of Egypt in 30 BC, but he died with his project only half finished. The survey of early Hellenistic coinage, however, is complete in itself. A short epilogue has been added by Professor Grierson describing the main features of the coinage after 188 BC.

This volume of Medieval European Coinage is the first English-language survey to bring the latest research on the coinage of Spain and Portugal c.1000-1500 to an international audience. A major work of reference by leading numismatic experts, the volume provides an authoritative and up-to-date account of the coinages of Aragon, Catalonia, Castile, Léon, Navarre and Portugal, which have rarely been studied together. It considers how money circulated throughout the peninsula, offering new syntheses of the monetary history of the individual kingdoms and includes an extensive catalogue of the Aragonese, Castilian, Catalan, Leonese, Navarrese and Portuguese coins in the collection of the Fitzwilliam Museum. This major contribution to the field will be a valuable point of reference for the study of medieval history, numismatics and archaeology.