An Important Offering of Early Papal
8th-10th Centuries

Triton XX, Lot: 1274. Estimate $5000. Sold for $4250. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

ITALY, Papale (Stato pontificio). Hadrian I. 772-795. AR Denaro (18mm, 1.15 g, 3h). Class 2. Rome mint. Struck 781-795. (retrograde C) N ΛDRIΛNVS • • PΛPΛ, half-length facing bust, wearing tonsure, mantum, and stole; I B across field / VICTOR IΛ DNN (triple pellets), cross potent; R m across field. Cf. CNI XV 11 (for type); Muntoni 1; Berman 10; MEC 1, 1032 var. (pellets flanking cross. EF, iridescent toning, minor deposits, some edge loss. Extremely rare.

The denaro was an Italian version of the Carolingian denier, introduced in 755 under Pepin I. Among other things, this new denomination established a uniform weight, fineness, and design. It also established a set relationship between the Carolingian silver denier, which had become the main denomination, and the fictional denominations of account - the shilling and the gold solidus - that were employed to handle larger sums. Under Charlemagne, this reform was implemented fully and expanded to meet the needs of his ever-increasing empire. Initially, Charlemagne's deniers followed the weight and general type of Pepin I. As new sources of silver were discovered, and as Charlemagne acquired more power and territory, he issued new, heavier deniers at his imperial mints (including the Italian ones), which continued under his successors. The denier became so popular as an international currency that early feudal issuers continued the coinage for their own areas, long after the Carolingian rulers themselves were gone. The Carolingian denier (and its fraction, the obole) continued as a denominational type throughout western Europe in the form of the denar, denaro, and even the English penny (notated as d. in accounting) for most of the Middle Ages until the introduction of the larger gros in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.