Generally they didn’t -it was a barter economy- but there were two exceptions. The first is the Roman solidus, a thin gold coin about the size of a US quarter, but those show up mostly in the context of extravagant royal transactions (“and king Childebert gave 6,000 solidi to the monastery of St. Martin,” that sort of thing). The second are various small copper and silver coins minted locally but in very small quantities. I’m not sure if there is a consensus as to whether they were genuine currency or mostly tokenistic.
Thank you for the answer! Is there a lemmy community to discuss these things? Om Reddit there are /r/Francish and other historical subreddits, but I’m new on lemmy and have not figured everything out yet I think.
So, what currency did the Merovingians use? Really I want to know. What coins did Charles Martel have in his purse?
Generally they didn’t -it was a barter economy- but there were two exceptions. The first is the Roman solidus, a thin gold coin about the size of a US quarter, but those show up mostly in the context of extravagant royal transactions (“and king Childebert gave 6,000 solidi to the monastery of St. Martin,” that sort of thing). The second are various small copper and silver coins minted locally but in very small quantities. I’m not sure if there is a consensus as to whether they were genuine currency or mostly tokenistic.
Thank you for the answer! Is there a lemmy community to discuss these things? Om Reddit there are /r/Francish and other historical subreddits, but I’m new on lemmy and have not figured everything out yet I think.
I don’t know, sorry, it’s been a while I used reddit myself.