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I'm not big into ancients or foreign coins, but I have a question....
MWallace
Posts: 3,935 ✭✭✭✭✭
What year/period do coins go from Ancient to Medieval to Foreign? I'm not even sure I asked that question correctly but you know what I mean. Thank you.
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There isn't one to my knowledge. From what I know, Byzantine coinage is considered "ancient" even though it ended in the mid-15th century while other medieval coinage (like England and France) which are noticeably older are not.
The above is how NGC grades coinage, as PCGS doesn't grade ancients to my knowledge. NGC grades ancients using wear, strike and surfaces on a scale of 1 to 5 and everything else on the Sheldon scale.
I don't know how collectors who collect this coinage view it.
Most pre-modern coins are divided into Ancient, Medieval, Islamic and East Asian, at least to my knowledge. The first includes any coins in Europe (except the Byzantine Empire) up to about 500 AD and in the later Islamic areas up to the coming of Islam, around 620 to 640 AD. Islamic coins are any from Islamic areas after these dates, up to either around 1600 AD or the introduction of milled or steam powered coining. Byzantine coins are usually considered ancient, but only apply to coins issue by the Byzantine Empire. Medieval coins are any from non-Islamic areas in Europe and the Middle East from around 500 AD to around 1500 AD. Sometimes East Asian coins are included in Ancient and Medieval, other times they are their own thing. World coins usually applies to coins from around 1500 onward, but it can be later for places outside Europe and the Islamic World.
@WCC @Bjorn
Good info. Thanks guys.
What you are asking is part of the broader philosophical question, about where exactly the boundaries are between "ancient" and "medieval", and between "mediaeval" and "modern".
Historians tend to use as boundary-points things that are relevant to them. Many Western historians regard the end of the Western Roman Empire in AD 476 to be the end of the "ancient" era and beginning of the "mediaeval" era. The problem with this point of view, for coin collectors, is that "Roman coins" continued to be struck in the Eastern Roman Empire after AD 476. A much more logical boundary for coins is the coinage reform of emperor Anastasius in AD 498, which radically changed the design and style of "Roman" coins, effectively beginning the "Byzantine" coin series. Of course, this logic really only applies to the Western European coinages, as India and China never really experienced the "Dark Ages" to the same extent as Europe and the Mediterranean.
The boundary between "mediaeval" and "modern" is even more problematic, as there are few obvious clear-cut defining moments. Some take it to be Columbus' voyage in 1492. Some, the invention of the printing press, or the Protestant Reformation. The fall of Constantinople in 1453, ending the Byzantine Empire, is another good reference point as far as coinage is concerned; it allows the entirety of the "Byzantine series" to fit into the "mediaeval" classification. Other coin collectors don't focus on a specific date, but rather focus on method of manufacture: hand-struck or cast coins are "mediaeval", machine-struck coins are "modern" - which would mean that "mediaeval" coins were still being made in the mid-20th century in some places. Finally, some collectors choose to use the Krause world coin catalogues as their "modern" cutoff point, so anything prior to 1600 is considered "mediaeval".
For me personally, as a collector who collects ancient, mediaeval, and modern, but who has separate albums for "ancient" and "mediaeval", the classification is more than purely theoretical, as I need to know where to put my coins, and where to find them if I need to. For me personally, I use AD 500 and AD 1450 as the boundary-dates. Near enough to the 498 and 1453 dates to really make no practical difference (since very few coins from that time period actually bore specific calendar dates), but they're nicer, rounder numbers.
Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, "Meditations"
Apparently I have been awarded one DPOTD.
Yes it means what you want it to mean, and what's convenient for your collection. Auctions and dealers don't often use such general groupings - they have sections for Roman Republic, Roman Imperial, Greek, Byzantine, Persian, Chinese etc., with no need for an 'ancients' or 'medieval' dividing line. The literature is the same. Many collections are the same.
The only time it matters is on forums, simply so you don't annoy anyone. But even there, you will get away with any definition as long as it is loosely defensible. I can post any coin from the Saxons to Charles I in a 'medieval' forum, and won't get any arguments, even though, technically, the medieval period in Britain is 600-1485.
'Foreign' is not a term you will see. 'World' you will, even though it is a nonsensical term, since it depends where you are. I post anything at all into 'World' - US coins, British coins - as long it is arguably post-medieval (which includes Henry VII-Charles I). It should really be called 'Modern' or 'Milled', but the implication is usually that collectors of US coins shouldn't post there.
I think as far as periodization of history - there is a growing idea of a 'global middle ages', but off course with more amorphous chronological boundaries. The beginning is a bit easier to roughly define as the unified/Western Roman Empire, the Eastern Roman Empire switching from the Roman model in coinage and language, invasion of the Huns into India, Liu Song and South Qi dynasty in China, etc. The end is often taken to be 1450 to 1525 in Europe, 1453 to 1517 for the the Mediterranean and Middle East, the early 1500s for India, 1492 - 1532 for the Americas. I think China perhaps falls the most outside this, although the trend is going to include it as well . This does tie in a bit with my idea of the end of the middle ages - there really should be a name for the transformative period from about 1450 to 1525 that is not purely medieval or early modern.
Regarding coins - I have seen some dealers and auctioneers who use the term medieval coins, but I will admit these are usually ancient coin dealers - for them, medieval is something they deal in, but is considered of equal importance as categories such as Greek, Roman, Persian, etc. I have seen some world coin dealers use the term/category medieval coins, but other times they will simply list them alphabetically by the issuing authority or the modern country it would fall under
The word used for that "the Dark Ages are over but it's still not quite Modern" time period is "Renaissance". Again, a label that's mostly appropriate to Western Europe.
The whole popular history concept of ancient-mediaeval-modern division began with Petrarch (1304-1374), the "first of the Renaissance thinkers", who considered himself and his time period to be at the end of the "mediaeval" period an the beginning of the "Modern" period. It often seems odd to us 21st century folks to talk about coins from the 1400s and 1500s as being "Modern", but that's just the label - anachronistic for sure, but continuing to use it is better than re-writing all the history books.
We've also got Petrarch to thank for effectively inventing the concept of coin collecting, as we now practice it. He was a particular fan of encouraging the aristocracy to take up coin collecting and using ancient coins as linchpins for learning and teaching moral lessons on how to be a "good prince", and avoid becoming an evil, corrupt one. He was bitterly disappointed when he gifted the emperor a highly educational coin collection, only for the emperor to toss it into the treasure room and ignore it.
Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, "Meditations"
Apparently I have been awarded one DPOTD.
As a history major, one of the most poignant things I learned was how categorizing history is all relative to the current humans doing such categorizing. Because of our limited life spans, certain concepts and time periods will become enlongated or even eliminated. Take the medieval era for example. 5,000 years from now, that era may just as well be considered ancient as Sparta or Carthage. So to relate it back to coins, there truly is no correct or definitive measure on which coins belong where
This is EXACTLY why I was asking, i.e. how to separate. Thank you.
True, that is the commonly used term in popular society, and traditional historiography, but I have often preferred to avoid the term Renaissance for the period outside of art history, particularly as there were several Renaissances for Western and Central Europe throughout the Middle Ages - that and the influence of writers such as Vasari in attempting to create the dichotomy of an enlightened Renaissance versus a backward Middle Ages. When I ran seminars on Medieval History as a PhD student I had to deal with a number of students with misconceptions about culture and life in the Middle Ages, so this may explain my wariness of the term and a preference for the generalizations of Early, High and Late Middle Ages - with the possibility of the Late Antique age as the transformation from the Ancient to Medieval world, and perhaps a 'End Middle Ages' for the period between 1450 and 1525. This would also avoid correlating it with the wider time range of the Italian Renaissance, which it is overlapped by.
As a side note, I am surprised that Charles IV ignored the coins Petrarch gave him - he normally comes off as a fairly effective and thoughtful ruler.. I guess he wasn't a numismatist!
Good points... I sometimes get too hung up on the periodization of history myself. While the 'discovery' of the New World and Protestant Reformation meants quite a bit to the people of the 1500s, and still a good deal to ourselves, in future eras it may be all lumped in together as 'Ancient Times'. I suspect you already see a bit of it with courses labelled Ancient and Medieval history.
Yes the terms 'ancient' and 'medieval' have almost no use at all, beyond giving a very vague idea of when you're talking about. As soon as you use them, you have to define the period more specifically by date and location - Greek, Roman Imperial, post-Norman Conquest, pre-Reformation etc. The precise dates for ancient and medieval are therefore not necessary.
As a collector of British coins, the change for me was during the rule of King Henry VII who ruled from 1485 to 1509. During that time his coins went from this:
to this:
The Renaissance style coins were still hammer struck, but the portrait looked like a real human.
For British coins, you can take medieval as being the Plantagenets (plus the Lancastrian interludes). Later than that, you tend to use the House name (Tudor, Stuart etc), and before that Norman, Saxon etc with sub-divisions. Ancients does cover up to the end of the Roman period including Celtic etc.
There are no rules, so any problems are likely to be self-inflicted.