According to Shopareview.com, the coin was known and used in France throughout the Middle Ages. Only from the reign of Theodbert I (534-548), grandson of Clovis (481-511), did the name of a Frankish ruler appear in clear letters on solids, which in type and weight are indistinguishable from Roman coins. Subsequently, the emissions were limited to the tremisse, the lower value of which, equal to one third of the solid, corresponded better to the needs of the barbarian kingdoms. The obverse of these coins, imprinted with little care, has a deformed imperial profile, while in the center of the reverse appears mostly a cross. The legends usually refer to a toponym (a few thousand have been found) and, more than to a sovereign, to a person called monetary, probably the person responsible for the manufacture. 7 ° there was a fundamental change with the abandonment of the manufacture of the gold coin in favor of the silver one; this small revolution reveals an adjustment to the limited economic needs of local populations. The silver denarius (the name denarius is legible on some specimens) was the only type currently wrought in medieval France, for approx. six hundred years, until the reign of Louis IX (c. 1226-1270). In the Merovingian period a profile still appears frequently on the obverse of the coins, sometimes replaced by other motifs, including monograms; on the reverse, beads, stars and different florets often replace the cross. These pieces, whose thick roundel is more or less well rounded, weighed about the same as the later gold coins. The advent of the Carolingians (see Carolingia, Art) also marked a reaffirmation of royal authority in the field of coinage, which was expressed through the reappearance on individual pieces of the king’s name, in full or in the form of initials. During the reign of Pippin the Short (751-768) the denarius changed shape: the round became broad, thin and rounded, with epigraphic motifs that occupied both the obverse and the reverse. Under the reign of Charlemagne (768-814) and more under that of Louis the Pious (814-840), the monetary art reached a sort of perfection in simplicity, with the name of the emperor arranged around a cross and on the reverse the name of the mint arranged in two or three lines. one of the purposes of the edict of Pîtres (864) was to impose in all the territories of the kingdom a currency of a single type and of good title. This type, once again epigraphic, presents in the center of the obverse the monogram of the king, signum affixed to official documents, sometimes surrounded by the name and always by the title of the sovereign, and on the reverse a patent cross surrounded by the name of the mint. The decline of the royal authority once again led to a dispersion of the right to coin money among multiple lay or ecclesiastical powers and a diversification of types, even if the one defined by the Edict of Pîtres constituted, albeit more or less deformed, the model of many noble coins of the 10th-12th century. 13 ° another type was established with great success, the tornese that Philip Augustus (1180-1223) took from the abbey of Saint-Martin in Tours. The king’s successors imposed the use of this coin throughout the kingdom and when Louis IX, in 1266, decided to create a multiple of the denarius, the gross (worth twelve denarii and future cornerstone of the silver coin), this assumed the type of the tornese, surrounded by twelve lilies. Louis IX continued his work of innovation by issuing a gold coin worth ten large silver tornesi, on which the lily stands, both in the shield on the obverse and next to the cross on the reverse. and more attractive for their Gothic elegance were issued by the last Capetians and the first Valois between the end of the century. 13th and half of the following: the king appears seated on a throne or standing, sometimes armed; S. Michele and S. Giorgio defeating the dragon; the paschal Lamb and the royal crown; all these motifs are accompanied, on the reverse, by an infinite variety of flowery crosses. However, these magnificent creations are not the result of monetary stability, but rather the consequence of a very turbulent political and economic history. The gold franc of John the Good (1350-1364), the first franc in history, created in 1360 in a context of relative calm and serenity, however, followed the defeat of Poitiers (1356), the imprisonment of the king by of the English and the payment of a ransom in exchange for his release. The equestrian type who occupies the forehand field, a superb example of a warrior charging at a gallop with a sword in his hand, cannot help but evoke these events. The political events of the century. 15 °, in particular the unrest related to the Hundred Years War and the shattering of the kingdom followed by the slow restoration of the royal authority, did not favor the creation of original coins. The shield surmounted by a crown of lilies was, starting from its creation under Charles VI (1380-1422), in 1385, the main and most constant motif used for gold coins and persisted until the reign of Louis XII (1498 -1515) The silver coin, in which the variation of types reflects the numerous changes that interested it, was almost always adorned on the obverse with three lilies in the field, surrounded by different motifs. Essentially epigraphic, influenced by the art of seals in its best Gothic types, the monetary art of medieval France shines neither for originality nor, as for the silver, for the accuracy of the execution. At this stage, money had the function of a medium of exchange rather than an instrument of ostentation and propaganda. From an iconographic point of view, in the Merovingian era, no profile stamped on the obverse of a coin shows the realistic characteristics typical of the Roman monetary tradition. At the beginning of the century. 9 ° Charlemagne issued, at the end of his reign, some denarii on which he was depicted in profile as a Roman emperor crowned with laurel, with the bust wrapped in the paludamentum. This type had an episodic following up to the century. 10 °; Louis the Pious also adopted this motif on some solid gold coins, now very rare coins, which at the time enjoyed a certain success in the northern regions of the empire, as evidenced by their imitations. In the second half of the century. 10 ° some lords of the Loire region, independent of royal power, adopted a curious stylized head that recalls the typical deformations of Gallic engravers. In the century 12 ° the frontal busts of a patron saint – S. Martial in Limoges, S. Maiolo in Souvigny or the Virgin in Le Puy -, present on the obverse of some ecclesiastical issues, did not aspire to any realism.