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An interpretation of the Pacx, Pax and Paxs pennies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Simon Keynes
Simon Keynes
Affiliation:
Trinity College, Cambridge
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Extract

Three eleventh-century English coin types bear legends on the reverse field which are customarily interpreted as forms of the Latin word pax, ‘peace’. The earliest is the Pacx type of Edward the Confessor, which takes its name from the letters p-a-c-x distributed in the four angles of a cross (see fig. 2a); the second is the sole, Pax, type of Harold II, which has the legend pax disposed horizontally within an inner circle (see fig. 2b); and finally there is the Paxs type of William I, which has four annulets within the angles of a cross, each containing one letter of the legend paxs (see fig. 2c). The issue of a type conveying ‘peace’ could be, and has been, regarded as a political gesture arising from specific circumstances, but it is difficult for a historian to understand why such a gesture should have been made on the three occasions in the eleventh century indicated by numismatic chronology – at the beginning of the reigns of Edward and Harold, and again two decades after the accession of William.

Type
Research Article
Information
Anglo-Saxon England , Volume 7 , December 1978 , pp. 165 - 173
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1978

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References

page 165 note 1 This design also occurs on a coin type of Henry I (North no. 859). The following abbreviations are used in this article: BMC = Grueber, H. A. and Keary, C. F., A Catalogue of English Coins in the British Museum. Anglo-Saxon Series (London, 1887–1893)Google Scholar; Brooke = Brooke, George C., English Coins, 3rd ed. (London, 1950)Google Scholar; North = North, J. J., English Hammered Coinage 1 (London, 1963)Google Scholar; Sawyer = Sawyer, P. H., Anglo-Saxon Charters. An Annotated List and Bibliography (London, 1968)Google Scholar; SCBI = Sylloge of Coins of the Brit. Isles (London, 195 8–); SNC = Spink's Numismatic Circular.

page 165 note 2 See, e.g., Keary, , BMC 11, lxxxvGoogle Scholar and xcvii, and Carlyon-Britton, P., ‘Edward the Confessor and his Coins’, NC 4th ser. 5 (1905), 202–3Google Scholar, and ‘A Numismatic History of the Reigns of William I and II (1066–1100)’, BNJ 2 (1905), 167–8.Google Scholar

page 165 note 3 As suggested for the same reason by Brooke (p. 67).

page 165 note 4 Seaby, Peter, ‘The Sequence of Anglo-Saxon Coin Types, 1030–50’, BNJ 28 (1955–1957), 131.Google Scholar

page 167 note 1 Ibid. p. 127, for the incidence of this spelling.

page 167 note 2 See Montagu, H., ‘Note on an Unpublished Penny of William I and on the Word Pax’, NC 3rd ser. 4 (1884), 63Google Scholar. Spicer, F. (‘The Coinage of William I and William II’, NC 4th ser. 4 (1904), 177Google Scholar) suggested that the legend paxs might stand for pax sigillo; Ogden, W. S. (‘Concerning the Evolution of some Reverse Types of the Anglo-Saxon Coinage’, BNJ 2 (1905), 64Google Scholar) read it as s. pax, for ‘holy peace’.

page 167 note 3 This figure does not include those coins with blundered or retrograde legends, all of which are mentioned below. SCBI Copenhagen 11, no. 1412, Midlands no. 209 and Yorkshire no. 69 are indistinct.

page 167 note 4 SCBI Reading no. 78, Mack Collections no. 867 and Yorkshire no. 79.

page 167 note 5 SCBI Copenhagen 11, no. 1253, and Mack Collection no. 902.

page 167 note 6 SCBI Copenhagen 11, nos. 62, 97 and 397, and Yorkshire no. 67.

page 168 note 1 SCBI Copenhagen 11, no. 280, Reading no. 76 and Yorkshire nos. 73–4.

page 168 note 2 SCBI Copenhagen 11, no. 250, reading from the fourth quadrant.

page 168 note 3 Ibid. no. 281, reading from the third quadrant.

page 168 note 4 Ibid. no. 1188.

page 168 note 5 SCBI Glasgow no. 1232 and Mack Collection no. 1344.

page 168 note 6 SCBI Norweb Collection no. 242, Midlands no. 565 and Mack Collection no. 1418 read axas; the mint is ‘Devintun’, on which see Michael Dolley, The Norman Conquest and the English Coinage (London, 1966), pp. 31–2. SCBI Mack Collection no. 1452 reads pasx from the fourth quadrant.

page 168 note 7 SCBI Copenhagen IV, no. 887 (pxca), no. 1045 (pcax) and no. 1263 (paxs); Jones, F. Elmore, ‘Four “New” Coins of the Huntingdon Mint’, BNJ 33 (1964), 168Google Scholar (pscx). A penny in the British Museum, ex Lockett no. 3799, reads xacx or xccx. A penny in the Royal Coin Cabinet at Stockholm reads pxcx.

page 168 note 8 Dolley, R. H. M., ‘Some Unpublished Variants of the PACX Type of Edward the Confessor’, NC 7th ser. 6 (1966), 207–16Google Scholar; ‘A New C-R-V-X Penny of Edward the Confessor’, SNC 81 (1973), 152Google Scholar; and ‘A Further Note on certain Unpublished Variants of the PACX Type of Edward the Confessor’, SNC 85 (1977), 357–8.Google Scholar

page 169 note 1 Sawyer no. 923, printed by Hart, C. R., The Early Charters of Northern England and the North Midlands (Leicester, 1975), pp. 228–30Google Scholar. Dr Hart points out that there was a moneyer called Elemod, who worked at the Chester mint between c. 979 and c. 997.

page 169 note 2 Sawyer nos. 977 and 1293.

page 169 note 3 Ibid. no. 926, printed by Campbell, A., Charters of Rochester (London, 1973), pp. 45–7.Google Scholar

page 169 note 4 Sawyer no. 1393.

page 169 note 5 See Jusselin, Maurice, ‘Notes Tironiennes dans les diplômes mérovingiens’, Bibliothèque de l'École des Charles 68 (1907), 486–7.Google Scholar

page 170 note 1 See Brooke, pp. 23 and 27, and Blunt, C. E., Lyon, C. S. S. and Stewart, B. H. I. H., ‘The Coinage of Southern England, 796–840’, BNJ 32 (1963), 13Google Scholar. Cf. North no. 375, for which the moneta interpretation is not tenable.

page 170 note 2 North nos. 376 and 381. A coin of the moneyer Eanwulf has:ta, with the A prominent, as the reverse design, answering to mone: in the inscription (BNJ 32 (1963), pl. v, Cl 7).

page 170 note 3 See Brooke, pp. 30–1. The design was popular in East Anglia, recurring on North nos. 450–1, 456 and 480, as well as on the St Edmund Memorial coinage (North nos. 483–5). It may also have been understood as standing for Anglia or Anglorum, on the analogy of the Mercian m, but it is unlikely that this was its original meaning: if it had been, North nos. 439 and 456 would be tautological.

page 170 note 4 Dolley, R. H. M. and Skaare, K., ‘The Coinage of Æthelwulf, King of the West Saxons, 839–58’, Anglo-Saxon Coins, ed. Dolley, R. H. M. (London, 1961), p. 71Google Scholar. Note that some of the designs in the series look almost like alpha and omega combined (North nos. 599 and 602; cf. no. 615 in ‘phase 3’), while the Canterbury monogram on North no. 614 seems also to be related to them.

page 170 note 5 Hickes, G., Linguarum Vett. Septentrionalium Thesaurus Grammatico-Criticus et Archæologicus (Oxford, 1705)Google Scholar, ‘Dissertatio Epistolaris’, p. 47. In a late-eleventh-century manuscript of Sawyer no. 906, dated 1004, a chrismon serves as the initial letter of Postquam.

page 171 note 1 Two charters of the 950s (Ibid. nos. 566 and 574) end with the appeal: ‘Pax Christi nobiscum. Amen’.

page 171 note 2 See, e.g., the chrismon reproduced as fig. 2f, from Ibid. no. 768. A coin type of Archbishop Plegmund provides a precedent for the standard contraction of Christ's name appearing on a coin: North no. 255 seems to read xḎs, a nonsensical legend which should perhaps be understood as xpc, and BMC 1, p. 81, no. 78, is said to read x???s, for xps (or conceivably for ‘Christus Dominus’).

page 171 note 3 See the figures quoted above. Note that the figures for the Lincoln mint on its own are slightly different: first quadrant, 9.9%; second, 41.7%; third, 4.4%; fourth, 44%.

page 171 note 4 See, e.g., North no. 495 and other late-ninth-century coins of the York mint.

page 171 note 5 Stewart, Ian, ‘A Variant of the First Coin Type of Edward the Confessor’, SNC 75 (1967), 2–3Google Scholar. The cruciform arrangement of four-letter words, which reflects the making of the sign of the cross, was certainly popular in the eleventh century: one of the diagrams in Byrhtferth's Manual (written c. 1011; facsimile, , Byrhtferth's Manual, ed. Crawford, S. J., Early Eng. Text Soc. o.s. 177 (London, 1929), opp. p. 86Google Scholar) has deus in a central roundel arranged in this way, with adam similarly disposed around it. See also Oxford, St John's College 17, 7v (facsimile, Ibid. opp. title page), and London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius C. i, 5r, for diagrams in which adam is disposed cruciform.

page 172 note 1 SCBI Copenhagen iv, no. 1045.

page 172 note 2 Elmore Jones, ‘Four “New” Coins’, p. 168.

page 172 note 3 SCBI Mack Collection no. 1452.

page 172 note 4 North nos. 228 (Archbishop Æthelheard), 242 (Archbishop Ceolnoth), 404 (Beorhtwulf, king of Mercia) and 608 (Æthelwulf, king of Wessex). Chrismons are rare on charters before the midtenth century, and so it is interesting that the few examples include a charter of Beorhtwulf of Mercia (Sawyer no. 204) and charters of Æthelwulf of Wessex (Sawyer nos. 293, 296 and 298). These charters were issued in the period 843–7, during the currency of the coins with chrismons.

page 172 note 5 North nos. 236, 384, 421, 559, 587, 591, 641 and 766–8. Alpha-omega motifs occur rarely on charters before the late tenth century, and then only in association with a chrismon. So the forms on ninth-century coins have no exact parallels in contemporary charters. When the motif appears on a charter in 993 (Sawyer no. 876), it does so in a form closely resembling the design on the coins of Beorhtric of Wessex (North no. 559).

page 172 note 6 A series of coins of King Olof Skötkonung of Sweden (c. 994–1022) provides a remarkable numismatic analogy for the pictorial and verbal invocations which occur on Anglo-Saxon charters. The type in question is based on the Crux type of Æthelred II, but the moncyer's name and mint on the reverse are replaced with the legend + in nomine dni m c, where mc perhaps stands for mundi creatoris: see SCBI Copenhagen 11, no. 1511, for an example which also preserves the name of King Æthelred on the obverse. An English moneyer called Godwine seems to have been associated with the production of these coins; see Malmer, Brita, ‘A Contribution to the Numismatic History of Norway during the Eleventh Century’, Commentationes de Nummis Saeculorum IX-XI in Sttecia Repertis 1 (Stockholm, 1961), 233–40.Google Scholar

page 173 note 1 While holding myself responsible for the views here expressed, I should like to thank Mark Blackburn, Christopher Blunt, Dr Pierre Chaplais, Professor P. A. M. Clemoes, Professor Michael Dolley, Professor Philip Grierson, Dr Cyril Hart, Michael Hoeflich, Peter Kitson and Dr D. M. Metcalf for their comments on carlier drafts of this article.