Catalog
1 Tremissis
| Issuer | Pisa, City of |
|---|---|
| Year | 700-750 |
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| Composition | Gold |
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| Obverse description | Central spoked wheel or rayed star motif, with alternating elongated petals or leaf forms radiating outward between the spokes, all contained within a beaded or plain inner circle. A retrograde or degenerate Latin legend encircles the central device in the field, reading FLAVIA PI YA C, interpreted as a corruption of the mint or civic attribution referencing Pisa. The overall style reflects the debased Lombard-Byzantine hammered tradition of early medieval Italian civic coinage. |
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| Reverse description | A plain cross occupies the central field, surrounded by a degenerate and largely nonsensical Latin circular legend composed of repetitive letterforms. Above and below the cross, a spiky globular ornament — sometimes described as a spiked ball or stylised star — is present in the field, a characteristic decorative element of early medieval Lombard-period Pisan tremisses. The lettering and design are highly degenerate, consistent with the decline of epigraphic standards in eighth-century Italian hammered gold coinage. |
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| Additional information |
Pisa's tremissis belongs to a murky transitional moment when northern Italian cities were producing pseudo-Byzantine gold under Lombard pressure, nominally imitating imperial types but drifting steadily toward local identity. The specific authority behind these issues remains disputed — whether civic, ecclesiastical, or connected to Lombard administrative structures in Tuscany is unresolved in the literature, which is why the date range spans half a century.
The BMC Vandal reference is a cataloguing artifact of older scholarship, not an attribution to Vandal issuance.